Quality of Life in multiple scenarios: The impact of work mode and social contact quantity

Abstract Background This study aims to explore issues, such as (i) whether there is a difference in quality of life (QoL) among subgroups of the work mode (working from home (WFH) vs. working in the office (WIO)), social contact quantity, and face contact ratio; (ii) whether employees' QoL is moderated by the social contact quantity and face contact ratio given their work mode; (iii) whether the three-way interaction effect of work mode, social contact quantity, and face contact ratio on employee's QoL is significant; and (iv) whether the WHOQOL-BREF invariantly measures for the subgroups of the work mode, social contact quantity, and face contact ratio. Methods We assessed the QoL of 803 WFH employees and 588 WIO employees during the same time period and divided them into sixteen groups resulting from the levels of work mode, social contact quantity, and face contact ratio, forming a case-control study. A differential item functioning (DIF) analysis was used for analyzing the responses on the WHOQOL-BREF under the 4-dimensional rating scale model fitting. Results Our results indicated that WFH employees’ QoL was superior to that of WIO employees [χ2(1) = 8.52, p = 0.0035]. However, since the work mode was moderated by the social contact quantity [χ2(3) = 10.89, p = .012] and face contact ratio [χ2(1) = 11.39, p < .001], WFH employees’ QoL was worse than that of WIO employees if their amount of social contact was low and if most social contacts were not face-to-face. Moreover, WFH employees’ QoL was better than WIF employees’ QoL when most contacts were not face-to-face and the number of social contacts was high [χ2(3) = 9.07, p = .028]. Besides, the WHOQOL-BREF measured employees’ QoL biasedly as many facets of the WHOQOL-BREF were found to diverge among subgroups of the work mode and social contact quantity.Conclusions The WFH mode was practical in the COVID-19 pandemic. However, maintaining social connections is equally important so that employees can maintain good performance in jobs. The facets detected as DIF items provided implications for QoL research methodology and insight into factors affecting employees' QoL.