Personal and Team Morale in Health Services: Distinct and Measurable Concepts

This article has two aims: to assess whether personal and team morale are distinctive concepts and to develop valid single-item measures of both on the assumption that they are ordinary language, singular concepts. It thus examines the interrelationship and validity of measures of personal and of team morale, using data from a survey of a sample of 1,886 mental health staff across England. A single-item measure of personal morale is shown to be distinct from a single-item measure of team morale. Initially their correlation is examined, and the relative proportions of variance at the individual and team levels are shown to differ. Second, the measure of personal morale is found to correlate strongly with a selection of scales conventionally used to measure individual staff well-being. Third, the core components of the Karasek model of strain, job demands, control and support are related to this single-item personal morale rating. Fourth, personal morale is shown to mediate a relationship between these job characteristics and self-reported absences. Team morale is shown to be more closely associated with measures of team characteristics than is the personal morale measure, and less with the individual job characteristics. Such validated single-item measures have considerable potential usefulness in health services (and beyond), especially if we are to monitor the impact of the ever-increasing changes associated with increased competition and restructuring.