Measuring worksite health promotion programs: an application of structural equation modeling with ordinal data.

This paper presents a model for measuring the outcome of Worksite Health Promotion Programs through an application of Structural Equation Modeling with ordinal data. We model the function "being healthy" as a vector comprised of three latent or unobservable variables: Health Status, Lifestyle and Stress. Each variable can be measured only indirectly through a set of manifest or observable ordinal indicators. The objective is to derive and analyze the distributions, and changes in distributions over time, of the latent variables on an individual level. The model is analyzed empirically on data from three large Swedish manufacturing firms.