Secondary or archival analysis – Work, Stress, and Health

Using workers’ compensation systems to improve workplace safety and health

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

The mission of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Center for Workers’ Compensation Studies (CWCS) is to maximize the use of workers’ compensation (WC) claims data and systems to improve workplace safety and health through partnerships. This poster presentation will describe recent and ongoing CWCS surveillance and research studies to achieve several key goals (see https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/workercomp/cwcs/publications.html).

The Effects of Chronic Thought Suppression on Post-Traumatic Stress Symptom Severity in Firefighters

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

Firefighter recruits through their first three years of service completed surveys measuring levels of thought suppression, PTSD symptoms, and exposure to potentially traumatic events. A secondary data analysis was conducted, and structural equation modeling revealed that, when controlling for trauma exposure, trait thought suppression correlated significantly with PTSD symptom severity. These results emphasize the importance of considering an individual’s tendency towards thought suppression as a complicating factor of firefighter PTSD severity.

Age Discrimination at Work: National Survey Data on Prevalence and Associations with Health and Well-Being, 2002-2018

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

As the workforce ages, interest has grown regarding the prevalence and possible impact of age discrimination at work. This study presents an analysis of data from a national survey in the United States in which worker-reported age discrimination was measured over a 16-year period. Findings indicated that the prevalence of workplace age discrimination remained fairly stable during this period, and that the experience of age discrimination was a significant predictor of several quality of work life measures.

Working on the railroad during COVID-19: A case study analysis on employee perceptions of safety culture

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

This mixed-methods case study analysis investigates employees? perceptions of their organization?s COVID-19 response, and seeks to examine how these perceptions relate to the organization?s safety culture. Qualitative and quantitative archival survey data collected from one large freight-carrying railroad with sites across the U.S. was utilized to conduct analyses. The top five themes extracted from a bottom-up qualitative analysis of employees? open-ended responses about their organization?s COVID-19 response are presented and discussed (n = 196). Initial quantitative analyses that examine these responses in relation to employees? perceptions of their organization?s safety culture suggest that an organization?s existing safety culture may relate to its handling of the pandemic; a finding that bolsters existing literature on the many benefits of a strong organizational safety culture. Additional analyses are currently being conducted to further explore how the top five themes that emerged from open-ended comments relate to more-specific indicators of safety culture. In this way, we may be able to more finely-tune the practical implications of this work.

The price of pain: Pain as an explanatory mechanism for the relationship between physical job demands and intentions to turnover

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

Our presentation conceptualizes pain as an explanatory mechanism for the relationship between physical job demands and intentions to turnover (ITO), using the fear-avoidance (FA) model as the theoretical framework. Data from a multi-wave study on work capacity and aging, which included 360 participants recruited from five manufacturing organizations in the northeastern U.S., were analyzed using the SPSS PROCESS macro (model 4) to estimate direct and indirect effects, while controlling for various covariates. Our results indicated that high physical job demands were significantly related to increased perceptions of pain; high perceptions of pain and high physical job demands were significantly related to higher ITO; and the relationship between physical job demands and ITO was partially mediated by perceptions of pain. Collectively, these results indicate that ITO is a potential outcome of physical job demands, and that pain may partially explain this relationship. As such, in order to reduce instances of ITO, research as well as organizations that require employees to engage in physically demanding work should focus on uncovering interventions that may reduce an employee?s associated experience of pain.

An exploration of the relationship between legislation on work-related stress and bullying at work, organizational practices and working conditions in European enterprises

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

This study explored the relationship between legislation on work-related stress and bullying at work, organizational practices and working conditions in European enterprises. The study was conducted in two stages. The first stage was a review of legislation of EU member states on work-related stress and harassment and bullying at work. The second stage of the study involved a secondary analysis utilizing two datasets representative of the EU population of workers (EWCS, 2015) and enterprises (ESENER, 2014). Multilevel modelling was conducted linking these two datasets in order to explore whether those member states that had specific legislation on work-related stress and on bullying at work reported more organizational practices (i.e. procedures and measures to deal with work-related stress and with harassment/bullying at work) and whether these were related with a more positive psychosocial work environment and less reported work stress and bullying.

Can’t we all just get along? A nomological network of workplace mistreatment

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

Our current examination of workplace mistreatment literature is conducted on a secondary level to identify trends and concerns across multiple research streams and unique to specific forms of mistreatment. The current work addresses these commonalities and unique concerns by identifying a holistic framework of workplace aggression, including immediate factors surrounding mistreatment, lenses through which the phenomena can be examined, and secondary-level categories for mistreatment influences (e.g., antecedents, outcomes). This framework was constructed through a thorough review and coding of 31 meta-analyses, qualitative reviews, and book chapters. The identified second-level categories of influences and outcomes of mistreatment may be practically useful for organizations when examining relationships and desired outcomes for workers, while the identified patterns of commonality in mistreatment research (e.g., prevalence of target perspective) highlight opportunities for future research (e.g., perpetrator perspective).

The Impact of Childhood Psychological Maltreatment on Work-Family Conflict in Adulthood

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

We analyzed publicly available self-report data from Wave IV of The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine how the experience of childhood psychological maltreatment impacts work-family conflict throughout adulthood. We chose to look at psychological maltreatment because it is a commonly reported form of trauma that can impede a child?s ability to develop both personal resources, such as mastery and perceived constraint, as well as social resources such as spousal support, that help an individual successfully manage work and family roles. While the results of our path analysis to test the indirect effect of psychological maltreatment on work-family conflict through mastery, perceived constraint, and spousal support were not significant, we did find significant negative associations between childhood psychological maltreatment and mastery and spouse support, and significant positive associations between childhood psychological maltreatment and perceived constraint and family-to-work conflict. Altogether, our findings indicate the childhood psychological maltreatment is associated with the availability of personal and social resources that are imperative for managing work and family roles, as well as family-to-work conflict itself.