European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology 6 th Annual Conference 24 November 2004, Oporto Research priorities in Occupational Health Psychology Michiel Kompier Radboud University Nijmegen The Netherlands

The psychosocial work environment and health I.What do we know? II.Where should we not go? III.Where should we go? Literature: Campbell The role of theory in industrial and organizational psychology (1992) Cox et al.Research on work related stress, Bilbao (2000) KompierScand J Work Environ Health (2002) 28 (1) 1-4 Kompier & TarisScand J Work Environ Health (2004) 30 (2) NORA/NIOSHThe changing organization of work and the safety and health of working people: knowledge gaps and research directions Schaufeli Applied Psych: Int Review 53 (4) (2004) Taris & KompierScand J Work Environ Health (2003) 28 (1) 1-4

Work-Person-Stress-Health What do we know? 1. Occupational stress major problem for both health and productivity 2. Good general theories 3. Which factors in work are major risk factors 4. (Inter)national legislation: Risk assessment and risk management

European legislation: Job design and well-being (European Framework Directive on Health and Safety at Work, 1993) The employer has ‘a duty to ensure the safety and health of workers in every aspect related to the work, following general principles of prevention’: Evaluating risks which cannot be avoided Avoiding risks Combating risks at source Adapting work to the individual Developing coherent overall prevention policy

Job design and well-being: 7 theories, critical job characteristics (Kompier, 2003) 1. Job Characteristics Model 2. Michigan-Organizational-Stress Model 3. Job Demands-Job Control Model 4. Sociotechnical approach 5. Action-Theory 6. Effort-Reward-Imbalance Model 7. Vitamin Model

Job design and well-being: 7 theories, critical job characteristics (Kompier, 2003) 1. Job demands(6) 2. Skill variety(6) 3. Autonomy(6) 4. Social support(4) 5. Feedback(3) 6. Task identity(3) 7. Job future ambiguity(3) 8. Pay(2)

Where should we not go? 1. No more general research! 2. Do not expand cross-sectional ‘cause-effect studies’ & self-reports-only studies ‘The plethora of hopeless cross-sectional studies which attack extremely complex issues with the weakest of research designs’ Kasl (1978, p.3) Epidemiological contributions to the study of work stress

B AC B C A B C A ‘normal causation’ ‘reverse causation’ ‘reciprocal causation’ A= Job demands B= Work-home imbalance C= Fatigue = ‘Direct’ = ‘Indirect’

Where should we not go? 3. Do not try to compensate for weak study designs by increasing the number of sophisticated statistical analyses

Where should we go? Learn from the past Learn from the past ‘While it is difficult to judge whether the current amount of high-quality research is excellent, reasonable, barely adequate, or less than adequate, it seems relatively obvious that we do a poor job of summarizing, storing and retrieving what we do know’ (Campbell, 1992) ‘While it is difficult to judge whether the current amount of high-quality research is excellent, reasonable, barely adequate, or less than adequate, it seems relatively obvious that we do a poor job of summarizing, storing and retrieving what we do know’ (Campbell, 1992) Better ideas: Good and original thinking Better ideas: Good and original thinking Better designs and better data Better designs and better data Analytical parsimony principle (APA 1996) Analytical parsimony principle (APA 1996) Progress in OHP will more likely come from simple analyses of good data than from sophisticated analyses of poor data

Research priorities: 4 types of studies 1. High-quality review studies Example: De Lange, Taris, Kompier, Houtman & Bongers (2003) The very best of the millennium: Longitudinal research and the Demand-Control-(Support) model, Journal Occupational Health Psychology, 8, Research question: How much evidence for strain hypothesis in longitudinal high quality studies?

(De Lange et al., 2003) Method: Methodological quality: type of design, length of time lags, quality of measures, method of analysis, non- response analysis Results: 45 longitudinal studies: 19 (42%) acceptable scores on all criteria 45 longitudinal studies: 19 (42%) acceptable scores on all criteria Only modest support for high strain hypothesis (‘combi’) Only modest support for high strain hypothesis (‘combi’) Good evidence for lagged causal effects of work characteristics (‘separate’) Good evidence for lagged causal effects of work characteristics (‘separate’)

2. Monitor-studies Cross-sectional studies are adequate for studying: 1. Prevalences 2. Trends 3. First ‘test’ of new ideas Example: Beckers, van der Linden, Smulders, Kompier, van Veldhoven, van Yperen Working overtime hours: relations with fatigue, work motivation and the quality of work, Jr. Occup. Envir. Med. (in press) Research question: Prevalence of overtime work? Related to fatigue, work motivation, quality of (overtime) work: demands, job variety, decision latitude?

(Beckers et al., in press) Results: 67% worked overtime (y = 3.5 hours) Overtime workers: non-fatigued, motivated workers with favourable work characteristics Psychosocial work characteristics much stronger related to fatigue than overtime Method: Survey study Representative sample Dutch full-time workforce (n=1807)

3. Aetiology and causality How questions / mechanisms / pathways Longitudinal studies (Quasi)Experimental studies Example: De Lange, Taris, Kompier, Houtman & Bongers (2004) The relationships between work characteristics and mental health: Examining normal, reversed and reciprocal relationships in a 4-wave study, Work and Stress, 18, Open up “the black box”:

(De Lange et al., 2004) Research question: Three types of causality, and, if so, which type is dominant? Method: Survey study, 4 wave study, heterogeneous sample of 668 Dutch employees, structural equation modelling Results: Evidence for reciprocal causal relationships between work characteristics and mental health Effects of work characteristics on mental health stronger than vice versa Follow-up: De Lange et al. (SJWEH, in press) studied 4 mechanisms that might underlie these reversed effects

4. Prevention and intervention Example: Kompier et al. (1998, 2000a, 2000b), Taris et al. (2003) Method: Cases, research design rating, comparison Results: Reduction occupational stress possible If 3 types of quality criteria are met: Content, Context, Design of the studyContent, Context, Design of the study Research question: How well, why and how do stress prevention programs work?

Conclusions 1. A lot of progress: knowledge and knowledge infrastructure 2. We have learned a lot 3. And enough to advocate interventions in the psychosocial work environment 4. There still are important challenges, both applied and theoretical: Learn from the past Learn from the past Monitoring Monitoring Opening up the black box Opening up the black box Prevention and intervention Prevention and intervention Thus: Think, but Keep it simple! Thus: Think, but Keep it simple!