RESEARCH PROGRAMS
The goals of my research programs are to improve the quality
of individual well-being, and to build a healthy workplace and society that
enhance the safety and health of workers and their families. A healthy workplace or a healthy society is
one in which all constituents are able to exercise their talents and gifts to
achieve high performance as well as maintain psychological and physical
well-being. In order to understand how
to effectively build a healthy society and a healthy organization, I have taken
an interdisciplinary approach over
years to explore the ways of maximizing organizational as well as societal
productivity, and optimizing individual potentials to pursue healthier, more
secure, and safer lives. My past field and military experience have convinced
me that there will be much more efficient options available if one is open to
different approaches and ideas, and utilize their strengths to solve problems.
To achieve the above goals, I have focused on four main
research programs: program evaluation, safety promotion and injury prevention,
stress and management, and person-environment fit. Whatever the areas are labeled, these
research programs share a common goal: understanding the way of building a
healthy workplace and society. Foremost,
my research programs are not mutually exclusive because each line of my
research has often interacted with others.
For instance, in an awarded NIOSH 5-year grant related to safety
training and safety campaigns, I have integrated diverse areas of research,
including occupational stress, organizational justice, organizational climate,
communication, attitude change, leadership, safety performance, motivation,
training, work-family conflict, social marketing, conflict management, and so
on. Another 3-year grant awarded by the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is to
evaluate two gatekeeper trainings for suicide prevention, which are conducted
for agencies in six communities working with juvenile justice and family
welfare. In addition, my team will identify
knowledge, ability, skill, and other personal characteristics (KSAOs) which are required for future gatekeeper selection
purpose. Finally, we identify gatekeeper
performance that distinguishes average and superior performers. The latter information will be used for
performance evaluation and training purposes.
In the following sections, I will briefly summarize my
research programs with the foci on stress and management, and safety promotion
& injury prevention.
Research in occupational stress has major implications for
healthy organizations and societies, as well as individual well-being. I have studied if perceptions of stressful
job environments are dependent upon the eyes of the beholders. In addressing this question, my colleagues
and I have examined to what degree trait negative affectivity (i.e., pervasive
experience of negative emotion) would contaminate the relationships between
stressful job characteristics or work contexts and strains. Furthermore, we also challenged the psychometric
quality of trait negative affectivity and two-factor structure of
affectivity. In addition, we have
expanded its role from the job stress literature to other areas, including personnel selection, performance feedback, and
person-environment fit.
Beside trait negative affectivity, my
colleagues and I have examined the roles of organizational justice in strain
reactions. In addition, my students and I have attempted to understand how to
help job incumbents cope with stressful job events in general contexts as well as
special circumstances such as job search and termination. My research team also explored
the mechanisms of aggressive behaviors at work. Workplace aggression is viewed
as one types of occupational stressor.
Supported by a NIOSH contract, we completed a
comprehensive review that postulates plausible causes and consequences of
workplace aggression. Extending this line of work, I employed a five-wave longitudinal design, with
the support of a CDC funding, to study patterns of aggressive behaviors from
geriatric patients in five long-term facilities, and its effects on certified
nursing assistant.
Injuries due to unsafe behaviors in general, and at work in
particular, often generate direct cost (e.g., payments to medical providers) and
indirect costs (e.g., lost productivity and worker replacement costs) for
victims, their families, organizations, and societies.
These costs have long been the concerns among CFOs, human resource (HR)
managers, risk managers, and others.
However, relatively little research has been done in HR, strategic HR,
or organizational behaviors, or occupational health and safety. To address these concerns, my research team
has completed a very
first comprehensive review pertaining to workplace sleepiness. The review explored the roles of individual
and organizational factors in workplace sleepiness, which may lead to various
adverse consequences such as productivity loss, injuries, and accidents. Extending this line of research, my colleague
and I had secured a 2-year grant from NIOSH to examine how farm safety climate,
risk beliefs of parents and adolescents, and sleep patterns predict adolescent
injuries and accidents. We have also
investigated to what extent organizational safety policies and return-to-work
policies predict injuries and psychological well-being. With the another CDC funding, my students and
I had conducted five small-scale studies to explore how various organizational
risk factors (injustice, leadership, communication structure, occupational
stressors, safety climate, etc.) and individual characteristics (motivation,
safety control) predict injuries, near miss, as well as microaccidents.
The most
recent research projects are listed below:
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Task and Contextual Safety Behaviors
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Workplace Violence Interventions
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Safety Training and Evaluation
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Training transfer climate
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Knowledge Utilization and Dissemination
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Mentoring
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Error Communication
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Occupational Stress
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Work and Safety Motivation
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Trainer Development
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Predictors of Turnover for Health Care Professionals
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Leadership and Justice in the Construction Industry
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Causes and Consequences of Workplace Sleepiness
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Patient Aggression Toward Health Care Workers
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Individual’s Perceptions of Control at Work
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Employees’ Reports of Occupational Injuries
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Work-Family Conflict
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Suicide Prevention
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Security and Safety Climate
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Gatekeeper KSAOs, Selection, Performance
Evaluation, and Training Projects
Contact My Office for comments
Updated on 12/25/2006