8260794 Psychosocial work factors and health: a field in the intersection between disciplines

<h3>Objective</h3> To discuss and problematize research on psychosocial work factors and health from an intersectional perspective <h3>Results</h3> Research on the psychosocial work environment has evolved significantly over the past century—from being a peripheral element of industrial psychology to becoming a well-established field of psychology — Work and Organizational Psychology (WOP) and Occupational Health Psychology (OHP). The early foundations were laid in the 1930s through the Hawthorne studies, which revealed the importance of social dynamics in the workplace. During the 1960s and 1970s, Herzberg’s two-factor theory and Bertil Gardell emphasized psychosocial work factors. Later in the 1980s, Karasek and Theorell’s job demand–control model gave the field theoretical depth and the relationship between work, stress, and health gained increasing attention. In the 1980s, psychosocial work exposure started to emerge in occupational epidemiology, where scholars sought to empirically quantify the impact of work-related psychosocial factors on population health. While much epidemiological research utilizes clearly defined and clinically assessed exposure and outcome measures, psychosocial occupational epidemiology faces many challenges. One problem is the lack of stable conceptual precision that has a bearing on robust measures of exposures with cut-off levels to distinguish between harmless and harmful exposure. While we need stable exposure assessments, the organisation of work has changed substantially and is continually and rapidly changing, raising concerns about whether instruments developed in the 1980s are still valid and will be valid in the coming years. <h3>Conclusion</h3> Researcher investigating psychosocial exposures risks ending up in between, neither ‘good enough’ for WOP/OHP, nor Psychosocial Occupational Epidemiology. This becomes evident when publishing research and for policy recommendations. To tackle problems, we advocate for increased interdisciplinary research discussions and collaborations, as well as for interdisciplinary research to attain a more prominent status in the research community.