8291962 Exploring a decade of interdisciplinary themes in occupational health: topic modelling of labour, employment, and health literature (2010–2020)

<h3>Objective</h3> Topic modelling is a valuable approach for identifying interdisciplinary trends in large-scale textual data. This study applies topic modelling to analyse research patterns in occupational health literature over the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic (2010–2020). <h3>Material and Methods</h3> We searched SCOPUS® using keywords related to labour force and employment relations, identifying 162,652 publications. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was used for topic modelling. Topics were identified and labelled through expert consensus, based on the coefficients of terms extracted from titles, abstracts, and keywords. Each topic was assessed by frequency, citation count, funding status, journal distribution, and annual trends. Prevalence ratios were calculated using the topic with the lowest publication count as the reference, comparing 2020 outputs to the cumulative counts of previous years. Linear trends across the decade were also estimated. <h3>Results</h3> Eighteen distinct topics were identified. The most prevalent topics were population characteristics and social inclusion (7.5%), social policy models (7.4%), and psychosocial factors (7.3%). The most highly funded topics were indices of exposure (9.9%), environmental exposure (8.9%), and health estimates (7.5%). In 2020, occupational health and safety (OHS) management showed the highest prevalence ratio, while interventions and occupational health outcomes showed the lowest. The steepest positive trends were observed in social policy models, psychosocial factors, and population characteristics and social inclusion. <h3>Conclusion</h3> Topic modelling serves as an effective exploratory method for secondary analysis, enabling the assessment of thematic and temporal patterns within occupational health literature. The observed trends underscore a growing emphasis on employment-related issues, particularly in psychosocial risk management and systems-level OHS governance. Key Messages: 1. Topic modelling is a valuable approach for secondary analysis, offering insights into research trends and interdisciplinary themes in occupational health. 2. The rise of topics such as psychosocial risks and OHS governance highlights the need to align future research and policy priorities with evolving global challenges.