Pushing Occupational Health Psychology into the Micro and Macro

Blog post by Allie Kom

Blog edited by Courtney Keim

Conducting Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) research comes with unique challenges (e.g., acute ethical and confidentiality concerns), but adding cross-level methods to the mix is a different kind of undertaking. To encourage OHP cross-level research, Dr. Katina Sawyer and Dr. Keaton Fletcher organized a Research Forum titled Thinking Big and Thinking Small: Pushing Occupational Health Psychology into the Micro and Macro at the 40th annual Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) 2025 Conference. They brought together two panels of distinguished OHP scholars to discuss challenges (and solutions!) of cross-level OHP research.

On the first panel, Drs. Russell Cropanzano, Chris Rosen, and Robert Sinclair discussed the general challenges that come with conducting cross-level research and how to address them. They offered advice on balancing theory building while addressing practical problems (spoiler: build theory around the practical problems you want to address), translating findings to practitioners, and choosing suitable methods for cross-level research. This discussion gave attendees an awareness of general issues they may encounter in their cross-level OHP research, providing a foundation for the next panel to address more specific challenges. 

In the following panel, Drs. Keaton Fletcher, Molly Minnen Sloan, and Tahira Probst described unique hurdles they encountered in their cross-level OHP research and how they overcame them. Common themes included challenges with data collection (e.g., equipment complications, finding datasets with multiple levels) and data analysis (e.g., balancing breadth and depth of topics in reviews, combining cross-level data sets, addressing the intricacies of multilevel data). The panelists were candid about their struggles and demonstrated, as one attendee noted, “the great tenacity of researchers,” in their ability to persevere through setbacks.

In addition to contributing to the panel discussions, attendees worked together to push forward their own OHP research. Together they built out research ideas, thought through method roadblocks, shared data sources, and planned future collaborations. Through their collaboration, the organizers, panelists, and attendees made the daunting concept of cross-level OHP research not only approachable but accomplishable.

The Research Forum also served as an incubator for a call for papers for a thematic collection on cross-level OHP research at Occupational Health Science. This collection encourages interdisciplinary and multilevel research exploring “macro” factors (like government policy, economics, culture) and “micro” factors (like physiology, momentary experiences, cognition) that influence worker wellbeing. Interested authors must first submit a 750-word extended abstract by September 1, 2025, for initial review before potentially being invited to submit a full paper. More information about this collection can be found here!

In the end, Thinking Big and Thinking Small: Pushing Occupational Health Psychology into the Micro and Macro left those attending feeling inspired and energized, with one attendee summarizing their experience by saying they felt “encouraged and excited” about their upcoming OHP projects.