A life course perspective on immigrant occupational health and well-being

Details

• Personal Author:
  Eggerth DE ; Flynn MA ; Leong FTL
• Description:
  This chapter proposed the application of the life course perspective to the study of immigrant occupational health in order to correct psychology's tendency to ignore the time and contextual dimensions and use primarily static cross-sectional designs with decontextualized variables. Wethington's (2005) formulation of the life-span perspective across the concepts of trajectories, transitions, context, linkages, and adaption strategies was used to frame our study of the immigrant experience and illustrate how such a perspective can enrich a program of research as well as provide a much needed theoretical model to guide such research. The discussion of this paradigm provided specific examples of how application of the life course perspective can enhance understanding of the occupational health of immigrants and move us from a variable-centered approach to the person-centered approach. What is needed next are research studies which incorporate the measurements of these dimensions of trajectories, transitions, context, and linkages to determine if they provide incremental validity above the traditional cross-sectional studies of immigrant occupational health. These studies should also help us identify important sub-group differences among immigrants due to differential life course dynamics which will ultimately help us design prevention and intervention programs with greater clinical utility and effectiveness. In the pursuit of clarity of definition and rigor of measurement, research in psychology has increasingly sacrificed directly addressing the depth, interrelatedness, and richness of human experiences such as immigration. Although such an approach is more easily funded and published, it is not necessarily better or more relevant science. The life course perspective embraces the complexity, the interrelatedness, and, dare we say, the "messiness" of life that current psychology too often attempts to avoid, control, or contain. The challenges inherent to conceptualizing research within such a model represent the spirit, if not the essence, of developing a nomological net around one's research concepts, as advocated by Cronbach and Meehl (1955) in their classic work on construct validity. Consequently, the life course perspective does not ask psychology researchers to enter uncharted methodological waters, but rather to embrace more tightly a decades-old "best practice" of our discipline. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Mental Health Occupational Health Preventive Medicine Safety
• Keywords:
  Analytical-processes Occupational-health Preventive-medicine Psychologists Psychology Sociological-factors
• ISBN:
  9781118713907
• Publisher:
  Wiley-Blackwell
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Book
• Place as Subject:
  Michigan ; Ohio ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  EID - Education and Information Division
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  97-113
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20045651
• Citation:
  Contemporary occupational health psychology: global perspectives on research and practice. Leka S, Sinclair RR, ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014 May; :97-113
• Editor(s):
  Leka S; Sinclair RR
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2014
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Contemporary occupational health psychology: global perspectives on research and practice
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:238763c170cb88828bc583ba4203681e202c60247a3152500f604c47313ff63396036e2ee966288ea5e5d04fcbf6c7001511eaf654d2c1273398a79d94b76fd5
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/200997/cdc_200997_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 4.85 MB ]