Occupational Health Psychology

Donald E. Eggerth

The goal of occupational health psychology (OHP) is to improve the quality of work life, and to protect and promote the health of workers and of their families. OHP is interdisciplinary, involving most areas of psychology and drawing upon fields such as public health, sociology, medicine, and industrial engineering. OHP is typically characterized as having a threefold focus on the work environment, the individual worker, and the interface between work and family. Interventions and/or research range across all three levels (primary, secondary, and tertiary) of the public health model of prevention. In many respects, OHP grew out of efforts to understand, and later to remediate, the impact of the widespread application of Frederick Taylor's management principles on workers in both the United States and Europe. Nearly a century ago, Taylor argued that industrial productivity can be improved by simplifying, compartmentalizing, and standardizing worker tasks. Thinking about work was considered the ...

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