Taming the flood of findings: What makes for a really useful literature review in occupational health psychology?

Abstract

Work & Stress was established in 1987 as one of the first journals specifically dedicated to publishing research in occupational health psychology (OHP), that is, psychological research aiming to improve the quality of work life, and to protect and promote the safety, health and well-being of workers (NIOSH, 2022). Other journals have not held back in publishing research in this area. To date a wealth of findings is available on a wide range of OHP-relevant topics like work stress, organisational and individual-level interventions, safety at work, recovery, work characteristics, and interpersonal relations at work. Moreover, much of this research can be retrieved in a split second using search engines such as PsycInfo and Google Scholar; a situation that could hardly be foreseen back in the days when Work & Stress was established! The downside of the availability of this treasure trove of findings is that these often diverge and sometimes contradict each other. Creating an overview can be confusing and the precise state of affairs in a particular area may be unclear. What do we know about a particular phenomenon? What is still under discussion? What are the research gaps that still need to be addressed? Responding to the growing need for summarising, reviewing, interpreting and integrating the findings that are available, over the years Work & Stress has paid much attention to publishing review studies. For example, over the past three years about one in five papers published in the journal was a review study. Moreover, these reviews figure prominently among the most highly-sought articles in Work & Stress. Clearly, there is a great need for such studies. Unfortunately, whereas to date we receive many submissions that present reviews, not all of these are equally interesting and useful. This raises questions like (a) What makes for a really valuable review study in the area of OHP?, and (b) Which recommendations can be formulated for new review studies to bring the research field of occupational health further?