Robert R. Sinclair, Ph.D.,
Associate Professor, Industrial/Organizational
Psychology
|
|
Department of Psychology Biography |
Research Interests
My research focuses on Occupational Health Psychology - the application of theories and methods of psychology to the study of worker safety, health, and well-being. Most of my current research addresses three main occupational contexts with different kinds of safety, health, and well-being concerns: military personnel, retail workers, and health care professionals (e.g., nurses). My primary theoretical interests are in the personal and organizational factors that contribute to employee stress and in differences across workers and occupational contexts in the nature of employee-employer relationships. Finally, while my research covers a wide array of outcomes, I most commonly study employee retention and turnover, organizational commitment, and occupational health and well-being.
In the military context, my research concerns personal and organizational factors that contribute to Soldiers' stress resilience. Most of this work has been in collaboration with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research . Regarding personal factors that contribute to stress resilience, I have conducted several studies related to hardiness - a set of beliefs people have about the extent to events in their lives are meaningful, under their personal control, and challenging rather than threatening. Hardy individuals are less likely to experience adverse reactions to stressors and may be more likely to see positive benefits in stressful experiences. In terms of organizational factors, my interests concern how high quality leadership and supportive organizational climates can help military personnel (and other workers) cope with both every-day work stressors as well as potentially traumatic events (e.g., combat exposure). In the near future, I anticipate focusing this work on personality factors that contribute to stress-resilience, multi-level approaches to understanding stress, and organizational climate as a potential buffer of the relationship between traumatic stressors and PTSD.
I have conducted numerous studies of retail workers, particularly in collaboration with Professor James E. Martin of Wayne State University. Our research has examined many different aspects of the retail work experience, including union-related attitudes and behavior, employee commitment, and retention and turnover. Our recent research has focused on differences among part-time employees and between part and full-time employees with respect to their job attitudes and turnover (e.g., Sinclair, Martin, & Michel, 1999; Martin & Sinclair, 2007). Our studies in progress continue to focus on part and full-time work status, as well as other issues of importance to retail workers, such as economic stress, safety climate, and applications of organizational justice to perceptions of work schedules.
Finally, I am currently collaborating with the Oregon Nurses Association on a grant sponsored by the Northwest Health Foundation . This research examines how both positive and negative work experiences affect nurses' intentions to leave their jobs. While stress and turnover have been heavily studied in prior literature, this study is one of a just a few that examine both positive and negative work experiences as they occur from week to week. Our research focuses on stressors that are particularly important in the nursing context, including staffing patterns, interpersonal conflict, and performance constraints. One difference between our research and many past studies is that we are not only assessing stressful working conditions but also asking our participants to describe interventions that would lessen the stressors and/or enhance the positive aspects of their work experiences.
