Stephanie Andel

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Investigating the impact of work on employees' health, safety, and well-being

Stephanie Andel is concerned about the psychosocial work factors that influence employee health, safety, and well-being. In her research, her goal is to answer the following questions:

  • What role does feeling called to one’s work have on employees’ health and well-being?
  • What are the psychosocial work factors that drive employee safety outcomes within high-risk occupations?
  • What are individual-level strategies that employees can use to effectively cope with work stress and promote their own recovery?


Much of Professor Andel's translational research is interdisciplinary. She frequently collaborates with colleagues from a variety of academic backgrounds, including Public Health, Management, Public Affairs, Medicine, and Information Systems. The ultimate goal of her research is to identify effective individual-level and organizational-level strategies that will enhance employees' health, safety, and well-being and reduce the negative impacts of stressful and harmful work environments.

Professor Andel's translation of research into occupational health solutions for stressful and harmful work situations is another excellent example of how IUPUI's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 10 of 13
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    Decarceration from Local County Jails during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Closer Look
    (Taylor & Francis, 2021-09) Martyn, Kevin P.; Andel, Stephanie A.; Stockman, M. Rhebeca N.; Grommon, Eric; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    The COVID-19 pandemic initially compelled population reductions at local county jails. This study uses daily population counts at 970 jail facilities in 43 different U.S. states to; assess changes in jail population levels during 2020; relate those changes to the demographic, economic, and political characteristics of the counties where they took place; and examine the relationships between jail population levels and COVID-19 cases and deaths. Jail population data was gathered by the Jail Data Initiative at New York University and linked to other publicly accessible data collections. Through descriptive analyses and latent growth curve modeling, our findings indicate that while jail population levels generally fell in the early stages of the pandemic, they remained higher in areas with larger proportions of minoritized populations, and returned more rapidly to pre-pandemic levels in areas with larger proportions of Black and Republican-leaning residents. Larger pre-pandemic jail population rates were associated with elevated COVID-19 case and death rates during 2020, and changes in local jail population rates predicted case and death rates over a following three-month period. Specifically, each percentage increase in jail populations was associated with between 80.4 and 101.9 additional cases and 1.2 to 1.4 additional deaths per 10 K county residents.
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    Do social features help in video-centric online learning platforms? A social presence perspective
    (Elsevier, 2020-12-01) Andel, Stephanie A.; de Vreede, Triparna; Spector, Paul E.; Padmanabhan, Balaji; Singh, Vivek; de Vreede, Gert-Jan
    The popularity of online learning is growing exponentially. Accordingly, it is critical to understand how we can facilitate the learning experience for users in these unique online environments. Past research consistently finds that one important antecedent of online learning outcomes is social presence. However, there is limited research related to how to foster social presence perceptions among users. Further, research has yet to understand whether there are boundary conditions for the positive effects of social presence perceptions on user outcomes (e.g., perceived learning, satisfaction). The current work describes two studies to address these questions. The first study uses an experimental design to investigate how the perception of social presence can be increased in the online learning context. In the second study, we investigate the degree to which social presence perceptions are more beneficial for some individuals versus others. Specifically, we consider two personality traits (i.e., conscientiousness, extraversion) as moderators of the relationships between social presence perceptions and two outcomes – perceived learning and satisfaction. Overall, the results of these two studies provide important insights into how to enhance user outcomes in online learning and training environments.
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    Being Called to Safety: Occupational Callings and Safety Climate in the Emergency Medical Services
    (American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2016-12) Andel, Stephanie A.; Pindek, Shani; Spector, Paul E.
    Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the importance of safety climate in the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and to assess occupational callings as a boundary condition for the effect of safety climate on safety behaviors. Methods: EMS professionals (n = 132) participated in a three-wave survey study. Hierarchical linear regressions were conducted to test the moderating effects of occupational callings. Results: Safety climate was significantly related to safety behavior, and occupational callings moderated this direct relationship (ΔR2 = 0.02 to 0.03, P < 0.05). Specifically, when occupational callings were high, the relationship between safety climate and safety behaviors was stronger, and when occupational callings were low, the relationship was weaker. Conclusion: In this EMS sample, safety climate was an important predictor of safety behavior. Further, occupational callings moderated this relationship, suggesting that callings may serve as a boundary condition.
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    When antecedent becomes consequent: An examination of the temporal order of job dissatisfaction and verbal aggression exposure in a longitudinal study
    (Work & Stress, 2019-10-02) Andel, Stephanie A.; Pindek, Shani; Spector, Paul E.
    Past research has traditionally examined stressors as predictors and strains as outcomes. However, some recent research has found evidence of reverse causality between various stressors and strains, demonstrating that the relationship between these types of variables may extend beyond the traditional stressor-strain framework. The current study builds upon this past research by examining the temporal direction of the relationship between verbal aggression exposure and job satisfaction. Specifically, through the lens of emotional contagion theory, we suggest that low levels of job satisfaction in employees are detectable by others, which in turn leads them to engage in verbal aggression directed toward those employees. To test this postulation, 309 emergency medical professionals completed surveys that assessed verbal aggression exposure and job satisfaction across three time points. Results of cross-lagged structural equation model tests showed a significant job satisfaction to verbal aggression path over time, but a nonsignificant verbal aggression to job satisfaction path over time. Additionally, results support the postulation that job satisfaction leads to physical strain outcomes through verbal aggression exposure. Overall, results suggest that job satisfaction may serve as a predictor of verbal aggression exposure rather than a result within high stakes environments such as the emergency medical services.
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    Safety at Work: Individual and Organizational Factors in Workplace Accidents and Mistreatment
    (Emerald Publishing, 2015-01-01) Andel, Stephanie A.; Hutchinson, Derek M.; Spector, Paul E.
    The modern workplace contains many physical and interpersonal hazards to employee physical and psychological health/well-being. This chapter integrates the literatures on occupational safety (i.e., accidents and injuries) and mistreatment (physical violence and psychological abuse). A model is provided linking environmental (climate and leadership), individual differences (demographics and personality), motivation, behavior, and outcomes. It notes that some of the same variables have been linked to both safety and mistreatment, such as safety climate, mistreatment climate, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.
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    The Development of a Multidimensional Engagement Measure
    (Research Gate, 2018-08-16) Andel, Stephanie A.; de Vreede, Gert-Jan; Singh, Vivek; de Vreede, Triparna; Padmanabhan, Balaji; Spector, Paul E.
    Over the past decades, user engagement has become central to product success more than ever before. However, while engagement has been studied extensively in various disciplines, these bodies of knowledge are siloed. One indication of this separation is that there is no existing user engagement measure that can be used consistently and reliably across research domains. This emergent research paper aims to progress towards bridging this gap by developing an engagement scale that may be generalized to multiple disciplines. To that effect, we first identified engagement as a three dimensional phenomenon and developed definitions for each dimension. Next, we conducted a series of four studies to develop and validate a measure of user engagement. This resulted in a 16-item measure to assess cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement. Future steps include further refinement of the measure, and additional studies to test the generalizability of the scale across disciplines.
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    A content engagement score for online learning platforms
    (Association for Computing Machinery, 2018-06-26) Singh, Vivek; Padmanabhan, Balaji; de Vreede, Triparna; de Vreede, Gert-Jan; Andel, Stephanie A.; Spector, Paul E.; Benfield, Steve; Aslami, Ahmad
    Engagement on online learning platforms is essential for user retention, learning, and performance. However, there is a paucity of research addressing latent engagement measurement using user activities. In this work in progress paper, we present a novel engagement score consisting of three sub-dimensions - cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, and behavioral engagement using a comprehensive set of user activities. We plan to evaluate our score on a large scale online learning platform and compare our score with measurements from a user survey-based engagement scale from the literature.
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    Information security climate and the assessment of information security risk among healthcare employees
    (Health Informatics Journal, 2020-03-01) Kessler, Stacey R.; Pindek, Shani; Kleinman, Gary; Andel, Stephanie A.; Spector, Paul E.
    Since 2009, over 176 million patients in the United States have been adversely impacted by data breaches affecting Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act–covered institutions. While the popular press often attributes data breaches to external hackers, most breaches are the result of employee carelessness and/or failure to comply with information security policies and procedures. To change employee behavior, we borrow from the organizational climate literature and introduce the Information Security Climate Index, developed and validated using two pilot samples. In this study, four categories of healthcare professionals (certified nursing assistants, dentists, pharmacists, and physician assistants) were surveyed. Likert-type items were used to assess the Information Security Climate Index, information security motivation, and information security behaviors. Study results indicated that the Information Security Climate Index was related to better employee information security motivation and information security behaviors. In addition, there were observed differences between occupational groups with pharmacists reporting a more favorable climate and behaviors than physician assistants.
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    Digging deeper into the shared variance among safety-related climates: the need for a general safety climate measure
    (Taylor & Francis, 2018) Hutchinson, Derek M.; Andel, Stephanie A.; Spector, Paul E.; Psychology, School of Science
    We combined three independent streams of workplace climate research, safety, violence prevention, and civility, to devise a general safety climate scale that explicitly addressed a variety of risks. A confirmatory factor analysis suggested that a higher-order factor may be responsible for the similarity in relationships across these safety-related climate measures with exposure to organizational hazards and resulting employee outcomes. As a result, a concise 10-item measure was developed and validated to assess a possible general safety climate factor. Further analyses suggested that the use of a general safety climate measure did not attenuate the relationships with workplace hazards and employee outcomes. Although different safety-related climate variables may be theoretically distinct, there may not be a measurable benefit in promoting one form of climate over others. Future studies should consider employing the general safety climate measure in place of domain-specific climate measures, unless the domain-specific climate is solely of interest.
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    What is Engagement and How Do We Measure It? Toward a Domain Independent Definition and Scale
    (2019-01-08) de Vreede, Triparna; Andel, Stephanie A.; de Vreede, Gert-Jan; Spector, Paul; Singh, Vivek; Padmanabhan, Balaji
    An engaging experience draws in and holds our attention. Engagement is a critical phenomenon of interest in a variety of disciplines and application domains and has been shown to lead to positive outcomes, such as enhanced learning, task performance, or job satisfaction. However, existing measures of engagement are typically specific to the domain in which the research is conducted. This paper builds on the synergies of various disciplines and proposes a discipline-independent definition of engagement and measurement scale. In this paper, we distinguished between the three temporal levels of engagement in terms of the expected length of the engagement (task/activity, initiative, and continuous). We further explored the differences in the conceptualization of engagement, viz. affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement. We then offered a comprehensive definition of engagement. We finally developed a measurement scale that can be used across domains and contexts which we derived by iteratively refining the items in this scale through a series of five data samples to arrive at the final scale. Our results provide evidence for the scale’s validity in two domains (online learning and work engagement).