Meg Bond, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Lowell, One University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01854, 1-978-934-3971, Meg_Bond@uml.edu and Laura Punnett, ScD, Department of Work Environment, University of Massachusetts Lowell, University of Massachusetts Lowell, One University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01854.

There is broad recognition that the psychosocial environment at work can affect physical and mental health as well as organizational outcomes such as work performance and effectiveness. The economic costs are related to absenteeism, turnover, and lost productivity, and, although difficult to estimate, could be billions of dollars per year. The psychosocial domains studied by occupational health researchers typically include psychological job demands, job control (decision latitude), social support, and intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. These factors, reflecting the organization of the work process, are often used to define the "psychosocial work environment." However, health and well-being are also affected by other features of the psychosocial work climate, such as unfair or inequitable treatment of employees, sexual harassment, and discrimination. Differential treatment, whether in terms of gender, age, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disabilities, is increasingly recognized as a chronic stressor that can affect both psychological and physical health. Experiences of discrimination can operate either in a cumulative way or in combination with each and are inherently likely to be distributed differentially by socioeconomic position. One barrier to such research is the lack of awareness of appropriate measurement instruments. Researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, at the request of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, have catalogued 46 measures of biases, discrimination, and harassment that may be useful to occupational health researchers who wish to explore these factors further. These measures will be presented and challenges and future needs to improve their application in occupational settings will be discussed.

Learning Objectives:

• • The audience should be able to identify significant challenges in measuring discrimination, bias and harassment in the occupational setting.
• • The audience should be able to engage in dialogue about research strategies that occupational health and safety researchers can adopt for study of discrimination, bias and harassment in the workplace

Keywords: Occupational Health, Health Disparities

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.