Open AccessModeling intraindividual variation in unsafe driving in a naturalistic commuting environment.
Author(s) -
Charles Calderwood,
Phillip L. Ackerman
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of occupational health psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.532
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1939-1307
pISSN - 1076-8998
DOI - 10.1037/ocp0000127
Subject(s) - stressor , psychology , psycinfo , affect (linguistics) , human factors and ergonomics , occupational safety and health , odds , multilevel model , injury prevention , poison control , applied psychology , safety behaviors , occupational stress , structural equation modeling , suicide prevention , distress , social psychology , environmental health , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , logistic regression , medicine , medline , statistics , communication , pathology , mathematics , machine learning , political science , computer science , law
Commuting to work by car is a frequently occurring activity that poses a salient risk to worker safety. Although general stress perceptions have been linked to indicators of unsafe commuting in cross-sectional studies, little is known about whether and how day-to-day variability in stressor exposure and subjective and affective strain reactions covary with intraindividual variability in unsafe driving while commuting over time. A major contributor to this knowledge gap is the lack of a validated methodology to link subjective self-report variables to objective driving performance criteria in a naturalistic commuting environment. Data were collected from university staff employees ( N = 50) over a 2-week sample of daily experiences and objective recordings of unsafe driving behaviors. We applied a multilevel methodology to evaluate a model in which exposure to daily hindering and challenging components of work stress, end-of-workday psychological distress, and end-of-workday negative affect influence objectively monitored unsafe driving behaviors in a naturalistic commuting environment. Results indicated that employees were less likely to drive unsafely during their postwork commute on days in which they encountered more challenge stressors at work (odds ratio = .63). However, employees who experienced heightened negative affective spillover were more likely to drive unsafely during their postwork commute (odds ratio = 1.96). We discuss the theoretical, practical, and methodological implications of our findings for research on employee commuting safety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).