Visualizing National Worker Survey Data through Worker Health Charts

October 23, 2018 by Blair Carlin; CAPT Sara E. Luckhaupt, MD, MPH; and Amy Mobley, MEn

Anne is the CEO of a major hospital in a large metropolitan area. She is concerned by reports the Human Resources Department is receiving from employees about harassment and bullying. She understands that harassment and bullying can create a hostile work environment. With these concerns in mind, she includes questions about hostile work environment in the hospital’s annual employee survey. Anne finds the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) interactive data visualization tool, called Worker Health Charts, and plans to compare results from the annual employee survey to national data available within this tool. Worker Health Charts allows users to examine trends in workplace injuries and exposures using national workplace safety and health data from various sources, including the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). The NHIS collects data about health and working conditions directly from a nationally representative sample of adults. In addition to the core questions asked every year, the survey also collects supplemental data that address special issues. In 2015 and 2010, NIOSH sponsored a series of questions added to the NHIS that were related to the impacts of work on health. Topics covered by the 2015 supplemental questions included:

Low back pain
Carpal tunnel syndrome
Workplace health promotion programs
General occupational exposures
Work organization characteristics
Psychosocial occupational exposures

The NHIS provides relevant data within Worker Health Charts to answer Anne’s questions on bullying and harassment.

Anne locates the Worker Health Charts home page, and scrolls down to find a menu summarizing the topics for which data are available. Anne thinks that “hostile work environment” might fall under “Exposures”, and more specifically, “Psychosocial Occupational Exposures”, so she clicks on that link.