Page No.11-17
Chris Piotrowski
University of West Florida, USA
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The current study, based on a content analysis of the recent literature, presents a
barometer on the major emphasized topical areas and research streams in the field
of Applied Psychology. The bibliometric analysis included a review of 675 articles
published in the top-tier publication: Journal of Applied Psychology, for years 2007-
2015 inclusive. The data analysis showed that the most popular investigatory topics, in
recent years, focus on a broad range of both traditional and emergent areas in applied
psychology: (in rank order) teams, theoretical frameworks and models, methods/data
analysis, organizational justice, leadership, ethics/values, work-family issues, abusive
supervision, turnover, personality factors, performance appraisal, LMX theory, personnel
selection, incivility, and worker creativity. These issues have been reported as major
research topics in prior bibliometric studies of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
(see Cascio & Aguinis, 2008; Piotrowski, 2014). In addition, a host of popular topics
evident in major texts across the field of applied psychology were found to be somewhat
underrepresented, i.e., job loss, assessment centers, sleep-shift factors, diversity
issues, sexual harassment, crisis management, entrepreneurship, retirement issues,
absenteeism, leisure, work recovery, and employee compensation. This analysis
illustrates a foundation for mapping the intellectual structure and research domain of
the emerging literature in applied psychology.
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