Research Interests

Research Interests: My research has two foci: (1) Employee Relations with specific emphasis on leadership, human resource practices, work-related stress and employee health and well-being, and (2) Research Methods to inform organizational research, and the development of effective work-based interventions.

Work-Stress and Employee Relations: I'm interested in how supportive relations in and outside the workplace affect employee health and well-being, and also how work-related conditions and practices (e.g., work hours, shift work, compensation) affect employee access to support from work and non-work related sources. I also investigate how the interplay between support and undermining from significant others (e.g., one's immediate supervisor, coworkers and close family members) affect employee health, well-being and performance. My research on Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCB) focuses on predictors of OCB, such as leadership and organizational practices, as well as on how employee cultural and demographic background shapes the implications of these predictors. Finally, I'm interested in designing interventions and work-based practices to reduce at-risk behaviors in the workplace (e.g., substance abuse) and improve employee ability to cope with work-related stress, and especially stress stemming from work-related transitions (e.g., school to work transition, job-loss and retirement).

Research Methods: My research focuses on developing methodologies for (a) advancing organizational research; and (b) developing effective work-based interventions. More specifically, I work on research relating to inter-rater agreement indices, which are useful for assessing organizational climate and related organizational-level constructs. I also investigate the properties of Polynomial Regression for addressing critical questions concerning work-related fit and misfit. I collaborate with Susan Murphy (Institute for Social Research) and Linda Collins (Methodology Center, Penn state) on developing innovative experimental designs and data analysis methods that inform the construction of high quality interventions. My research focuses on the Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trial (SMART) and methods for use with SMART study data to inform the construction of high-quality adaptive interventions (in which intervention options are adapted over time in response to the needs and ongoing performance of the participant). I also investigate the properties of factorial and fractional factorial designs and their application in multi-level contexts (e.g., employees nested within organizations or work-units).

Key words: Employee Relations, Work Stress, Social Support, Social Undermining, Leadership, Employee Health and Well-Being, Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trials, Factorial Designs, Inter-Rater Agreement Indices, Polynomial Regression.

Publications

  • Nahum-Shani, I., Henderson, M.M., Lim, S., & Vinokur, A.V. (In Press) Supervisor support: Does it buffer or exacerbate the adverse effects of supervisor undermining? Journal of Applied Psychology.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., Qian, M., Almirall, D., Pelham, W.E., Gnagy, B., Fabiano, G., Waxmonsky, J., Yu, J., & Murphy, S. (2012). Q-Learning: A Secondary Data Analysis Method for Developing Adaptive Interventions. Psychological Methods, 17(4), 478.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., Qian, M., Almirall, D., Pelham, W.E., Gnagy, B., Fabiano, G., Waxmonsky, J., Yu, J., & Murphy, S. (2012). Experimental Design and Primary Data Analysis for Developing Adaptive Interventions. Psychological Methods, 17(4), 457.
  • Dziak, J., Nahum-Shani, I., & Collins, L. (2012) Multilevel Factorial Experiments: Power and Conceptual Considerations. Psychological Methods, 17(2), 153 *equal contribution of authors.
  • Lei, H., Nahum-Shani, I., Lynch, K., Oslin, D., & Murphy, S.A. (2012). Using Sequential, Multiple Assignment, Randomized Trial (SMART) Designs to Build Individualized Treatment Sequences. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 8, 21-48.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., & Bamberger, P.A. (2011). The Buffering Effect of Social Support on Stressor-Strain Relations: The Conditioning Effects of Perceived Reciprocity Patterns. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 114, 49-63.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., Bamberger, P.A., & Bacharach, S.B. (2011). Social Support and Well-Being among Blue Collar Workers: The Conditioning Effects of Perceived Patterns of Supportive Exchange. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 52, 123-139.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., & Somech, A. (2011). Leadership, OCB and Individual Differences: Idiocentrism and Allocentrism as Moderators of the Relationship between Transformational and Transactional Leadership and OCB. Leadership Quarterly, 22, 353-366.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., & Bamberger, P.A. (2011). Work Hours, Retirement and Supportive Relations among Older Adults. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32, 345-369.
  • Cohen, A. Nahum-Shani, I., & Doveh, E. (2010). Further Insight and Additional Inference Methods for Polynomial Regression Applied to the Analysis of Congruence. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 45, 828-852.
  • Cohen. A., Doveh, E., & Nahum-Shani, I. (2009). Testing agreement for multi-item scales with indices rwg(J) and ADM(J). Organizational Research Methods, 12, 148-164.
  • Bamberger, P., Kohn, E., & Nahum-Shani, I. (2008). Aversive Workplace Conditions and Employee Grievance Filing: The Moderating Effects of Gender and Ethnicity. Industrial Relations, 47, 229-260.

Book Chapters

  • Qian, M., Nahum-Shani, I., Murphy, S. (2012). Dynamic treatment regimes, To appear as a book chapter in Modern Clinical Trial Analysis , edited by X. Tu and W. Tang, Springer Science.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., Xi, L., Henderson, M.M., & Murphy, S.A. (2012) Innovative experimental design for developing effective technology-supported help-seeking interventions. Book chapter to appear in S.A. Karabenick and M. Puustinen (Eds). Advances in Help Seeking Research and Applications: The Role of Information and Communication Technologies.

Manuscripts under Review or In Progress

  • Nahum-Shani, I., Bamberger, P.A., Bacharach, S.B., & Doveh, E. Explaining the varying effects of retirement on alcohol consumption: The role of unit-level drinking norms and stress climate.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., Dziak, J.J., Collins, L.M. Multi-level factorial designs: When clustering is generated by experimental conditions.
  • Vinokur, A.D., Nahum-Shani, I., & Shirom, A. Job involvement and organizational commitment as moderators of the relationship between job burnout and depressive symptoms.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., Vinokur, A.D., & Howe, G. Social undermining and reemployment: The buffering and exacerbating effects of patterns of supportive exchanges.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., Bamberger, P.A., Bacharach, S.B., & Doveh, E. When the honeymoon is over: Retirement and changes in psychological distress and supportive relations.

Presentations

  • Bacharach, S.B., Bamberger, P.A., & Nahum-Shani, I. Hours, shifts and supportive relations: Resource mobilization and the link between temporal workplace demands and social support. Paper presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, August 2007.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., Doveh, E., Bamberger, P.A., & Bacharach, S.B. Moderated mediation in multilevel models: The case of involvement in traumatic events. Poster presentation at the 4th conference of the EMR - International Biometric Society. January, 2007.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., & Bamberger, P.A., Temporal workplace demands and the Buffering Effect of Social Support: The Conditioning role of perceived reciprocity patterns". Paper presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA, August 2008.
  • Nahum-Shani, I. Hours worked and their positioning during the day: Effects on support availability from work, family and non-work friends. Invited talk, HR Dissertation award winners' paper session, Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA, August 2008.
  • Nahum-Shani, I. Dissertation Award winners session: Invited talk at the HR Doctoral Consortium, Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA, August 2008.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., & Bamberger, P.A. Work Hours, Retirement and Supportive Relations among Older Adults. Paper presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, August 2009.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., Qian, M., Pelham, W.E., Gnagy, B., Fabiano, G., Waxmonsky, J., Yu, J., & Murphy, S.A. Q-Learning: A Data Analysis Method for Constructing Adaptive Interventions. Paper presented at the Society for Prevention Research Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, May 2010.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., & Somech, A. Leadership, OCB and Individual Differences: Idiocentrism and Allocentrism as Moderators. Paper presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada, August 2010.
  • Nahum-Shani, I. Adaptive Interventions Utilizing Mobile Health Technologies. Whitepaper accepted to the mHealth Evidence Workshop, sponsored by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health. Bethesda, MD, August 2011.
  • Dziak, J., Nahum-Shani, I., & Collins, L. Multilevel Factorial Experiments: Power and Conceptual Considerations. Paper presented at the Society for Prevention Research 20th Annual Meeting. Washington, DC, May 2012.
  • Nahum-Shani, I., & Bamberger, P.A., Bacharach, S.B., & Doveh, E. Explaining the varying effects of retirement on alcohol consumption: The role of unit-level drinking norms and stress climate. Paper presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, August 2012.
  • Nahum-Shani, I. Supervisor support: Does it buffer or exacerbate the adverse effects of supervisor undermining? Paper presented at Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI; November 2012.
  • Nahum-Shani, I. Supervisor support: Does it buffer or exacerbate the adverse effects of supervisor undermining? Seminar presented at the Department of Psychology, Virginia Tech; January, 2013.
  • Nahum-Shani, I. Designing work-based brief interventions for at-risk drinking: The SMART way. Research project presented at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA; February 2013.

Teaching/Training/Workshops

Advanced Regression Analysis workshop, Organizer/Speaker
The international summer workshop series in advanced research methods
Recanati School of Business, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Part of CARMA: Research Methods Education for the Global Classroom

Methods for Just In Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAIs), Instructor
Workshop for discussing conceptual and methodological issues in optimizing JITAIs
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI August 16 2013
Funded by SRC/ISR, NIH/NIDA, Mcubed

Quantitative Methodology Program Seminar, Coordinator/Instructor
Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI

  • Experimental Designs for Intervention Development. NIH SOBC: Meeting on Use-Inspired Basic Research, Bethesda, MD, October 2012.
  • Experimental Designs for Intervention Development. National Strategic Summit on creating a roadmap for physical activity, lifestyle and comparative effectiveness research. Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, October 2012.
  • MHealth research and experimental designs: Beyond randomized control trials. NIH/Mhealth 2012 training workshop, Washington DC; November 2012.
  • Q-learning: A data analysis method for developing behavioral interventions. Seminar presented at the Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC; Dec, 2012.
  • Optimizing technology-based interventions: The SMART experimental approach. Seminar presented at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA; January 2013.
  • Being SMART about adapting interventions: An introduction to Adaptive Interventions and SMART designs. Pre-conference workshop on Tobacco Use Treatment Development: Challenges, Opportunities, & New Methods, Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco's 19th Annual Meeting, March, 2013.
  • On MOST, SMART and Factorial Designs. NIH/NIDA Division of Clinical Neuroscience & Behavioral Research (DCNBR): Meeting on Overcoming Barriers and Making Adolescent Drug Abuse Treatment More Community, Bethesda, MD, June 2013.
  • On MOST, SMART and Factorial Designs. Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, Department of Psychiatry, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Dartmouth College, November 2013.
  • Research Methodology for mHealth. Training session at the NIH/mHealth 2012 training workshop, Washington DC; December 2013.