We are thrilled to announce that Dr Vanessa Gash has been selected as a winner of the prestigious UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) Innovation Panel Competition 2025.
Dr Gash’s winning proposal introduces a new battery of indicators on workplace violence, a critical and timely topic in labour market research. These indicators will be fielded to a nationally representative sample as part of the UKHLS Innovation Panel, a unique test-bed for pioneering survey methods and content within the broader Understanding Society study.
This project not only generates valuable new data on workplace violence across the UK, but will also advance methodological innovation in how such sensitive topics are measured. Once collected, the data will be made publicly available, offering researchers across disciplines the opportunity to explore and build upon this work.
In addition to the data release, Dr Gash and her co-applicants, including Dr Niels Blom, will develop a series of working papers to disseminate findings and insights from the project. These papers will contribute to academic debates and inform policy discussions around workplace safety and wellbeing.
The Innovation Panel Competition is a highly competitive initiative that supports cutting-edge research ideas with real-world impact. We are proud to see Dr Gash’s work recognised and supported by Understanding Society.
Workplace violence is a significant problem with underexamined productivity effects. In a global survey, just under 1 in 5 workers reported exposure to psychological violence and harassment at work, and 1 in 10 reported exposure to physical violence during their working-lives. In the United Kingdom (UK), the Health and Safety Executive (the regulator for workplace health and safety) found 1% of all adults of working age, in the 12 months prior, experienced a physical assault or threat of assault at work.
Workplace violence covers a broad range of adverse social interactions and behaviours committed by or towards employees. It includes encounters between colleagues and between workers and service users. It can also include incidents of domestic abuse experienced at work, with abusers known to pursue victims in the workplace.
Direct and indirect exposure to violent acts or threats of violence at work can be anticipated to lead to anxiety and fear of further victimization. Workplace violence, especially when persistent, may cause psychological disorders including common mental disorders (CMD) of generalized anxiety and depression.
VISION researchers Dr Vanessa Gash (City St George’s University of London) and Dr Niels Blom (University of Manchester) used the United Kingdom Household Panel Study, a nationally representative survey with mental health indicators to examine the prevalence of violence and fear of violence by sector and the effect of violence on common mental disorders (CMD) risk. They also supplemented the analyses with the views of those with lived experience.
Results showed that a high prevalence of workplace violence and fear of workplace violence was found in multiple different UK industrial sectors – >1 in 10 workers were exposed to violence in the last 12 months in 30% of sectors and >1 in 20 workers were exposed in 70% of sectors. Workers employed in public administration and facilities had the highest risks of workplace violence. The second highest sector was health, residential care, and social work. Workplace violence increased CMD risk as did fear of violence at work. Also, the effect of violence and fear of violence on CMD remained when the researchers investigated CMD one year later.
Recommendation
The researchers recommend better recognition of the extent to which workplace violence is experienced across multiple sectors and call for better systems wide interventions to mitigate the associated harms.
To cite: Gash, V, Blom, N. ‘Workplace violence and fear of violence: an assessment of prevalence across industrial sectors and its mental health effects’. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health. https://doi.org/10.5271/sjweh.4230
However, recently, ‘Understanding Society’, the United Kingdom Household Panel Survey (UKHLS), began fielding a small battery of questions relating to violence experience. Here, we examined the strengths and weaknesses of these UKHLS measures with similar indices from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), a widely used and regarded but cross-sectional survey.
Vanessa and Niels empirically assessed the extent to which the UKHLS variables are comparable with those in the CSEW to determine the viability of the UKHLS for the longitudinal study of (fear of) violence and its consequences.
Overall, they regarded the UKHLS to provide an important resource for future panel research on the consequences of victimisation. They found the indicators measuring physical assault to be similar in both sets of data, but also noted differences in prevalence and/or different distributions by socioeconomic group for the indices relating to being threatened and of feeling unsafe.
Nonetheless, Vanessa and Niels maintain their utility for researchers in this field, allowing researchers to uncover new inequalities in violence exposure.
