The UTC Graduate School is pleased to announce that Jacob Lamprecht will present Master’s research titled, Loneliness and social support in healthcare shift workers on 03/06/2026 at 11 A.M. in 540 McCallie 107. Everyone is invited to attend.
Psychology
Chair: Dr. Kristen Black
Co-Chair:
Abstract:
In the workplace and beyond, loneliness has a substantial impact on the health and wellbeing of individuals. Defined as a dissatisfaction with the quantity and quality of one’s relationships, loneliness has been connected to increases in mortality, as well as lower job performance, reduced job satisfaction, and increased burnout. Loneliness has often been theoretically linked to social support, interactions between a sender and a recipient intended to benefit the recipient. A further distinction of social support, unhelpful social support, occurs when these interactions are not interpreted as beneficial by the recipient. Finally, research suggests that those working night shifts, or any other atypical shifts, are more prone to fatigue and health risks. This study examines how helpful and unhelpful social support connect to loneliness among healthcare shift workers. I hypothesized that in both the work and nonwork domain helpful social support would be negatively related to loneliness. Additionally, in both domains I hypothesized that unhelpful social support would be positively related to loneliness. Finally, I hypothesized that the relationship between social support and loneliness would be moderated by shift such that the relationship between helpful support and loneliness would be weaker for night shift employees and the relationship between unhelpful support and loneliness will be stronger for these employees. Data was gathered from 134 healthcare workers. Support was found for the hypotheses regarding the direct relationship between both kinds of support and loneliness. No support was found for the moderating effect of shift on the relationship between any form of support and loneliness.