Does wage rank affect employees' well-being?

How do workers make wage comparisons? Both an experimental study and an analysis of 16,000 British employees are reported. Satisfaction and well-being levels are shown to depend on more than simple relative pay. They depend upon the ordinal rank of an individual's wage within a comparison group. “Rank” itself thus seems to matter to human beings. Moreover, consistent with psychological theory, quits in a workplace are correlated with pay distribution skewness

Automatic Identification of Faked and Fraudulent Interviews in Surveys by Two Different Methods

This paper presents two new tools for the identification of faking interviewers in surveys. One method is based on Benford's Law, and the other exploits the empirical observation that fakers most often produce answers with less variability than could be expected from the whole survey. We focus on fabricated data, which were taken out of the survey before the data were disseminated in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). For two samples, the resulting rankings of the interviewers with respect to their cheating behavior are given. For both methods all of the evident fakers are identified.

Management of COPD in the UK primary-care setting : an analysis of real-life prescribing patterns

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Emotion regulation difficulties related to depression and anxiety : a network approach to model relations among symptoms, positive reappraisal, and repetitive negative thinking

Frequent repetitive negative thinking and infrequent positive reappraisal use are theorized to increase risk for depression and anxiety. Yet, research has studied these regulatory strategies at the disorder level, ignoring the clinical heterogeneity and differential relations among their individual symptoms. In this study, we examined the associations among repetitive negative thinking, positive reappraisal, and individual symptoms of depression and anxiety disorders. Models of regularized partial-correlation networks were estimated using cross-sectional data from 468 participants. Results showed that repetitive negative thinking and positive reappraisal were differentially related to affective, cognitive, and somatic symptoms of depression and anxiety. Moreover, repetitive negative thinking was more central than positive reappraisal with stronger connections to individual symptoms. Finally, repetitive negative thinking was more important than positive reappraisal in connecting clusters of depression and anxiety symptoms. These findings cast light on potential pathways through which repetitive negative thinking and positive reappraisal may operate within depression and anxiety

Study protocol: a randomised controlled trial investigating the effect of exercise training on peripheral blood gene expression in patients with stable angina

Background: Exercise training has been shown to reduce angina and promote collateral vessel development in patients with coronary artery disease. However, the mechanism whereby exercise exerts these beneficial effects is unclear. There has been increasing interest in the use of whole genome peripheral blood gene expression in a wide range of conditions to attempt to identify both novel mechanisms of disease and transcriptional biomarkers. This protocol describes a study in which we will assess the effect of a structured exercise programme on peripheral blood gene expression in patients with stable angina, and correlate this with changes in angina level, anxiety, depression, and exercise capacity. Methods/Design: Sixty patients with stable angina will be recruited and randomised 1: 1 to exercise training or conventional care. Patients randomised to exercise training will attend an exercise physiology laboratory up to three times weekly for supervised aerobic interval training sessions of one hour in total duration. Patients will undergo assessments of angina, anxiety, depression, and peripheral blood gene expression at baseline, after six and twelve weeks of training, and twelve weeks after formal exercise training ceases. Discussion: This study will provide comprehensive data on the effect of exercise training on peripheral blood gene expression in patients with angina. By correlating this with improvement in angina status we will identify candidate peripheral blood transcriptional markers predictive of improvements in angina level in response to exercise training

Self-reported genital warts among sexually-active university students: A cross-sectional study

Background: Genital warts are one of the most common forms of sexually-transmitted disease, but their epidemiology has yet to be thoroughly elucidated. The present study was designed to shed light on the prevalence of clinically-confirmed, self-reported genital warts (GWs) in a representative sample of the university population. Methods: In 2015, a cross-sectional survey was conducted on 11,096 individuals approached at the Students Information Bureau where they came to enroll for a university degree course. Participants completed an anonymous, self-administered questionnaire providing information on their sociodemographic characteristics, sexual behavior, and any history of clinically-diagnosed genital warts. Multivariate logistic regression was then used to identify any factors associated with the disease. Results: Our analysis was conducted on 9259 questionnaires (83.4%). Participants were a mean 21.8 +/- 4.8 years of age, and 59.6% were female. Overall, 124 individuals (1.3%, 95%CI: 1.0-1.6) reported having been diagnosed with genital warts: 48 men (1.3%, 95%CI: 0.9-1.6), and 76 women (1.4% 95%CI: 1.1-1.7). Overall, 22.5% of the sample were vaccinated (1.3% of the males and 36.8% of the females). The group of respondents aged 30 years or more had the highest incidence of genital warts (males: 5.6%, 95%CI: 2.5-8.6; females: 6.9%, 95%CI: 3.4-10.4). The independent risk factors associated with a history of disease were (for both genders) a history of other sexually-transmitted diseases, and >= 2 sex partners in the previous 24 months. A protective role emerged for routine condom use. Additional risk factors associated with genital warts in males concerned men who have sex with men, bisexuality vis-a-vis heterosexuality, and smoking. Conclusions: The findings emerging from our study help to further clarify the epidemiology of genital warts in young people, and may be useful to public health decision-makers. This study showed that genital warts occur in men as well as women, and suggests that both genders should be monitored for this disease to ascertain the effects of the free HPV vaccination offered to all girls in the Veneto in their 12th year of life since 2008, and to all boys of the same age since 2015

The Sense of Quality of Life Among the Elderly in the Open Protection Centres of the Elderly (KAPI) During the Economic Crisis

Surveys in the field of health sociology have repeatedly shown that people belonging to low socio-economic groups face health problems and live less than people belonging to high socio-economic groups. The purpose of the current survey is to investigate the socio-economic indicators that affect the health level of the elderly. A number of questionnaires were distributed to the elderly in a number of Open Protection Centres of the Elderly (KAPI) in the country. A total of 897 questionnaires were filled in. The data was processed using the IBM SPSS Statistics v. 23. Regarding the existence of correlations between economic characteristics and the sense of the quality of life of the elderly, it was established that people with economic autonomy and highest annual income perceive their quality of life as being superior compared to those lacking economic autonomy and lower annual income. There is almost complete coincidence of the research findings with the theoretical approaches of the literature survey. Specifically, there is an apparently stronger proportional relationship of the “Sense of Quality of Life” with the Health Characteristics of the respondents and a less proportional relationship of the “Sense of Quality of Life” with the Economic Characteristics of the respondents

Attitudes of Japanese Medical Students towards Disclosure of a Diagnosis of Life-threatening Illness

In this study we investigated the attitudes of Japanese medical students toward being informed of a diagnosis of life-threatening illness. Fourth-year medical students from 20 randomly sampled universities were administered questionnaires that examined their opinion about whether they would welcome disclosure of medical information if they were diagnosed as having an ultimately fatal disease. Data from 1,619 students (male 1,074, female 545, effective collection rate 90.6%) were analyzed. With regard to attitudes about disclosure of a diagnosis of life-threatening illness, 87.7% of the students stated that they would wish to be informed even if there was little chance of recovery, and 11.6% expressed a wish to be informed of their condition only if there was a chance of recovery. Students who did not wish to be informed even if there was a chance of recovery accounted for 0.7% of those surveyed. Our study reveals that medical students are more positive than are members of the general population with regard to being informed of the truth. The proportion of those who wished to be informed even if there was little chance of recovery was higher among students from national and public universities than among those from private universities, and the inter-group difference was statistically significant. Among male students, answers to the survey were significantly correlated with 12-item General Health Questionnaire scores and mental health status, suggesting that mental health status may have affected how this study population viewed being informed of their diagnosis.</p

Clinical outcomes from a randomised comparison of Microwave Endometrial Ablation with Thermal Balloon endometrial ablation for the treatment of heavy menstrual bleeding

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