Work-related stress case definitions and prevalence rates in national surveys

Background: There is concern about lack of consistency in the design of case definitions used to measure work-related stress in national workforce surveys and the implications of this for the reliability and validity of prevalence estimates as well as for developments in policy and practice on tackling work-related stress. Aims: To examine associations between case definitions used for the measurement of work-related stress in nationally representative workforce surveys and the prevalence rates generated. Methods: The study focused on 18 nationally representative workforce surveys conducted between 1995 and 2008 that involved British samples. The published report from each survey was scrutinized for evidence of the case definition used to measure work-related stress and the associated prevalence rate. Results: Several types of case definition were identified that differed in terms of their theoretical basis, structure, and content. Each was associated with a unique range of prevalence rates. Conclusions: The results illustrate the challenge presented to the production of valid and reliable estimates of the scale of work-related stress by inconsistent case definition design. The imperative for theory-based consistency in the design of case definitions used for the measurement of work-related stress in national workforce surveys is highlighted

What Factors Are Related to Medical Students’ and Doctors’ Attitudes Towards Older Patients?

Background: Studies have sought to determine the possible precursors to medical students’ and doctors’ positive or negative attitudes towards older patients by examining associations with a variety of demographic, educational/training, and job/career factors. A review is now needed to explore the quality of these studies and to synthesize findings. Methods: A systematic review on the worldwide English language literature was conducted. Ten databases were explored (including Medline, PsychInfo and Science Direct) from database inception to December 2015 using a systematic search strategy. Quality was assessed and reported. Results: The search identified 2332 articles; 37 studies met the eligibility criteria. Students’ year in medical school, doctors’ years of practice or seniority, participants’ age and ethnicity did not appear to demonstrate relationships with (positive or negative) attitudes towards older patients. Ten studies reported that female medical students and/or doctors reported significantly more positive attitudes towards older patients than their male counterparts, although 18 studies found no differences. No studies reported more positive attitudes scores for males than females. Interest in working in older patient settings and reporting a high level of intrinsic motivation for choosing medicine as a career were both associated with positive attitudes towards older patients. Eight of 11 studies found more positive attitudes were reported by those who demonstrated higher levels of knowledge about ageing but this apparent relationship is questioned here due to methodological issues identified in the quality assessment stage pertaining to the knowledge measures employed. Reliability and validity of the attitude measures, that were employed, were examined. Conclusions: This article has identified factors associated with medical students’ and doctors’ positive attitudes towards older patients, as well as factors which have been extensively studied but failed to demonstrate meaningful relationships with attitudes. This is the first study to identify that the relationship between attitudes and knowledge about ageing may be a methodological artefact. Future research can build on the relationships identified here and should employ appropriate measures of attitudes with demonstrated reliability and validity

Mixed methods research in the health sciences : a review

This paper provides health science researchers new to mixed methods research with a review of the purpose of mixed method studies, an overview of the debate surrounding the method’s philosophical underpinnings and a discussion of the most popular mixed method design classifications. It is argued that despite its limitations, mixed methods research has contributed to health science research, and allows researchers to profit from the benefits of combining quantitative and qualitative data in the same study while minimising their individual shortcomings. In so doing, researchers are able to answer complex real world research questions typical of the health sciences. Additionally, it is argued that mixed methods research in the health sciences is best served by the paradigm of pragmatism and that while various mixed method typologies exist, the most popular classifications have common elements.peer-reviewe

What do working menopausal women want? A qualitative investigation into women’s perspectives on employer and line manager support

Objectives: To explore women’s perspectives on what employers and managers should, and should not do in relation to women going through the menopause at work. Methods: An online questionnaire was used to collect qualitative data in a cross-sectional study of working women. Three open-ended questions asked peri- and post-menopausal women, aged 45-65 years: (i) what they thought employers could do, or should do, to help menopausal women who may be experiencing difficult menopausal symptoms at work; (ii) how managers should behave, and (iii) how managers should not behave towards women going through the menopause. Results: 137 women responded to the open questions in the survey. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted and three overarching themes emerged. Theme 1 related to employer/manager awareness, specifically to knowledge about the menopause and awareness of how the physical work environment might impact on menopausal women. Theme 2 related to employer/ manager communication skills and behaviors, specifically, those considered helpful and desired and those unhelpful and undesired. Theme 3 described employer actions, involving staff training and raising awareness, and supportive policies such as those relating to sickness absence and flexible working hours. Conclusions: The menopause can be difficult for some women to deal with at work partly due to the working environment. To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore women’s descriptions of how they would like to be treated by employers/managers, and what would be helpful and unhelpful. The results have clear implications for communication about menopause at work and for employer-level policy and practice

The linguistic competence of deaf primary school children

Observation of deaf children in conversation with their teachers might lead one to believe they are behaving in a somewhat contrived way in comparison with their behaviour when communicating with their peers. Examination of the performance of deaf and hearing children on various reading tests has shown the deaf to be pursuing markedly different strategies from the hearing (e.g. word association). Such observations lead us to ask, is the linguistic behaviour of these children then simply a selection of 'special tricks' developed to cope with everyday demands? Or, if various measures of their language intercorrelate, can we assume the existence of a unitary linguistic competence? To answer this question and to investigate the validity of the measures chosen, a group of 50 profoundly deaf children from two schools for the deaf were studied (where necessary using, videorecordings) in 4 situations. These were a) in conversation with their teachers, b) in a referential communication game with their peers, c) their performance on the Edinburgh Reading Test and d) their writing. Since degree of hearing loss, age, sex and intelligence have been shown to be influential, we included these together with teacher ratings of oral proficiency, general ability, attitude to school, written ability and speech intelligibility. The results showed all language measures intercorrelated with varying degrees of significance. Multiple regression analysis showed that the -main measure taken from the conversation with teachers (namely, average length of turn) proved to be the most powerful predictor of reading. Written syntactic accuracy was the second most powerful predictor. Since reliable measures of deaf children's linguistic abilities are badly needed (especially in the wake of recent legislation advocating the education of deaf children in ordinary schools) the potential use of these measures is discussed. Since these language abilities are good predictors of each other, future research might investigate the possibility that concentrated teaching in one area of language use could have positive effects on other linguistic abilities

The relationship between work design and retirement: implications for organizational policy

In most developed countries the population is ageing. A combination of factors is responsible, although increasing life expectancy and declining birth rates are the primary drivers. National-level initiatives, such as increasing the age at which people can access their pensions, are encouraging later retirement. The upshot of this is that many people, largely for financial reasons, currently find themselves needing to extend their working lives, and to postpone their previously planned retirement. For many people, continuing to work will be an economic necessity; others may wish to continue to work even if not financially compelled to do so. For some, work contributes to a sense of purpose, self-esteem and provides opportunities for engagement; for others it can be tedious, unpleasant and stressful. Some may choose to continue to work not because in itself it provides meaningful activity, but because it funds other activities that hold purpose and enjoyment. Yet others may prefer to work part time in a job that does not hold much excitement, because it affords time to engage in more interesting activities outside work. But the general result will be that over the next few decades, many organizations will see changes in the profile of their workforces, with more workers approaching the transitional phase leading toward retirement

The measurement of rail passenger crowding : scale development and psychometric properties

Research on rail passenger crowding often tacitly subscribes to a measurement of crowding based on density (i.e. physical conditions involving space limitations) and rarely considers the possible role psychological factors may play in measuring this construct. This paper describes the development of an instrument that captures the dimensionality of rail passenger crowding and its relationship to the experience of stress and feelings of exhaustion. The proposed instrument is a 20-item self-rating questionnaire consisting of three sub-scales designed to assess subjective crowding experiences among rail users (n = 525). Findings from the factor analyses generally support the hypothesised three-factor structure of the measurement model (evaluation of the psychosocial aspects of the crowded situation, evaluation of the ambient environment of the crowded situation, and affective reactions to the crowded situation). All sub-scales demonstrate excellent internal consistency and construct validity as well as good convergent and discriminant validity values. The instrument was further tested using structural equation modelling to examine the impact of crowding on commuters' stress and feelings of exhaustion. With the addition of the "passenger density" variable as an indicator of objective measurement of crowding operating in tandem with the crowding sub-scales, the results reveal that: (1) commuters' evaluations of the psychosocial aspects of the crowded situation and of its ambient environment, alongside their rating of passenger density, significantly predict affective reactions to the crowded situation; (2) these affective reactions, in turn, significantly predict stress and feelings of exhaustion; and (3) evaluations of the psychosocial aspects of the crowded situation and of its ambient environment as well as passenger density do not directly predict stress and feelings of exhaustion. The link between rail passenger crowding and the negative outcomes therefore does not appear as a simple, direct relationship, but is mediated by affective feelings of crowdedness. Overall, these results provide satisfactory psychometric properties for the proposed instrument and support its use as an assessment tool for measuring crowding experience in the rail setting

Importance of personal and professional experience for hospital staff in person-centred dementia care: a cross-sectional interview study using freelisting in a UK hospital ward

© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. Objective To detail how hospital staff with differing personal and professional caregiving experiences approach the care of patients with dementia, in order to make practical recommendations for practice. Design Cross-sectional qualitative interviews. Setting A UK hospital ward providing dementia care. Participants A complete hospital ward staff team, constituting 47 hospital staff from 10 professions. Methods Hospital staff were asked to list their approaches to emotion-focused care in individual, ethnographic freelisting interviews. Cultural consensus analysis was used to detail variations in approaches to dementia care between staff subgroups. Main outcome measures The most salient listed descriptions of care emphasised by staff members with personal experience of dementia caregiving when compared with staff members without such experience, and descriptions from staff newer to the profession compared with staff with more years of professional dementia caregiving experience. Results Subgroups of hospital staff showed different patterns of responses both in how they noticed the emotional distress of patients with dementia, and in prioritised responses that they deemed to work. Hospital staff with professional experience of dementia caregiving and staff with fewer years of professional experience prioritised mutual communication and getting to know each patient. Conclusions Subgroups of hospital staff with personal caregiving experiences and fewer years of professional care experience were more likely to describe person-centred care as their routine ways of working with patients with dementia. It is recommended that personal experience and the novice curiosity of hospital staff be considered as valuable resources that exist within multidisciplinary staff teams that could enhance staff training to improve the hospital care for patients with dementia

Dealing with self-management of chronic illness at work: predictors for self-disclosure

This paper explores the role of self-management of chronic illness at work, as a predictor for self-disclosure. The study reports findings from a survey sent to all staff at a UK university, of which 610 employees reported managing a chronic illness: arthritis, musculoskeletal pain, diabetes, asthma, migraine, heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome and depression. The study found that discrete self-management factors predicted different levels of disclosure: partial self-disclosure (employees informing line managers about the presence of a chronic illness) and full self-disclosure (employees informing line managers how that chronic illness affected them at work). For partial disclosure, a greater reported experience of chronic illness by employees was positively associated with self-disclosure. For full-disclosure, employees were more likely to report disclosure to line managers if they had already disclosed to colleagues, and if they perceived receiving support from their line managers in relation to their chronic illness as important. Except for academics who were least likely to disclose, occupational groups did not emerge as significant predictors for either partial or full disclosure. Except for diabetes, chronic illness itself was not a significant predictor or barrier to self-disclosure. Our findings suggest that chronically ill employees adopt a disclosure strategy specifically related to different self-management needs of chronic illness at work

Stratigraphic forward modelling of distributive fluvial systems based on the Huesca System, Ebro Basin, Northern Spain

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project was part of a doctoral project financed through a studentship by the United Kingdom Research and Innovation Centre for Doctoral Training in Oil and Gas, which was institutionally funded by the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. An academic licence of the stratigraphic forward modelling software SedsimX was provided by StrataMod Pty. Ltd, Australia. The authors want to thank John Wood, Prabhat Hegde and Ramy Abdallah for their help with coding of the model processing scripts. We also want to thank the developers of Python, its interface Spyder and its libraries Pandas, NumPy, Math, Statistics and Matplotlib.Peer reviewedPublisher PD