Objective physical activity and sleep characteristic measurements using a triaxial accelerometer in eight year olds

Background: Secular trends demonstrate that young children are less active and sleep less. Inequity in an individual\u27s energy balance is known to have poor health outcomes. Academic achievement, academic behavior, and weight status are proxy indicators for health and psychosocial outcomes in this study. Current guidelines in place for sleep and physical activity in childhood are the result of data collected in the form of self-reports. Quantification and qualification of physical activity dimensions and sleep characteristics are essential not only for the purpose of clearly establishing parameters but also for the intent of verifying optimal health outcomes and evaluating interventions related to conditions of energy balance. Purpose: The purpose of this research was to determine the relationships amongst and between the objective dimensions of physical activity, sleep, weight status, academic achievement, and academic behavior. Methods: This cross-sectional correlational descriptive design study monitored the physical activity and sleep duration for 24 hours per day for 7 consecutive days with triaxial accelerometers. Data was successfully gathered on 55 low socioeconomic income African American eight-year-olds. Weight status was measured and body mass index (BMI) was calculated. Standardized scores, subjective grades from the teachers, and attendance records were obtained from the schools. A qualitative component gathered demographic information related to home life, meal habits, and play times. Results: This sample was predominantly overweight/obese. Light intensity activity accounted for 86% of their daytime hours while vigorous activity accounted for less than 1%. Moderate-vigorous activity bouts were inversely significantly correlated with the standardized reading scores. Students with failing reading scores had significantly more time per day in light activity and less time in moderate intensity activity. This sample averaged 8 hours of sleep per night. Students with failing math scores had significantly longer mean wake episodes at night. A significant difference between hours of sleep and weight status was seen. The overweight/obese child slept, on average, less than the normal weight child. Conclusions: Sleep is an important health indicator. Lack of sleep has academic implications. Different weight classifications may benefit from different interventional activities. Future studies should be conducted with larger and diverse samples

Organizational Culture and Telecommuters\u27 Quality of Work Life and Professional Isolation

While much has been studied and written about the adjustments managers must make when supervising remote workers in virtual work arrangements, little has been written about the potential change in the organizational culture and the effect the culture has on the virtual worker\u27s quality of work life and professional isolation. Not only may culture affect the implementation and success of telecommuting arrangements, but the increased isolation and independence of a virtual worker may impact the culture surrounding remote workers and create an organizational subculture. This study examines the relationship between quality of work life, professional isolation, and an organization\u27s cultural values surrounding telecommuters and non-telecommuters

Typology of alcohol users based on longitudinal patterns of drinking

Objective: Worldwide, alcohol is the most commonly used psychoactive substance. However, heterogeneity among alcohol users has been widely recognized. This paper presents a typology of alcohol users based on an implementation of idiographic methodology to examine longitudinal daily and cyclic (weekly) patterns of alcohol use at the individual level. Method: A secondary data analysis was performed on the pre-intervention data from a large randomized control trial. A time series analysis was performed at the individual level, and a dynamic cluster analysis was employed to identify homogenous longitudinal patterns of drinking behavior at the group level. The analysis employed 180 daily observations of alcohol use in a sample of 177 alcohol users. Results: The first order autocorrelations ranged from − .76 to .72, and seventh order autocorrelations ranged from − .27 to .79. Eight distinct profiles of alcohol users were identified, each characterized by a unique configuration of first and seventh autoregressive terms and longitudinal trajectories of alcohol use. External validity of the profiles confirmed the theoretical relevance of different patterns of alcohol use. Significant differences among the eight subtypes were found on gender, marital status, frequency of drug use, lifetime alcohol dependence, family history of alcohol use and the Short Index of Problems. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate that individuals can have very different temporal patterns of drinking behavior. The daily and cyclic patterns of alcohol use may be important for designing tailored interventions for problem drinkers

Workplace bullying through the eyes of human resource practitioners : a Bourdieusian analysis

This thesis addresses an existing gap in the workplace bullying literature: how Human Resource Practitioners (HRPs) construct, interpret and respond to workplace bullying. Semistructured interviews were conducted with individual HRPs and a small focus group using two forms of data collection: HRPs’ unprompted interpretations of a vignette depicting a bullying situation and HRPs’ own experiential accounts of handling bullying claims. The HRPs were from private and public sector organisations, and all occupied roles that involved dealing with bullying claims. The interviews were analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis, and Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice provided the framework for interpreting the multilevel individual, organisational and social factors influencing HRPs’ bullying-related practice. The findings suggest that bullying is a complex and difficult issue for HRPs due to a combination of organisational pressure to protect managers, management-centric antibullying policies and the relative powerlessness of Human Resource Management and HRPs in organisations. HRPs applied a range of interpretive mechanisms that served to attribute blame to the target and legitimise the manager’s behaviour, even when the behaviour described met academic definitions of bullying. The way the HRPs constructed, interpreted and responded to bullying claims depended on whether the alleged bully was the target’s peer or manager. The HRPs consistently constructed peer-to-peer claims as interpersonal conflict and manager-to-employee claims as the target’s reaction to performance-management practices. The HRPs’ construct of ‘genuine bullying’ appeared to comprise four essential criteria: intentional and person-related behaviour between peers, which has significant negative impact on a trustworthy target. These findings have significant implications for research and practice. Firstly, HRPs’ construct of ‘genuine bullying’ is fundamentally different to academic and organisational definitions of bullying. Secondly, as a result of these constructs and interpretive mechanisms it appears very unlikely that any management behaviour in manager-to-employee claims would be constructed as bullying by HRPs.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Improving I.S. student Engagement and Perceived Course Value

This study investigated the relationships among course organization, active learning assignments, perceived course value, and student engagement. The study relied on constructs from previous studies to measure value, engagement, and course organization. A new construct of active learning assignments was specially designed for this study. Statistically significant findings were observed between course organization, active learning assignments, perceived course value, and student engagement. The use of active learning assignments has a strong positive relationship with students’ perception of course value and course engagement. Likewise, there is a positive correlation between course organization and students’ perception of course value and course engagement

A Late Holocene community burial area: Evidence of diverse mortuary practices in the Western Cape, South Africa.

Over several decades, human skeletal remains from at least twelve individuals (males, females, children and infants) were recovered from a small area (ca. 10 x 10 m) on the eastern shore of Table Bay, Cape Town, near the mouth of the Diep River where it empties into the sea. Two groups, each comprising four individuals, appear to have been buried in single graves. Unusually for this region, several skeletons were interred with large numbers of ostrich eggshell (OES) beads. In some cases, careful excavation enabled recovery of segments of beadwork. One collective burial held items including an ostrich egg-shell flask, a tortoise carapace bowl, a fragmentary bone point or linkshaft and various lithic artefacts. This group appears to have died together and been buried expediently. A mid-adult woman from this group sustained perimortem blunt-force trauma to her skull, very likely the cause of her death. This case adds to the developing picture of interpersonal violence associated with a period of subsistence intensification among late Holocene foragers. Radiocarbon dates obtained for nine skeletons may overlap but given the uncertainties associated with marine carbon input, we cannot constrain the date range more tightly than 1900-1340 calBP (at 2 sigma). The locale appears to have been used by a community as a burial ground, perhaps regularly for several generations, or on a single catastrophic occasion, or some combination thereof. The evidence documents regional and temporal variation in burial practices among late Holocene foragers of the south-western Cape

Juvenile mortality in Southern African archaeological contexts

Estimates of age at death that are both accurate and precise and provide information about the patterns and causes of premature mortality in both Later Stone Age and Iron Age archaeology. Assuming a link between subsistence and health differences in patterns of childhood growth are hypothesized. The best source of this information comes from the formation of tooth crowns and roots. Through the study of femurs hafts from Later Stone Age juvenile skeletons, it can be demonstrated that linear growth was normal in tempo. The study of femora from a smaller number of Iron Age juvenile skeletons suggests that growth in this group did not follow a normal pattern, perhaps because prolonged ill health preceded death. Growth of Iron Age children who failed to reach adulthood appears to be variable but slow and this may provide insights into the Iron Age biosocial environment. Because of the demonstrated correlation between dental development and femur shaft length, the Later Stone Age juvenile long bone lengths provided here can be used in Later Stone Age contexts to estimate chronological age at death if dental information is unavailable. This approach should not be used in Iron Age contexts, since such an approach is likely to yield biased (under-aged) estimates of age at death