Work orientations, well-being and job content of self-employed and employed professionals

Drawing on psychology-derived theories and methods, a questionnaire survey compared principal kinds of work orientation, job content and mental well-being between self-employed and organisationally employed professional workers. Self-employment was found to be particularly associated with energised well-being in the form of job engagement. The presence in self-employment of greater challenge, such as an enhanced requirement for personal innovation, accounted statistically for self-employed professionals’ greater job engagement, and self-employed professionals more strongly valued personal challenge than did professionals employed in an organisation. However, no between-role differences occurred in respect of supportive job features such as having a comfortable workplace. Differences in well-being, job content and work orientations were found primarily in comparison between self-employees and organisational non-managers. The study emphasises the need to distinguish conceptually and empirically between different forms of work orientation, job content and well-being, and points to the value of incorporating psychological thinking in some sociological research

Psychiatric outcomes in low-birth-weight children at age 6 years: Relation to neonatal cranial ultrasound abnormalities

Examined the relation of neonatal cranial ultrasonography abnormalities to later psychiatric disorder in 564 low birth weight children (aged 5.2–8.7 yrs). Psychiatric diagnoses were assessed by means of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children–Parent version, and detailed information was collected on other predictors and outcomes. Results show that 454 Ss had no cranial abnormalities, 78 had germinal matrix hemorrhage (GMH) and/or intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), and 32 had a parenchymal lesion (PL) or ventricular enlargement (VE). 22% of the Ss had at least 1 psychiatric disorder, the most common being attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Isolated GMH/IVH did not increase risk for psychiatric disorder at age 6 yrs, while PL/VE increased the risk of having at least 1 psychiatric disorder by 4-fold. Among the other predictors, maternal smoking elevated risk of psychiatric disorder. Male sex and proximal, but not distal, social disadvantage predicted the risk of any disorder and ADHD