The effect of mental ill health on absence from work in different occupational classifications: analysis of routine data in the British Household Panel Survey

<b>Objective</b> To investigate relationship of mental ill health to absence from work in different occupational classifications.<p></p> <b>Method</b> Examined sickness absence, mental health (GHQ-12), physical health, job characteristics, and personal characteristics in 18 waves of the British Household Panel Survey.<p></p> <b>Results</b> Overall sickness absence rate was 1.68%. Increased absence was associated with age greater than 45 years, female gender, lower occupational classification, and public-sector employers. Decreased absence was associated with part-time working. Scoring 4 or more on the General Health Questionnaire 12-item version (GHQ-12 caseness) was strongly associated with sickness absence. Public-sector employers had highest rates of sickness absence. GHQ-12 caseness had largest impact on absence in the public and nonprofit sectors, whereas physical health problems impacted more in the private sector.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b> GHQ-12 caseness is strongly associated with increased absence in all classifications of occupations. Differences between sectors require further investigation

How important is Autonomy to Professional Workers?

A common assumption is that autonomy is crucial to professional workers. I examine this using survey data on a sample of public sector welfare professionals, viz. medical doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers. Comparisons are made with general population data from the International Social Survey Programme. Two methods of assessing the importance of work autonomy are employed; respondents’ direct ratings and statistical associations between work autonomy (and other job characteristics) on the one hand and job satisfaction and organizational commitment on the other. Findings: Autonomy is not rated as more important among the professionals than in the general population, and neither is it more strongly related to job satisfaction. Interesting work and workplace social support appear to be more central

Organisational commitment among public and private sector professionals

Public sector workers are partly portrayed as highly motivated and with relatively altruistic values, and partly as lazy and opportunistic. This paper compares the level of organisational commitment in professional groups mainly employed in the private sector on the one hand (e.g., journalists, business administration graduates) with public sector professions (e.g., social workers and teachers) on the other. Data come from a sample of people who graduated from Norwegian university colleges in 2001 and who responded to a survey in 2003. It turns out to be considerable variation among the public sector professions, with the highest commitment among teachers and the lowest among nurses, but no systematic difference between the sectors. I also examine to what extent differences among groups can be explained as a function of the rewards people feel they receive in their jobs and of the importance (value) they attach to the various rewards. Special attention is given to the hypothesis of an interaction effect between values and rewards, implying that the more important an individual considers a given reward to be, the stronger the impact of that reward on organisational commitment. The analyses indicate that some of the group differences in commitment are due to corresponding differences in job rewards, but this holds only to a very limited extent. The hypothesis of values-rewards interactions is rejected. It is noteworthy that although the effects of some job rewards differ among the groups, these variations are not captured by the value measures. This may indicate that the processes involved in the formation of commitment attitudes are more complex and less rational than assumed in much of the literature

Tidligere skoleprestasjoner og rekruttering til og gjennomføring av allmennlærerutdanning

I mange land er man bekymret over sviktende rekruttering til læreryrket, og spesielt over kvaliteten på nye lærere. Det er vanskelig å definere lærerkvalitet og enda vanskeligere å måle slik kvalitet. Formålet med dette notatet er å bidra med en del statistisk informasjon som kan kaste lys over noen sannsynlige konsekvenser av de skjerpete opptakskravene i allmennlærerutdanningen

Organizational commitment among public and private sector professionals

Public sector workers are partly portrayed as highly motivated and with relatively altruistic values, and partly as lazy and opportunistic. This article compares the level of organizational commitment in professional groups mainly employed in the private sector on the one hand (e.g., journalists, business administration graduates) with public sector professions (e.g., social workers, teachers) on the other. It turns out to be considerable variation among the public sector professions, with the highest commitment among teachers and the lowest among nurses, but no systematic difference between the sectors. The group variations in commitment are explained by perceived job rewards and work values only to a very limited extent

Fertility, Living Arrangements, Care and Mobility

There are four main interconnecting themes around which the contributions in this book are based. This introductory chapter aims to establish the broad context for the chapters that follow by discussing each of the themes. It does so by setting these themes within the overarching demographic challenge of the twenty-first century – demographic ageing. Each chapter is introduced in the context of the specific theme to which it primarily relates and there is a summary of the data sets used by the contributors to illustrate the wide range of cross-sectional and longitudinal data analysed

The Portuguese version of the Psychological Adjustment to Separation Test-Part A (PAST-A): a study with recently and non-recently divorced adults

Past research has demonstrated that divorced adults show more health problems and psychological distress than married adults. Considering the high prevalence rates of divorce among Western countries, new and robust measures should be developed to measure psychological distress after this specific transition in adulthood. The aim of this study was to adapt and validate a Portuguese version of the Psychological Adjustment to Separation Test-Part A (PAST-A; Sweeper and Halford in J Family Psychol 20(4):632–640, 2006). PAST-A is a self-report measure that assesses two key dimensions of separation adjustment problems: lonely-negativity and former partner attachment. Psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of PAST-A were assessed in terms of factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent and divergent validity, in an online convenience sample with divorced adults (N = 460). The PAST-A two-factor structure was confirmed by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, with each factor demonstrating very satisfactory internal consistency and good convergence. In terms of discriminant validity, the Portuguese PAST-A reveals a distinct factor from psychological growth after divorce. The results provided support for the use of the Portuguese PAST-A with divorced adults and also suggested that the explicative factors of the psychological adjustment to divorce may be cross-cultural stable. The non-existence of validated divorce-related well-being measures and its implications for divorce research are also discussed

Studenttilfredshet i profesjonsutdanningene

Artikkelen belyser studentenes generelle tilfredshet med utdanningene samt med mer spesifikke sider som undervisningsplanlegging, lærere og yrkesrelevans. Ca. 4000 studenter ved åtte læresteder inngår i analysene. Data er samlet inn i 2001 og i 2003 og dekker to studentkull. Innsamlingen foregikk i siste semester av studiene. For et underutvalg har vi også longitudinelle data om de enkelte studentene slik at vurderinger i siste semester kan ses i lys av faktorer målt ved studiestart. Vi finner relativt systematiske forskjeller mellom en del av utdanningstypene. Vurderingene er svært positive ved medisinstudiene og relativt negative sykepleier-, allmennlærer- og fysioterapeutstudiene. Det er videre ingen systematiske forskjeller i studenttilfredshet innen samme type utdanning ved ulike læresteder og det er relativt stor stabilitet fra 2001 til 2003 i hvordan enkeltutdanninger vurderes. Selv om det er systematiske forskjeller mellom utdanningstyper, finner man stor variasjon mellom studenter på samme utdanning. Vår undersøkelse kan forklare bare en liten del av denne variasjonen, men det er likevel en klar tendens til at de studentene som er mest motiverte ved studiestart, er mest tilfredse i siste semester. En hypotese om at høye forventninger fører til at mange blir skuffet og dermed til mindre fornøyde studenter, får dermed ingen støtte

Educational choice and persistence in male and female dominated fields

Even though female students now make up more than half of all higher education students in many countries, the distribution of women across fields of study is still very uneven. This study examines the gendered nature of recruitment and dropout in higher education. Our results show that students who made gender traditional choices more often had an early preference for the study programme they enrolled in. Moreover, female students reported more often than male students that they had been encouraged by their parents and friends. However, unlike what we expected, there are no differences between students in gender traditional and non-traditional programmes with regard to encouragement from parents and students’ confidence that they had made the right choice. While gender composition of educational programmes is unrelated to male students’ dropout, women drop out of female dominated programmes to a less extent