Mid-Adolescent Predictors of Adult Drinking Levels in Early Adulthood and Gender Differences: Longitudinal Analyses Based on the South Australian School Leavers Study

There is considerable public health interest in understanding what factors during adolescence predict longer-term drinking patterns in adulthood. The aim of this study was to examine gender differences in the age 15 social and psychological predictors of less healthy drinking patterns in early adulthood. The study investigates the relative importance of internalising problems, other risky health behaviours, and peer relationships after controlling for family background characteristics. A sample of 812 young people who provided complete alcohol consumption data from the age of 15 to 20 years (5 measurement points) were drawn from South Australian secondary schools and given a detailed survey concerning their psychological and social wellbeing. Respondents were classified into two groups based upon a percentile division: those who drank at levels consistently below NHMRC guidelines and those who consistently drank at higher levels. The results showed that poorer age 15 scores on measures of psychological wellbeing including scores on the GHQ-12, self-esteem, and life-satisfaction as well as engagement in health-related behaviours such as smoking or drug-taking were associated with higher drinking levels in early adulthood. The pattern of results was generally similar for both genders. Higher drinking levels were most strongly associated with smoking and marijuana use and poorer psychological wellbeing during adolescence

Reliability and Validity of Self-Reported Questionnaires Related to Adolescent Violence and Consequences, Thailand

Copyright © 2013 Wongtonkam et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.In Thailand physical violence among male adolescents is considered a significant public health issue, although there has been little published research into the aetiology and functions of violence in Thai youth. Research in this area has been hampered by a lack of psychometrically sound tools that have been validated to assess problem behaviours in Asian youth. The purpose of this paper is to provide validity and reliability data on an instrument to measure violence in Thai youth. In this study, reliability and validity data for a sample of adolescent Thai youth are reported for the Communities That Care Youth Survey (CTC-YS), a measure of risk and protective factors for violent behaviour, and the STAXI-II, a measure of angry experience and expression. The findings showed overall high internal consistency for both questionnaires, and there was evidence of construct validity. It is concluded that these measures are appropriate for use in research that seeks to investigate youth violence among adolescents in Thailand

The importance of resilience to primary care practitioners: an interactive psycho-social model

In this paper, it is argued that an understanding of the factors that make up resilience can enhance communication and concordance between practitioner and patient. A model is presented demonstrating that resilience is an interaction between factors in the internal domain, comprising psychological characteristics and resources, and the external domain, comprising the social environment surrounding the individual. As resilience manifests itself in different ways across the life-cycle, and according to individual circumstances, time is also an important part of the model presented in this paper. Understanding this model of resilience can lead to an insight that there are factors that can be influenced whereby the primary care practitioner can treat the patient, or refer them after a process of concordance through a deeper understanding of the factors that surround a patient’s current health status. Underlying the model is the view that resilience is linked to the assets model of health, seeking to promote and maintain health and prevent illness. Therefore, primary care practitioners, through a deeper understanding of the circumstances of the patient, and through understanding the factors that promote resilience, may be better able to take action in health promotion and maintenance

Work-family balance in Malaysia: Does work-family policy make a difference?

In Western literature, work-family policy is seen as an important agenda to address work-family balance issues. However, there is a lack of evidence on the relationship between work-family policy and work-family balance in Eastern cultures. The aim of this study was to advance the understanding of work-family policy and its relationship to work-family balance (i.e., conflict and enrichment) in Sarawak, East Malaysia. A sample of 506 employees from three public and three private sector organizations was surveyed twice in three months. By way of questionnaires, participants completed measures of work-family policy by Haar and Spell (2003), work-family conflict by Carlson et al., (2000) and work-family enrichment by Carlson et al., (2006)

Job Characteristics: What Can We Learn From the East?

Since being introduced in 2000, the Job Demands and Resources (JD-R) model (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner & Schaufeli, 2000) has been studied extensively in various Western countries. Although the JD-R proposition is not proscriptive about specific demands and resource variables, scholars have used common variables as demands (e.g. workloads, deadlines), and as resources (e.g. support). The question is whether the common variables in the JD-R model that had their origins in Western formulations are applicable in developing countries. In this paper, based on grounded theory, we conducted focus group interviews to investigate specific variables that may apply in Malaysian workplaces. Two focus group interviews (N=13) were conducted with two groups of respondents (managers and non-managers) who worked for private and public sector organizations. Data were analysed using a thematic content analysis strategy. The study found that new variables (e.g. organizational politics, bureaucratic factors) emerged as new demands not generally explored in JD-R research, whereas similar demands were identified at a job-task level (e.g. deadlines). Regarding resources these were mainly identified as in other Western research (e.g. support). Job challenge and exploring new things were identified as pleasurable aspects of work. This finding suggests that using qualitative methods is crucial to exploring the psychosocial concept of stress at work to uncover cultural differences that are apparent between Malaysian and Western employees . Keywords: Job demands, job resources, qualitative studies, job stress, JD-R

Is resilience relevant to smoking abstinence for Indigenous Australians?

This article is under embargo for 12 months from the date of publication, in accordance with the publisher's policy. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in HEALTH PROMOTION INTERNATIONAL following peer review. The version of record [Tsourtos G, Ward P, Lawn S, Winefield A, Hersh D and Coveney J (2014) Is resilience relevant to smoking abstinence for Indigenous Australians? . Health Promotion International 30 (1): pp. 64-76] is available online at: http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/1/64The prevalence rate of tobacco smoking remains high for Australian Indigenous people despite declining rates in other Australian populations. Given many Indigenous Australians continue to experience a range of social and economic structural problems, stress could be a significant contributing factor to preventing smoking abstinence. The reasons why some Indigenous people have remained resilient to stressful adverse conditions, and not rely on smoking to cope as a consequence, may provide important insights and lessons for health promotion policy and practice. In-depth interviews were employed to collect oral histories from 31 Indigenous adults who live in metropolitan Adelaide. Participants were recruited according to smoking status (non-smokers were compared to current smokers to gain a greater depth of understanding of how some participants have abstained from smoking). Perceived levels of stress were associated with encouraging smoking behaviour. Many participants reported having different stresses compared to non-Indigenous Australians, with some participants reporting having additional stressors such as constantly experiencing racism. Resilience often occurred when participants reported drawing upon internal psychological assets such as being motivated to quit and where external social support was available. These findings are discussed in relation to a recently developed psycho-social interactive model of resilience, and how this resilience model can be improved regarding the historical and cultural context of Indigenous Australians’ experience of smoking

Life-time and current suicide-ideation in Australian secondary school students : socio-demographic, health and psychological predictors

Conclusions: Adolescent girls and adolescents with poor social and family functioning and those who engage in substance use are at risk of suicidal ideation (a known precursor of suicide attempts). School counsellors and teachers need to be aware of the risks.

Betriebliches Gesundheitsmanagement im Hochschulsetting

Das vorliegende Fallbeispiel des Departements Gesundheit der Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften (ZHAW) beschreibt den Aufbau eines systematischen betrieblichen Gesundheitsmanagements (BGM) an einer Hochschule sowie die mit dem Setting verbundenen spezifischen Herausforderungen. Das Kapitel beschreibt und diskutiert die zentralen Faktoren, welche dabei förderlich bzw. erschwerend waren: das Commitment der obersten Leitung, die Einbettung von BGM in die Organisationsstrategie sowie die Orientierung an den Leitlinien des Labels Friendly Work Space von Gesundheitsförderung Schweiz (2008) erwiesen sich als besonders hilfreich. Die Eingebundenheit in die Gesamthochschule sowie unterschiedliche Auffassungen von Gesundheitsförderung und Prävention gehörten zu den größten Herausforderungen