Work-life balance and family friendly policies

Abstract This paper presents Australian and international research on work-life interaction. We review the work-life policies and practices that are likely to have the greatest impact on work-life outcomes, specifically reducing the negative impact of work on other life domains (work-life interference), and enhancing the positive effect (worklife facilitation). The review addresses four policy areas common in work-life studies of the general workforce: employee-centered flexible work practices; working hours (e.g. access to part-time work); paid and unpaid leave (e.g. parental leave); and access to childcare. It then considers the work-life literature related to two specific industries – the Australian public sector, and health and social services – to identify work-life issues and practices specific to each industry. We then conclude with a general discussion of challenges associated with the policy-practice gap, focusing particularly on work intensification and the role of organisational culture as the catalyst for policy uptake and effectiveness

Assessing the disclosure protection provided by misclassification for survey microdata

Government statistical agencies often apply statistical disclosure limitation techniques to survey microdata to protect confidentiality. There is a need for ways to assess the protection provided. This paper develops some simple methods for disclosure limitation techniques which perturb the values of categorical identifying variables. The methods are applied in numerical experiments based upon census data from the United Kingdom which are subject to two perturbation techniques: data swapping and the post randomisation method. Some simplifying approximations to the measure of risk are found to work well in capturing the impacts of these techniques. These approximations provide simple extensions of existing risk assessment methods based upon Poisson log-linear models. A numerical experiment is also undertaken to assess the impact of multivariate misclassification with an increasing number of identifying variables. The methods developed in this paper may also be used to obtain more realistic assessments of risk which take account of the kinds of measurement and other non-sampling errors commonly arising in surveys

The big squeeze: work, home and care in 2012

The Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) survey measures how work intersects with other life activities, as seen by a randomly selected representative group of 2,887 working Australians.In recent years a number of major events have influenced Australians’ work, personal, family and community lives. The global financial crisis commenced in 2007/8 and international financial markets have experienced continuing instability. The Fair Work Act 2009 introduced a number of changes to the regulation of work. These included a new net of National Employment Standards that incorporated a formal right for some workers to request flexibility or extended unpaid parental leave from 1 January 2010. A national system of paid parental leave came into effect in January 2011. At the same time, the Australian labour force has continued to evolve, with increasing participation of women, declining rates of participation amongst men, an aging workforce and a continuing shift in the composition of employment away from manufacturing and agriculture towards the services sector

Measuring risk of re-identification in microdata: state-of-the art and new directions

We review the influential research carried out by Chris Skinner in the area of statistical disclosure control, and in particular quantifying the risk of re-identification in sample microdata from a random survey drawn from a finite population. We use the sample microdata to infer population parameters when the population is unknown, and estimate the risk of re-identification based on the notion of population uniqueness using probabilistic modelling. We also introduce a new approach to measure the risk of re-identification for a subpopulation in a register that is not representative of the general population, for example a register of cancer patients. In addition, we can use the additional information from the register to measure the risk of re-identification for the sample microdata. This new approach was developed by the two authors and is published here for the first time. We demonstrate this approach in an application study based on UK census data where we can compare the estimated risk measures to the known truth

Personality affects aspects of health-related quality of life in Parkinson’s disease via psychological coping strategies.

Background: Personality traits influence health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in Parkinson's disease (PD). Further, an individual's personality traits can influence the strategies they use to cope with a particular stressful situation. However, in PD, the interplay between personality traits, choice of coping strategy, and their subsequent effect on HRQoL remains unclear. Objective: The objective of this study was to examine whether personality (neuroticism and extraversion) indirectly affects HRQoL through the use of specific psychological coping strategies. Methods: One hundred and forty-six patients with PD completed questionnaires on personality (Big Five Aspects Scale; BFAS), coping (Ways of Coping Questionnaire; WCQ), and mood-specific (Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale; DASS-21) and disease-specific HRQoL (Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire; PDQ-39). Results: After controlling for gender, age at diagnosis, and age at testing, the emotion-focused coping strategy of escape-avoidance was significantly correlated with neuroticism and certain aspects of HRQoL (cognitive impairment and social support). This suggests that neurotic personality traits may negatively impact on some aspects of HRQoL due to an increased use of escape-avoidance coping strategies. By contrast, planned problem-solving and escape-avoidance coping strategies were both significantly linked to extraversion and interpersonal and mood-related domains of HRQoL. This suggests that extraversion may positively impact on some aspects of HRQoL due to patients adopting greater planned, problem-solving coping strategies, and using fewer escape-avoidance coping mechanisms. Conclusions: Psychological interventions aimed at targeting maladaptive coping strategies, such as the use of escape-avoidance coping, may be effective in minimising the negative impact of neuroticism on HRQoL in PD

Confidentiality and differential privacy in the dissemination of frequency tables

For decades, national statistical agencies and other data custodians have been publishing frequency tables based on census, survey and administrative data. In order to protect the confidentiality of individuals represented in the data, tables based on original data are modified before release. Recently, in response to user demand for more flexible and responsive table publication services, frequency table publication schemes have been augmented with on-line table generating servers such as the US Census Bureau FactFinder and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) TableBuilder. These systems allow users to build their own custom tables, and make use of automated perturbation routines to protect confidentiality. Motivated by the growing popularity of table generating servers, in this paper we study confidentiality protection for perturbed frequency tables, including the trade-off with analytical utility, focusing on a version of the ABS TableBuilder as a concrete example of a data release mechanism, and examining its properties. Confidentiality protection is assessed in terms of the differential privacy standard, and this paper can be used as a practical introduction to differential privacy, to calculations related to its application, to the relationship between confidentiality protection and utility, and to confidentiality in general

Potent dual inhibitors of Plasmodium falciparum M1 and M17 aminopeptidases through optimization of S1 pocket interactions

Malaria remains a global health problem, and though international efforts for treatment and eradication have made some headway, the emergence of drug-resistant parasites threatens this progress. Antimalarial therapeutics acting via novel mechanisms are urgently required. P. falciparum M1 and M17 are neutral aminopeptidases which are essential for parasite growth and development. Previous work in our group has identified inhibitors capable of dual inhibition of PfA-M1 and PfA-M17, and revealed further regions within the protease S1 pockets that could be exploited in the development of ligands with improved inhibitory activity. Herein, we report the structure-based design and synthesis of novel hydroxamic acid analogues that are capable of potent inhibition of both PfA-M1 and PfA-M17. Furthermore, the developed compounds potently inhibit Pf growth in culture, including the multi-drug resistant strain Dd2. The ongoing development of dual PfA-M1/PfA-M17 inhibitors continues to be an attractive strategy for the design of novel antimalarial therapeutics

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy