Cultural cues and behavioural patterns in stress dynamics: a case of the construction industry

CIB W099 and TG59 Conference: Coping with the Complexity of Safety, Health, and Wellbeing in ConstructionCritical factors underpinning stress development in the Construction Industry were investigated in an ethnographic study. Data were collected from three construction organizations in the UK and analysed by content analysis. The results show the pivotal importance of interpersonal relationships to coping with the uncertainty of working conditions, coordination of activities involving teamwork and managing responsibilities and power interactions. The study underlines the importance of dedicated services for stress management and specific trainingrelated abilities devoted to reinforcing positive dynamics between persons and organizations. In particular, these related to managing the impacts of stress on physical status, interpersonal relationships, work performance, and emotional well-being. Communication systems, tools and software and their application were also claimed to have been carefully implemented as effective stress deterrents in the management of daily routine activities.CI

Cognition, heuristics, and biases behind environmental related behaviours

© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(17)30179-1We read with great interest Matthieu Guitton and Julien Poitras published in The Lancet Planetary Health, and we would like to reinforce the importance of environmental education for health professionals

Framing stress and associated behaviours at work: an ethnography study in the United Kingdom

Aim: The purpose is to understand more precisely the culture and interpersonal behaviours associated with stress. Methods: The research was conducted using a qualitative approach through an ethnographic methodology in relation to three companies. The greater part of the data collection period was structured into observations that ranged between 2 and 4 hours per day, 1 to 3 days per week, for a period of 6 months. A total of 10 sites were explored; and on each site, the observations involved activities by 5 to 20 people. Findings: The results showed the pivotal importance of interpersonal relationships in coping with the uncertainty of working conditions, the coordination of team-work, and managing responsibilities and power interactions. It was found that the impact of stress is multifaceted, affecting the physical status, interpersonal relationships, work performance, and emotional wellbeing of construction workers. The workers who were studied emphasised five sources of support that help moderate work-related stress: additional tools such as communication systems and software, a facilitated access to professional help (e.g. psychological services), organisational changes in leadership, provision of resources for the wellbeing of personnel (e.g. job training) and better teamwork. Practical implications: The study underlines the importance of dedicated services for stress management and specific training-related abilities devoted to reinforcing positive person-organization dynamics. In particular, the abilities should relate to managing the impact of stress in terms of physique, interpersonal relationships, work performance, and emotional well-being. Originality/value: This is one of the first studies to adopt a psychological perspective for understanding construction scenarios and phenomena and was conducted by a qualified psychologist.EU Horizon 2020/ Marie Curie. INSTINCT Project (EU Individual Fellowship

Methodological considerations in injury burden of disease studies across Europe: a systematic literature review

Background Calculating the disease burden due to injury is complex, as it requires many methodological choices. Until now, an overview of the methodological design choices that have been made in burden of disease (BoD) studies in injury populations is not available. The aim of this systematic literature review was to identify existing injury BoD studies undertaken across Europe and to comprehensively review the methodological design choices and assumption parameters that have been made to calculate years of life lost (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD) in these studies. Methods We searched EMBASE, MEDLINE, Cochrane Central, Google Scholar, and Web of Science, and the grey literature supplemented by handsearching, for BoD studies. We included injury BoD studies that quantified the BoD expressed in YLL, YLD, and disability-adjusted life years (DALY) in countries within the European Region between early-1990 and mid-2021. Results We retrieved 2,914 results of which 48 performed an injury-specific BoD assessment. Single-country independent and Global Burden of Disease (GBD)-linked injury BoD studies were performed in 11 European countries. Approximately 79% of injury BoD studies reported the BoD by external cause-of-injury. Most independent studies used the incidence-based approach to calculate YLDs. About half of the injury disease burden studies applied disability weights (DWs) developed by the GBD study. Almost all independent injury studies have determined YLL using national life tables. Conclusions Considerable methodological variation across independent injury BoD assessments was observed; differences were mainly apparent in the design choices and assumption parameters towards injury YLD calculations, implementation of DWs, and the choice of life table for YLL calculations. Development and use of guidelines for performing and reporting of injury BoD studies is crucial to enhance transparency and comparability of injury BoD estimates across Europe and beyond

Bounded rationality in medical choices: Heuristics, trust and risk perception in the decision-making process

Il presente lavoro si è proposto di indagare il concetto di razionalità limitata nel contesto delle scelte mediche. Sono stati reclutati 80 adulti, senza una storia clinica particolare a cui è stato dapprima somministrato un test virtuale che richiedeva di prendere delle decisioni su alcuni trattamenti e, successivamente, è stata somministrata una intervista semi-strutturata per approfondire il tema della scelta. I principali risultati: in primis, le persone adottano l’uso di euristiche veloci e frugali. In particolare, le persone adottano l’euristica del “Prendi il meglio” considerando, per ogni scelta, un numero limitato di caratteristiche. In secondo luogo, l'uso di euristiche è legato a una razionalità ecologica che adatta le strategie decisionali alla struttura delle informazioni disponibili del contesto ambientale. In questo contesto, se il consiglio del o le informazioni rispetto ai rischi/effetti indesiderati sono disponibili allora essi saranno sempre valutati perché sono caratteristiche fondamentali del processo di scelta. Il consiglio del medico è espressione della fiducia tra medico e paziente. La fiducia è rappresentata da segnali semplici e onesti che il medico è capace di trasmettere e questi segnali formano un canale di comunicazione tra le persone. Infine un altro risultato riguarda la comprensione del rischio associato al consumo di un farmaco che è risultato di difficile comprensione e rappresentazione.This research aimed at applying the concept of bounded rationality in common medical choices in order to analyse the process by which laypersons make decisions in the field of health. Eighty adults, without a particular disease history were recruited and they were asked to manage both some virtual situations of medical choices and to discuss face to face about their past experiences in medical choices.Three major findings emerged. Firstly, people often use fast and frugal heuristics. In particular, people adopt the rule of the ‘take the best” considering, for each choice, a very limited number of elements to make their decisions. Secondly, the use of heuristics is related with the principle of ecological rationality in which strategies are chosen in connection with the available information of the environmental context. In this context, if “doctor’s advice” as well as “side effects information” are available, they will be always considered because they represent fundamental features of the decision making process. Doctor’s advice is expression of the trust between patient-doctor relationship. Trust is represented by simple and honest signals that the doctor communicates and these signals form an unconscious channel of communication between people. Thirdly, we found that risks associated with treatments are not easy to be conceived by laypersons. It was that people have not in mind a clear definition of the risk implied by medicines and treatment and they show, in average, a scarce interest in risk comprehension

Pour une ethnologie du présent en littérature

Dans cet article nous étudions des textes francophones contemporains à l’aune d’une lecture « métonymique » qui interroge la notion d’ethnologie du présent par l’intermédiaire de la phénoménologie foucaldienne. L’étude d’un roman initiatique fondé sur l’oniromancie et ses symboles issus du patrimoine luba, et d’une épopée lyrique qui fait recours à des éléments de la tradition malinké et luba, nous donnera l’occasion de poser quelques questions-clés à propos du rapport entre littérature et anthropologie dans le domaine littéraire francophone africain d’aujourd’hui (micro-ethnologie versus macro-ethnologie ; co-construction du terrain ; théorie des genres littéraires ; herméneutique).Our purpose is to analyse contemporary francophone texts and the notion of an “ethnology of the present,” through metonymic reading and Foucauldian phenomenology, in order to show the diffraction and re-composition of a traditional African heritage by certain writers. The study of an initiation tale based on oneiromancy and its Luba symbols, and of a lyric epic inspired by the Malinké and Luba traditions, leads to key questions on the intersections of literature and anthropology in contemporary francophone African literatures (i.e. micro-ethnology versus macro-ethnology; co-construction of the field; theory of literary genres; hermeneutics)

La città scrive: "détournements" nella cultura contemporanea di lingua francese

The marks of the events on the urban landscape are a city's writing. More than writings on a city - amongst which are the memorable work of Baudelaire, the ";flâneur";, and Apollinaire's Lettre-Océan -  they represent the analysis of the city that writes on its own texture.This phenomenon relies on a procedure of diversion and estrangement which turns famous places into uncommon areas and it finds amongst its founding models the cinematographic production of Francois Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451). A similar approach allows us to capture the significance of the work of Dominique Fourcade, one of the most important contemporary French poets. In MW Chute, a  poem dated 5th October 2001, he describes the horror of the collapse of New York City's twin towers.In this piece, Fourcade describes what happened to him on 9/11 not much from a man's perspective but rather from . a poetic standpoint. Ground Zero allows his writing to jump forward, and turn into a verbal city and labyrynth. His reflections on the urban landscape  which, collapses under the explosion become a map of dispersed images made of innumerabile détournements (detour aheads), of endless variants and deviations. The event becomes the model and shape of his writing