Improving the person-environment congruence for an office setting

"December 2013.""A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri--Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science."Thesis supervisor: Dr. Ronald Phillips.Creating an effective workplace to fit each unique setting can be useful to change social cognitive behavior, increase employee retention, provide effective work environments, increase company profits and attract new employees. Corporate businesses are in a heightened pressure state to adapt to changing world economies. The margin for error of a faulty space plan is diminishing as the cost of doing business skyrockets. Businesses are being asked to adapt, realign and alter their practices in order to promote greater profits and maintain a stable workforce. Traditional planning methods are being found ineffective in today's changing environment. Most space planning practices use past ideas and intuitive guesses to create what is needed to for a satisfactory space plan. A level of internal understanding is needed to capitalize on management decisions and promote employee satisfaction. The level of understanding would benefit from a precise manner of determining workplace environmental preferences. It is a common understanding within the architectural and business research fields that office employees are highly affected by the setting in which they conduct their work (Becker, 1995). Not only are workers users of spaces within the workplace, but also today's worker recognizes, responds to and is motivated by aesthetically pleasing places and useful spaces that are meaningful and congruent in supporting their work activities (Wicker, 1992). Past research has studied the person-environment relationship and studies have shown that the person-environment (P-E) congruence heavily influences the level of job satisfaction, employee retention and motivation (Caplan, 1987). The P-E congruence model seeks to understand the nature of how the environments that people use or experience have an effect upon their behaviors as well as the manner that peopleIncludes bibliographical references (pages 90-96)

A descriptive study of workplace attributes : environmental preference index examined through organizational system preference typologies

Creating an effective workplace to fit each setting can be useful in changing social cognitive behavior, increasing employee retention, providing effective work environments, increasing company profits, and attracting new employees. Corporate businesses are in a heightened pressure state to adapt to changing world economies. The margin for error of a faulty space plan grows increasingly all the while the cost of doing business skyrockets. Businesses are being asked to adapt, realign, and alter their practices in order to promote greater profits and maintain a stable workforce. Traditional planning methods are being found ineffective in today's changing environment. Most space planning practices use past ideas and intuitive guesses to create what is needed for a satisfactory space plan. A deeper level of understanding is needed that capitalizes on management decisions and promotes employee satisfaction. The level of understanding would benefit from the development of a precise manner for determining workplace environmental preferences. It is a common understanding within the architectural and business research fields that office employees are highly affected by the setting in which they conduct their work (Becker & Steele, 1995). The integration of two scaled indices to ascertain environmental preferences is an important area of study for today's research, design practice, and educational training which provide the opportunity to create patterns for creating environments that truly support the unique set of workers found within. The Environment Preference Index (EPI) measures an office worker's built environment preferences which include the physical facility, furniture and equipment, the opportunity to control their surroundings, the organizational culture's integration into the surrounding built environment, and the amenity spaces provided within the space. The Organizational System Assessment Scale index provides the ability to determine the organization's unique work type as a group or individual. The index provides the fundamental understanding to categorize all the workers within the studied organization by the way the worker views its current work setting and also their ideal way to work. The final integration between the two indices provides insight to contribute to future research seeking to create work patterns to improve design and space planning. The need for this type of planning precision is profound and while many ideas seem to be common sense, many of the white paper resources currently available have not had formal testing that would lead to causal theory application. The research also has the opportunity to create a unifying bridge between different university colleges such as organizational studies found in the nation's business schools and architecture and design college institutions. Shared information would also be made available to further the link between education/research and private design planning practices. The University of Missouri convenience study with a sample size of 411 respondents provides the opportunity to test out previously developed scaled indices, create a process to collect, study, and analyze survey data. As the University of Missouri Extension group sought to understand its workforce, they felt it important to know what areas in their overall physical structures could be enhanced to create a better work experience for its staff and faculty. The outcome for the study provides valuable insight into the organization's aggregate that previously would have been unavailable to researchers and practitioners alike as well as providing the opportunity for the contribution of improving the person and environment congruency. The research findings concluded that when considering the eight demographic variables, the results create a sample profile - the typical individual would be a 50 year old female who has worked for the University of Missouri Extension for 13.5 years on the Columbia campus in the same office for the past eight and a half years, working through Human Environmental Sciences under the current title of Specialist and has either moved only once and more commonly never has moved. Survey results also concluded that the organization comprised the highest mean group of open and that the EPI pattern connections were aligned with the constructs of the physical facility and the culture construct. In a climate of cultural change on the campus of the University of Missouri, this is a significant outcome for future design and business studies. The study's conclusions are significant as the design profession seeks ways to effectively manage and predict the link between employee engagement, attraction, and retention. With a process and beginning pattern development that can be associated between people and the built environment, architects, interior designers, and organizational analysts can more fully consider the connection for buildings and people as they seek to create future healthy building projects

Preseason Lower Extremity Functional Test Scores Are Not Associated With Lower Quadrant Injury - A Validation Study With Normative Data on 395 Division III Athletes

Background: Preseason performance on the lower extremity functional test (LEFT), a timed series of agility drills, has been previously reported to be associated with future risk of lower quadrant (LQ = low back and lower extremities) injury in Division III (D III) athletes.Validation studies are warranted to confirm or refute initial findings. Hypothesis/Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to examine the ability of the LEFT to discriminate injury occurrence in D III athletes, in order to validate or refute prior findings. It was hypothesized that female and male D III athletes slower at completion of the LEFT would be at a greater risk for a non-contact time-loss injury during sport. Secondary purposes of this study are to report other potential risk factors based on athlete demographics and to present normative LEFT data based on sport participation. Methods: Two hundred and six (females = 104; males = 102) D III collegiate athletes formed a validation sample. Athletes in the validation sample completed a demographic questionnaire and performed the LEFT at the start of their sports preseason. Athletic trainers tracked non-contact time-loss LQ injuries during the season. A secondary analysis of risk based on preseason LEFT performance was conducted for a sample (n = 395) that consisted of subjects in the validation sample (n = 206) as well as athletes from a prior LEFT related study (n = 189). Study Design: Prospective cohort Results: Male athletes in the validation sample completed the LEFT [98.6 (± 8.1) seconds] significantly faster than female athletes [113.1 (± 10.4) seconds]. Male athletes, by sport, also completed the LEFT significantly faster than their female counterparts who participated in the same sport. There was no association between preseason LEFT performance and subsequent injury, by sex, in either the validation sample or the combined sample. Females who reported starting primary sport participation by age 10 were two times (OR = 2.4, 95% CI: 1.2, 4.9; p = 0.01) more likely to experience a non-contact time-loss LQ injury than female athletes who started their primary sport at age 11 or older. Males who reported greater than three hours per week of plyometric training during the six-week period prior to the start of the preseason were four times more likely (OR = 4.0, 95% CI: 1.1, 14.0; p = 0.03) to experience a foot or ankle injury than male athletes who performed three or less hours per week. Conclusions: The LEFT could not be validated as a preseason performance measure to predict future sports injury risk. The data presented in this study may aid rehabilitation professionals when evaluating an injured athlete’s ability to return to sport by comparing their LEFT score to population norms

Drug use monitoring in Australia: An expansion into the Pilbara

The relationship between alcohol, illicit drugs and offending is complex and dynamic. Substance misuse both nationally and internationally has been found to be prevalent in detained populations (Bennett & Holloway 2007, Pernanen, Cousineau, Brochu & Sun 2002, Sweeney & Payne 2012). With the cost of crime in Australia estimated to be $36 billion per annum (AIC 2009), it is important to establish some of the links that, if addressed, may reduce the level of commissions of crime and increase the wellbeing of Australians

An experimental investigation: The effects of familiarity and lighting on face recognition accuracy.

Face recognition often plays an important role in identification in many forensic settings as well as other commercial settings. Despite its prevalence, eyewitness memory and identification are highly error prone. Many factors can influence face recognition accuracy under a variety of different conditions. The aim of this research is to explore the influence of familiarity and lighting to accurately identify the correct face from CCVT footage in an experimental recognition memory task. Results found a large effect of familiarity in all responses where familiar targets were correctly identified more often than unfamiliar targets. Results found no significant differences between the lighting conditions, which may suggest that lighting has little to no effect on accuracy of identification in this task. Further analysis found that participants were better able to discriminate familiar faces from the distractor faces in line-ups compared to unfamiliar faces. It also found that familiarity or lighting did not appear to bias observers to make incorrect decisions. It can be concluded that a familiarity advantage is consistent across viewing conditions, suggesting that familiar faces provide the most accurate identification responses. This can effectively be explained by sensitivity as a significant difference was again found for familiarity. It is also concluded that it is not possible to fully determine the influence of lighting on face recognition accuracy from this study alone. No clear bias was found between conditions, which suggests that the familiarity and lighting have no impact of the likeliness of choice in this sample

Aquatic habitat shift assessment in a groundwater-fed semi-arid stream: an investigation into the response of Karoo hydroecology to system variability

From introduction: The subject of biological response to changes in aquatic habitat is one which has been well explored in many regions of the world. Examples include work in south east Spain by Mellado Diaz et al. (2008) and Oliva-Paterna et al. (2003), in western United States of America by Hauer and Lorang (2004), and in West Germany by Meyer et al. (2003). Similarly, a number of studies have been conducted in semi-arid regions, exploring elements such as erosion, climate, lithology and landscape formations (e.g. Boardman et al., 2013; Le Maitre et al., 2007; Meyer et al., 2003). However, apart from the study by Uys (1997), and Uys and O’Keeffe (1997), there is a noticeable lack of literature on aquatic habitat shifts in semi-arid stream systems, despite these systems being recognised for their high natural variability. This study provides a base-level approach to conducting habitat shift assessments in a semi-arid stream system and monitoring the hydroecological responses to system variability

Comparison of Jump and Hop Test Measures Between NAIA and Division III Male Collegiate Basketball Players

Purpose: To report normative data for two functional performance tests (FPTs) (the standing long jump [SLJ] and the single-leg hop [SLH]) in a population of male collegiate basketball players and to identify differences in measures between athletes based on level of competition, starter status, and position. Methods: Eighty-six male collegiate basketball players from six teams were recruited for this study. Each athlete performed three SLJs and three SLHs (bilaterally). Results: Mean (± SD) FPT measures (normalized to height) for all basketball players were: SLJ = 1.0 ± 0.1, right SLH = 0.84 ± 0.1, and left SLH = 0.85 ± 0.1. Significant differences in FPT measures were observed both within and between groups based on: level of competition, by player position, and by starter status. Conclusions: The data presented in this study can be used by coaches and athletic trainers to assess aspects of athletic readiness in male collegiate basketball players

Give them a chance: public attitudes to sentencing young offenders in Western Australia

Public opinion is often reported as punitive towards sentencing young people. Attitudes remain important to investigate given their potential to influence policy within the criminal justice system. Therefore, it is important to understand the formation of these attitudes and their consistency with sentencing principles. Semi-structured interviews (n = 72) and surveys (n = 502) were used to gauge opinions of sentencing young people under different scenario manipulations (age, weapon, drug treatment, prior record). The findings revealed the public expected punishment, but favoured rehabilitation with an opportunity to repent, suggesting the public are open to alternatives to ‘tough on crime’ approaches

Are Preseason Functional and Biomechanical Measures Associated with Lower Quadrant Injury Risk in Division III Athletes?

A recent trend in sports medicine research is to determine risk of injury during sport based on preseason functional performance test (FPT) measures. Equivocal findings associated with prior studies may leave PTs with uncertainty as to which FPT, or combination of FPTs, can best identify athletes who have a greater risk for injury. Previous studies have utilized low-tech FPT measures: standing long jump (SLJ), single-leg hop (SLH), lower extremity functional test (LEFT), and the Y-balance test (YBT) (1,3,4). These low-tech options may not be able to identify potential deficits that could be collected with high-tech measures (e.g., DVJ measures collected in a motion capture lab) (2). The purpose of this study was to determine if “high-tech” and/or “low-tech” preseason functional performance test measures were associated with non-contact time loss lower quadrant (LQ = low back and/or lower extremity) injuries

The Role of Social Media Technology Tools in Higher Education Instruction

Although instructors at a Western Caribbean university use technology in the instructional process, they rarely use social media tools for teaching and learning. This exploratory qualitative case study addressed faculty members\u27 perceived role of social media technology tools in higher education instruction at the local university. The conceptual frameworks that guided this study were the theory of planned behavior and the technology acceptance model. Ten faculty members at the local university were selected through a purposeful sampling process and were interviewed. Interview transcripts were organized using an iterative coding process and were analyzed for recurring themes. Trustworthiness was established through peer review, member checking, peer debriefing, and triangulation. The themes that emerged from the interviews revealed factors that encouraged the use of social media tools such as freedom in learning, growth in inferential skills, ease of communication, or access to a repository of online lessons. In addition, factors that discouraged the use of social media were also discovered, such as unreliability of the tools, hindrance to cognitive growth, or the increased number of cyber bullies. The resulting project consisted of a white paper that will disseminate the findings from this study to stakeholders with the goal of initiating a collaborative process focused on the use of social media tools in instruction. Recommendations from this project study may help to implement and integrate social media tools in instruction. The project contributes to social change through faculty members\u27 stronger understanding of both those factors that encourage the use of social media tools and the barriers that prevent their effective use in instruction