Resilience: A new integrative approach to health and mental health research

We know from anecdote and research, science and art, that human resilience is a powerful, seemingly ubiquitous force. What is needed is a better understanding of the properties, variations, and applications of that concept to health and well-being. In this paper we put forth two definitions of resilience: Sustainability of purpose in the face of stress, and recovery from adversity. We review current thinking in the social sciences on the nature of biological, psychological and socio-community processes that may confer resilience. In doing so, we encourage greater attention to aspects of biopsychosocial resourcefulness as a dimension of influence on health and mental health distinct from measures of risk found in standard models of public health inquiry. Multi-level, longitudinal, and intervention methods are advocated for research and applications of the concept with conceptual guidelines for the examination of laboratory, diary, and community indicator data on manifestations of resilience across the life span.

Predictors of clinical improvement in children with recurrent abdominal pain

Forty-three children with recurrent abdominal pain who had received treatment from a paediatric gastroenterology clinic were reassessed 6 and 12 months after initial presentation. Measures of children's pain included a pain diary (PD) which measured pain intensity, a parent observation record (POR) which assessed pain behaviour and a structured interview to assess the degree to which pain interferes with the child's activities. Pretreatment measures of the child's history of pain, coping strategies in dealing with pain, and their mother's caregiving strategies were examined as predictors of two indices of clinical improvement: the extent of change in pain on the child's pain diary from pre-test to 6 months follow-up, and the degree of interference to the child's activities. All children had shown significant improvement in the level of pain at follow up, with 74.4% being pain free at 12 month follow-up on the PD and 83.7% being pain free on the POR. The amount of change they showed varied, with some showing residual impairment even though they were significantly improved. Regression analyses showed that children with greatest reductions on the child's pain diary at the 6 month follow-up were those with a stress-related mode of onset, whose mothers used more adaptive caregiving strategies, and who received cognitive behavioural family intervention. There was also a non significant trend for younger children to fare better. These data suggest the importance of early diagnosis and routinely assessing parental caregiving behaviour and beliefs about the origins of pain in planning treatment for children with RAP.

Children’s personal exposure to air pollution in rural villages in Bhutan

Exposure assessment studies conducted in developing countries have been based on fixed-site monitoring to date. This is a major deficiency, leading to errors in estimating the actual exposures, which are a function of time spent and pollutant concentrations in different microenvironments. This study quantified school children’s daily personal exposure to ultrafine particles (UFP) using real-time monitoring, as well as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and NO2 using passive sampling in rural Bhutan in order to determine the factors driving the exposures. An activity diary was used to track children’s time activity patterns, and difference in mean exposure levels across sex and indoor/outdoor were investigated with ANOVA. 82 children, attending three primary schools participated in this study; S1 and S2 during the wet season and S3 during the dry season. Mean daily UFP exposure (cm-3) was 1.08 × 104 for children attending S1, 9.81 × 103 for S2, and 4.19 × 104 for S3. The mean daily NO2 exposure (µg m-3) was 4.27 for S1, 3.33 for S2 and 5.38 for S3 children. Likewise, children attending S3 also experienced higher daily exposure to a majority of the VOCs than those attending S1 and S2. Time-series of UFP personal exposures provided detailed information on identifying sources of these particles and quantifying their contributions to the total daily exposures for each microenvironment. The highest UFP exposure resulted from cooking/eating, contributing to 64% of the daily exposure, due to firewood combustion in houses using traditional mud cookstoves. The lowest UFP exposures were during the hours that children spent outdoors at school. The outcomes of this study highlight the significant contributions of lifestyle and socio-economic factors in personal exposures and have applications in environmental risk assessment and household air pollution mitigation in Bhutan.

Focus on opportunities as a boundary condition of the relationship between job control and work engagement: A multi-sample, multi-method study

The concept of focus on opportunities describes how many new goals, options, and possibilities employees believe to have in their personal future at work. In this multi-sample, multi-method study, the authors investigated relationships between focus on opportunities and general and daily work engagement and the moderating role of focus on opportunities on between- and within-person relationships between job control and work engagement. Based on a social cognitive theory framework on the motivating potential of a future temporal focus, it was hypothesized that focus on opportunities is positively related to work engagement. Further, consistent with the notion of compensatory resources, it was expected that job control is not related to work engagement among employees with a high focus on opportunities, whereas job control, as an external resource of the work environment, is positively related to work engagement among employees with a low focus on opportunities. Both a cross-sectional survey study (N=174) and a daily diary study (N=64) supported the hypotheses. The study contributes to research on the job demands-resources model as it emphasizes the role of focus on opportunities as a motivational factor in the relationship between job control and work engagement.

Relationships between daily affect and pro-environmental behavior at work: The moderating role of pro-environmental attitude

Research in organizational psychology has increasingly focused on understanding the determinants of "green" employee behavior. The present study used a daily diary design to investigate relationships between employees' daily affect, pro-environmental attitude, as well as daily task-related pro-environmental behavior (i.e., the extent to which employees complete required work tasks in environmentally friendly ways), and daily proactive pro-environmental behavior (i.e., the extent to which employees show personal initiative when acting in environmentally friendly ways at work). Fifty-six employees working in small businesses completed a baseline survey and two daily surveys over ten workdays. Daily unactivated positive affect and pro-environmental attitude positively predicted daily task-related pro-environmental behavior. In addition, daily activated positive affect positively predicted daily proactive pro-environmental behavior among employees with a less positive pro-environmental attitude but not among employees with a more positive pro-environmental attitude. These findings suggest that fostering pro-environmental attitudes and, to some extent, positive affect among employees could help organizations to promote pro-environmental behavior in the workplace.

An intraindividual perspective on pro-environmental behaviors at work

Ones and Dilchert (2012) highlight the importance of examining workplace environmental sustainability at the interindividual (or between-person) and organizational levels. In this commentary, we aim to extend these authors’ framework by focusing on pro-environmental behaviors and their potential predictors at the intraindividual, or within-person, level. To this end, we will first describe the intraindividual perspective, its benefits, and the diary study methodology often used to operationalize this perspective. Secondly, we will share how the intraindividual perspective was useful in an empirical study we conducted on multilevel relationships among employees’ pro-environmental attitude, daily affect, and daily proenvironmental behaviors. Finally, we will discuss a number of possible limitations of the diary study methodology, ways to Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Megan J. Bissing-Olson. E-mail: m.bissing-olson@uq.edu.au Address: School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia overcome them, and directions for future research.

Within-person relationships between daily individual and job characteristics and daily manifestations of career adaptability

Previous research showed that daily manifestations of career adaptability fluctuate within individuals over short periods of time, and predict important daily job and career outcomes. Using a quantitative daily diary study design (N = 156 employees; 591 daily entries), the author investigated daily job characteristics (i.e., daily job demands, daily job autonomy, and daily supervisory career mentoring) and daily individual characteristics (i.e., daily Big Five personality characteristics, daily core self-evaluations, and daily temporal focus) as within-person predictors of daily career adaptability and its four dimensions (concern, control, curiosity, and confidence). Results showed that daily job demands, daily job autonomy, daily conscientiousness, daily openness to experience, as well as daily past and future temporal focus positively predicted daily career adaptability. Differential results emerged for the four career adaptability dimensions. Implications for future research on within-person variability in career adaptability are discussed.

Daily manifestations of career adaptability: Relationships with job and career outcomes

Most research on career adaptability has examined the construct as an individual differences variable and neglected that it may vary within an individual over a short period of time. In two daily diary studies, the author investigated the relationships of career adaptability and its four dimensions (concern, control, curiosity, and confidence) to their daily manifestations as well as daily job and career outcomes. Both Study 1 (N = 53) and Study 2 (N = 234) demonstrated substantial within-person variability in employees' behavioral expressions of career adaptability across five work days. Results further showed that daily career adaptability and daily confidence positively predicted daily task and career performance, as well as daily job and career satisfaction. Daily control positively predicted daily task performance, as well as daily job and career satisfaction. Daily concern positively predicted daily career performance and satisfaction, and daily curiosity positively predicted daily career satisfaction.

Selection, optimization, and compensation strategies: Interactive effects on daily work engagement

The theory of selective optimization with compensation (SOC) proposes that the “orchestrated” use of three distinct action regulation strategies (selection, optimization, and compensation) leads to positive employee outcomes. Previous research examined overall scores and additive models (i.e., main effects) of SOC strategies instead of interaction models in which SOC strategies mutually enhance each other's effects. Thus, a central assumption of SOC theory remains untested. In addition, most research on SOC strategies has been cross-sectional, assuming that employees' use of SOC strategies is stable over time. We conducted a quantitative diary study across nine work days (N = 77; 514 daily entries) to investigate interactive effects of daily SOC strategies on daily work engagement. Results showed that optimization and compensation, but not selection, had positive main effects on work engagement. Moreover, a significant three-way interaction effect indicated that the relationship between selection and work engagement was positive only when both optimization and compensation were high, whereas the relationship was negative when optimization was low and compensation was high. We discuss implications for future research and practice regarding the use of SOC strategies at work.

Emotional climate of a pre-service science teacher education class in Bhutan

This study explored pre-service secondary science teachers’ perceptions of classroom emotional climate in the context of the Bhutanese macro-social policy of Gross National Happiness. Drawing upon sociological perspectives of human emotions and using Interaction Ritual Theory this study investigated how pre-service science teachers may be supported in their professional development. It was a multi-method study involving video and audio recordings of teaching episodes supported by interviews and the researcher’s diary. Students also registered their perceptions of the emotional climate of their classroom at 3-minute intervals using audience response technology. In this way, emotional events were identified for video analysis. The findings of this study highlighted that the activities pre-service teachers engaged in matter to them. Positive emotional climate was identified in activities involving students’ presentations using video clips and models, coteaching, and interactive whole class discussions. Decreases in emotional climate were identified during formal lectures and when unprepared presenters led presentations. Emotions such as frustration and disappointment characterized classes with negative emotional climate. The enabling conditions to sustain a positive emotional climate are identified. Implications for sustaining macro-social policy about Gross National Happiness are considered in light of the climate that develops in science teacher education classes.

Healing gardens in the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital: Reflections on benefits, preferences and design from bench diaries

Background Interest in the use of healing gardens in healthcare settings to provide therapeutic benefits is increasing, however insight is needed to determine whether patients, patient families and friends, and staff who spend time in these gardens use these in the manner for which they were designed, and experience the benefits suggested by broader research in this field. Objective(s) Visitors to four of the LCCH gardens have left comments in ‘bench diaries’ (visitors books). Analysis of these comments yields valuable insights into the use of the gardens, enabling reflection on the design intent and outcomes and guidance regarding how the gardens might be better utilised, as well as a basis for further investigation into the use and value of the gardens. Method(s) Comments have been coded and analysed using a thematic analysis approach to identify patterns relating to the reasons for which people appear to come to the healing gardens; benefits they appear to receive from spending time there; and features and aspects of the gardens that they appear to appreciate in particular. Only comments related to the gardens have been used in this analysis, with all comments being deidentified. Outcome/Conclusion Comments left in the Adventure Garden and Secret Garden bench diaries were used for the analysis, as Staff Garden and Babies Garden bench diary comments did not relate to the garden. There were no negative comments relating to the gardens, other than one comment requesting additional benches. The vast majority of comments expressed gratitude for the space. The four most frequently observed themes from the comments left in the Secret Garden Bench Diary indicated that they were seeking ‘time out’ from their experiences of being at the hospital, a desire for a ‘dose of nature’ (greenery, beautiful garden, etc), and fresh air, and that the garden space provided a restorative experience to them in some manner. Comments in the Adventure Garden Bench Diary related predominately to the view. Analysis of the comments emphasises the importance of gardens providing multi-sensory experiences that significantly differentiate the space from the hospital ward and provide visitors with a sense of being away, of peacefulness, and of familiarity with the outside world. Positioning gardens with prospect, and solar aspect, appears important in these regards, as does the presence of visible greenery. Adequate seating in locations that provide pleasing views appears particularly important for staff and adult visitors. Whilst comments in the Bench Diaries did not indicate direct awareness of the stress and anxiety-reducing effects that research elsewhere has found from viewing plants and nature, however these effects may underpin many of these experiences that visitors did share.