The psychological impact of industrial strikes: Does involvement in union activity during strikes make a difference?

The current study investigated the psychological impact of a United Steelworkers of America strike on the steelworkers involved, and the relationship between psychological well-being and individuals' levels of involvement in union activity during the strike. Three hundred and fifty-one steelworkers (302 `strikers' and 49 `non-strikers') completed surveys measuring a range of demographic and psychological well-being variables. Strikers, compared to non-strikers, reported higher levels of depression, anxiety, and irritation, and lower levels of mental health. For strikers, engaging in higher levels of union activity during the strike was associated with better psychological well-being. Jahoda's theory of deprivation during unemployment is used as the lens through which to explain some of the results, supporting the view that latent benefits associated with work are important for psychological well-being. A range of practical implications are offered for unions and their members.

Beware of geeks bearing gifts? Online latent and untapped outlets for farmers' markets in South East Wales

This chapter sets out to identify related issues surrounding the use of Information and Computer Technology (ICT) in developing relationships between local food producers and consumers (both individuals and businesses). Three surveys were conducted in South- East Wales to consider the overlapping issues. The first concerned the role of ICT in relationships between farmers’ market (FMs) vendors and their traditional customers. The second survey examined potential new markets for farmers in the propensity of restaurants and hotels to buy locally, the types and sources of purchases made and the modes of advertising of these businesses. The final survey focused on the potential to expand local web- based selling of farmers’ produce in the future, by examining the potential market of high ICT- use small hotels. Despite the development of tailored ICT facilities, farmers’ market vendors and current individual customers are antipathetic to them. In addition, whilst there is a desire for more local produce particularly amongst independent local restaurants and hotels, this has not been capitalised upon and there is much work to be done even amongst high ICT-use small hotels, to expand the range and scope of farmers’ markets. This raises the need for creation and utilisation of enhanced logistics, payment and marketing management capacity available through a web- based presence, linked to promotion of FMs in business- to- business (B2B) links with local restaurants and hotels. This linked quantitative research highlights the potential value in substantial development of both web portals and supporting logistics to exploit this potential in the future.

Variables governing the dynamics of attacker-defender systems in team sport

This project was a step forward in the examination and identification of key variables on the perception, decision making and action of team sport athletes through theoretical insights provided by the ecological dynamics perspective. The methodology drew on experiential knowledge of elite coaches to drive further empirical investigation into the specific task, environmental and personal constraints that shape the behaviour of athletes in specific performance contexts. The thesis has provided an effective rationale for further investigation into the emergent perception, decision making and action demanded of athletes in these unpredictable, fluent, fast-paced environments.

Determining indicators of transportation disadvantage for establishing knowledge-based environments

Although, transportation disadvantage or imbalance between travel needs and supply of transportation system is a great harm to knowledge based environments, quantification and objectively measuring the state of transportation disadvantaged remain to be a great challenge for researcher due to its ambiguity. This poses questions of whether the current indicators are accurately linked with transportation disadvantages and the effectiveness of the current policies. Using current indicators of transportation disadvantages, the state of transportation disadvantage is often exaggerated due to limited afford has been put forward to provide clear assessment on the existed relationship between transportation disadvantage indicators with travel performance or capability. This paper proposes a structural equation model of transportation disadvantage using household variables gained from the 2006-2008 South-East Queensland Travel Survey (SEQTS). The underlying relationships between social economics and demographic characteristics of household with travel performance are modelled using a latent variable approach. The final model has been able to fit the data gathered from SEQTS and explained established links between key household factors with travel capability and determined key indicator of travel capability. The model recognises that travel capability is directly influenced by household factors; vehicle ratio, license possession, retirees and pensioners.

Trading spaces : on the lore and limitations of latent semantic analysis

Two decades after its inception, Latent Semantic Analysis(LSA) has become part and parcel of every modern introduction to Information Retrieval. For any tool that matures so quickly, it is important to check its lore and limitations, or else stagnation will set in. We focus here on the three main aspects of LSA that are well accepted, and the gist of which can be summarized as follows: (1) that LSA recovers latent semantic factors underlying the document space, (2) that such can be accomplished through lossy compression of the document space by eliminating lexical noise, and (3) that the latter can best be achieved by Singular Value Decomposition. For each aspect we performed experiments analogous to those reported in the LSA literature and compared the evidence brought to bear in each case. On the negative side, we show that the above claims about LSA are much more limited than commonly believed. Even a simple example may show that LSA does not recover the optimal semantic factors as intended in the pedagogical example used in many LSA publications. Additionally, and remarkably deviating from LSA lore, LSA does not scale up well: the larger the document space, the more unlikely that LSA recovers an optimal set of semantic factors. On the positive side, we describe new algorithms to replace LSA (and more recent alternatives as pLSA, LDA, and kernel methods) by trading its l2 space for an l1 space, thereby guaranteeing an optimal set of semantic factors. These algorithms seem to salvage the spirit of LSA as we think it was initially conceived.

Profiling and characterisation of key weather variables and their implication on building design

Local climate is a critical element in the design of buildings. In this paper, ten years of historical weather data in Australia's all eight capital cities are analyzed to characterize the variation profiles of climatic variables. The method of descriptive statistics is employed. Either the pattern of cumulative distribution and/or the profile of percentage distribution are used to graphically illustrate the similarity and difference between different study locations. It is found that although the weather variables vary with different locations, except for the extreme parts, there is often a good, nearly linear relation between weather variable and its cumulative percentage for the majority of middle part. The implication of these extreme parts and the slopes of the middle parts on building design is also discussed.

On the significance of omitted variables in intersection crash modeling

Advances in safety research—trying to improve the collective understanding of motor vehicle crash causes and contributing factors—rest upon the pursuit of numerous lines of research inquiry. The research community has focused considerable attention on analytical methods development (negative binomial models, simultaneous equations, etc.), on better experimental designs (before-after studies, comparison sites, etc.), on improving exposure measures, and on model specification improvements (additive terms, non-linear relations, etc.). One might logically seek to know which lines of inquiry might provide the most significant improvements in understanding crash causation and/or prediction. It is the contention of this paper that the exclusion of important variables (causal or surrogate measures of causal variables) cause omitted variable bias in model estimation and is an important and neglected line of inquiry in safety research. In particular, spatially related variables are often difficult to collect and omitted from crash models—but offer significant opportunities to better understand contributing factors and/or causes of crashes. This study examines the role of important variables (other than Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT)) that are generally omitted from intersection crash prediction models. In addition to the geometric and traffic regulatory information of intersection, the proposed model includes many spatial factors such as local influences of weather, sun glare, proximity to drinking establishments, and proximity to schools—representing a mix of potential environmental and human factors that are theoretically important, but rarely used. Results suggest that these variables in addition to AADT have significant explanatory power, and their exclusion leads to omitted variable bias. Provided is evidence that variable exclusion overstates the effect of minor road AADT by as much as 40% and major road AADT by 14%.

Simulating a latent susceptible pool to examine the impact on cardiovascular mortality

The health effects of cold and hot temperatures are strongest in the frail and elderly. A large number of deaths in this "susceptible pool" after heat waves and cold snaps can cause mortality displacement, where an immediate increase in mortality is somewhat offset by a subsequent decrease in the following weeks. There may also be longer-term implications, as reductions in the pool caused by hot summers can reduce cold-related mortality in the following winter. A state-space model was used to simulate the numbers in the susceptible pool over time. We simulated the effects of harsh winters and heat waves, and varied the size of the susceptible pool. The larger the susceptible pool the smaller the mortality displacement. When 1% of the population were susceptible a harsh winter lead to an average of just 3 months of life lost per cold-related death, whereas a pool size of 10% meant that 24 months of life were lost per death. The impact of a cold spell on months of life lost was greater when the increased risk of death also applied to healthy people. The number of deaths caused by an August heat wave were reduced when there was a prior heat wave in June which reduced the susceptible pool. We were able to mimic some observed seasonal patterns in mortality using a simple state-space model. A better understanding of the size and dynamics of the susceptible pool will improve our understanding of the health effects of temperature.

Analytical solutions for the two- and three-dimensional time-fractional telegraph equations by the method of separating variables

In this paper, a method of separating variables is effectively implemented for solving a time-fractional telegraph equation (TFTE) in two and three dimensions. We discuss and derive the analytical solution of the TFTE in two and three dimensions with nonhomogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition. This method can be extended to other kinds of the boundary conditions.

Explicit, latent and meta-criteria : types of criteria at play in professional judgement practice

This paper engages with debates about whether comprehensive prior specification of criteria and standards is sufficient for informed professional judgement. A preoccupation has emerged with the specificity and explication of criteria intended to regulate judgement. This has resulted in criteria-compliance in the use of defined standards to validate judgements and improve reliability and consistency. Compliance has become a priority, the consequence being the prominence of explicit criteria, to the lack of acknowledgement of the operation of latent and meta-criteria within judgement practice. This paper examines judgement as a process involving three categories of assessment criteria in the context of standards-referenced systems: explicit, latent and meta-criteria. These are understood to be wholly interrelated and interdependent. A conceptualisation of judgement involving the interplay of the three criteria types is presented with an exploration of how they function to focus or alter assessments of quality in judgements of achievement in English and Mathematics.

The mystery of the U-shaped relationship between happiness and age

In this paper, we address the puzzle of the relationship between age and happiness. Whilst the majority of psychologists have concluded there is not much of a relationship at all, the economic literature has unearthed a possible U-shape relationship with the minimum level of satisfaction occurring in middle age (35–50). In this paper, we look for a U-shape in three panel data sets, the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the Household Income Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA). We find that the raw data mainly supports a wave-like shape that only weakly looks U-shaped for the 20–60 age range. That weak U-shape in middle age becomes more pronounced when allowing for socio-economic variables. When we then take account of selection effects via fixed-effects, however, the dominant age-effect in all three panels is a strong happiness increase around the age of 60 followed by a major decline after 75, with the U-shape in middle age disappearing such that there is almost no change in happiness between the age of 20 and 50.

A history of heart interventions moderates the relationship between psychological variables and the presence of chest pain in older women with self-reported coronary heart disease

Objectives: This study examines the hypothesis that a past history of heart interventions will moderate the relationship between psychosocial factors (stressful life events, social support, perceived stress, having a current partner, having a past diagnosis of depression or anxiety over the past 3 years, time pressure, education level, and the mental health index) and the presence of chest pain in a sample of older women. Design: Longitudinal survey over a 3-year period. Methods: The sample was taken from a prospective cohort study of 10,432 women initially aged between 70 and 75 years, who were surveyed in 1996 and then again in 1999. Two groups of women were identified: those reporting to have heart disease but no past history of heart interventions (i.e., coronary artery bypass graft/angioplasty) and those reporting to have heart disease with a past history of heart interventions. Results: Binary logistic regression analysis was used to show that for the women with self-reported coronary heart disease but without a past history of heart intervention, feelings of time pressure as well as the number of stressful life events experienced in the 12 months prior to 1996 were independent risk factors for the presence of chest pain, even after accounting for a range of traditional risk factors. In comparison, for the women with self-reported coronary heart disease who did report a past history of heart interventions, a diagnosis of depression in the previous 3 years was the significant independent risk factor for chest pain even after accounting for traditional risk factors. Conclusion: The results indicate that it is important to consider a history of heart interventions as a moderator of the associations between psychosocial variables and the frequency of chest pain in older women. Statement of Contribution: What is already known on this subject? Psychological factors have been shown to be independent predictors of a range of health outcomes in individuals with coronary heart disease, including the presence of chest pain. Most research has been conducted with men or with small samples of women; however, the evidence does suggest that these relationships exist in women as well as in men. What does this study add? Most studies have looked at overall relationships between psychological variables and health outcomes. The few studies that have looked at moderators have mainly examined gender as a moderator. To our knowledge, this is the first published study to examine a history of heart interventions as a moderator of the relationship between psychological variables and the presence of chest pain.

A critical evaluation and comparison of two formative measures of system quality using criterion variables

Evaluating the validity of formative variables has presented ongoing challenges for researchers. In this paper we use global criterion measures to compare and critically evaluate two alternative formative measures of System Quality. One model is based on the ISO-9126 software quality standard, and the other is based on a leading information systems research model. We find that despite both models having a strong provenance, many of the items appear to be non-significant in our study. We examine the implications of this by evaluating the quality of the criterion variables we used, and the performance of PLS when evaluating formative models with a large number of items. We find that our respondents had difficulty distinguishing between global criterion variables measuring different aspects of overall System Quality. Also, because formative indicators “compete with one another” in PLS, it may be difficult to develop a set of measures which are all significant for a complex formative construct with a broad scope and a large number of items. Overall, we suggest that there is cautious evidence that both sets of measures are valid and largely equivalent, although questions still remain about the measures, the use of criterion variables, and the use of PLS for this type of model evaluation.