Internal consistency of the self-reporting questionnaire-20 in occupational groups

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE To assess the internal consistency of the measurements of the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20) in different occupational groups. METHODS A validation study was conducted with data from four surveys with groups of workers, using similar methods. A total of 9,959 workers were studied. In all surveys, the common mental disorders were assessed via SRQ-20. The internal consistency considered the items belonging to dimensions extracted by tetrachoric factor analysis for each study. Item homogeneity assessment compared estimates of Cronbach’s alpha (KD-20), the alpha applied to a tetrachoric correlation matrix and stratified Cronbach’s alpha. RESULTS The SRQ-20 dimensions showed adequate values, considering the reference parameters. The internal consistency of the instrument items, assessed by stratified Cronbach’s alpha, was high (> 0.80) in the four studies. CONCLUSIONS The SRQ-20 showed good internal consistency in the professional categories evaluated. However, there is still a need for studies using alternative methods and additional information able to refine the accuracy of latent variable measurement instruments, as in the case of common mental disorders.

The Career Satisfaction Scale in Context: A Test for Measurement Invariance Across Four Occupational Groups

This study analyzed the influence of the occupational context on the conceptualization of career satisfaction measured by the career satisfaction scale (CSS). In a large sample of N ¼ 729 highly educated professionals, a cross-occupational (i.e., physicians, economists, engineers, and teachers) measurement invariance analysis showed that the CSS was conceptualized according to occupational group membership, that is, 4 of the 5 items of the scale showed measurement noninvariance. More specifically, the relative importance, the response biases, and the reliabilities associated with different career satisfaction content domains measured by the CSS (i.e., achieved success, overall career goals, goals for advancement, goals for income, and goals for development of new skills) varied by occupational context. However, results of a comparison between manifest and latent mean differences between the occupational groups revealed that the observed measurement noninvariance did not affect the estimation of mean differences.

A model for the identification of high risk occupational groups using RTECS and NOHS data /

Accompanying microfiches (issued in pocket inside back cover) have title: NIOSH risk identification model.

Time and professional work in public sector organisations: an examination of four occupational groups in education and medicine

The aim of this thesis is to examine the experience of time of four professional occupational groups working in public sector organisations and the factors affecting this experience. The literature on time and work is examined to delineate the key parameters of research in this area. A broad organisation behaviour approach to the experience of time and work is developed in which individual, occupational, organisational and socio-political factors are inter-related. The experience of secondary school teachers, further education lecturers, general medical practitioners and hosoital consultants is then examined. Multiple methods of data collection are used: open-ended interviews, a questionnaire survey and the analysis of key documents relating to the institutional settings in which the four groups work. The research aims to develop our knowledge of working time by considering the dimensions of the experience of time at work, the contexts in wlhich this experience is generated and the constraints these contexts give rIse to. By developing our understanding of time as a key feature of work experience we also extend our knowledge of organisation behaviour in general. In conclusion a model of the factors relating the experience of time to the negotiation of time at work is presented.

Work-related stress and occupational therapy

Occupational stress and burnout have been studied extensively in the human services. It has been suggested that healthcare professionals in particular are at risk of stress owing to the caring nature of their work. Articles related to occupational therapy and work-related stress were reviewed in regard to practice in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and Sweden. Although the empirical literature is relatively weak for occupational therapy, it has been argued that occupational therapists in health care share risk factors with other healthcare professionals. These risk factors include repeated exposure to distress and difficult behaviour, prolonged interventions and uncertain outcome. Issues such as professional status, staffing issues and the nature of the profession have been identified as additional risk factors for occupational therapists. However, empirical studies that enable burnout rates of occupational therapists to be compared with those of related occupational groups suggest that this may not be the case. Occupational therapists may in fact be protected from some stress and burnout factors. Further research is recommended to clarify the nature of stress experienced by occupational therapists and to identify both risk and protective factors characteristic of the profession. Copyright © 2001 Whurr Publishers Ltd.

An occupational view of the Australian labour force - Patterns of job growth and decline

Generally employment has been studied in terms of changes in the types of goods and services that the economy is purchasing. Far less attention has been given to the occupational aggregates that go into producing these goods and services. The few studies that did investigate this area found that the mix of tabour inputs appear to have been changing over time in a systematic pattern. The increasing prevalence of white-collar, information workers gave rise to the assertion that many societies had entered a post-industrial information age. Deals first of aff with some issues of measurement in the context of the Australian labour force, then looks at trends in various occupational groups using a non-standard four-sector classification of the labour force. Finally suggests an application in relation to the link between education and training and its ability to reduce structural unemployment.

Social networks and occupational choice: the endogenous formation of attitudes and beliefs about tax compliance

The paper analyses the emergence of group-specific attitudes and beliefs about tax compliance when individuals interact in a social network. It develops a model in which taxpayers possess a range of individual characteristics – including attitude to risk, potential for success in self-employment, and the weight attached to the social custom for honesty – and make an occupational choice based on these characteristics. Occupations differ in the possibility for evading tax. The social network determines which taxpayers are linked, and information about auditing and compliance is transmitted at meetings between linked taxpayers. Using agent-based simulations, the analysis demonstrates how attitudes and beliefs endogenously emerge that differ across sub-groups of the population. Compliance behaviour is different across occupational groups, and this is reinforced by the development of group-specific attitudes and beliefs. Taxpayers self-select into occupations according to the degree of risk aversion, the subjective probability of audit is sustained above the objective probability, and the weight attached to the social custom differs across occupations. These factors combine to lead to compliance levels that differ across occupations.

Who Should do What to Whom? : Occupational Groups´Views on Special Needs

The overall aim of this thesis is to increase our knowledge of different occupational groups´ views on work with children in need of special support. This is explored in four separate studies. The first study investigates the views of occupational groups in preschools and schools in one municipality. A questionnaire was handed out to all personnel (N=1297) in the municipality in 2008 (72.5 % response rate). The second study explores the views of educational leaders (N=45) in the same municipality. Questionnaire # 2 was distributed in 2009. All the educational leaders responded to the questionnaire. The third study describes the views of different occupational groups concerning special educational needs coordinators´ (SENCOs) role and work. This was highlighted by comparing responses from questionnaire #1 and # 2. Responses concerning SENCOs´ work were also added using a third questionnaire. This questionnaire was handed out in 2006 to chief education officers (N=290) in all municipalities in Sweden. The response rate was 90.3%. Finally, the fourth study presents five head teachers´ descriptions of their work with special needs issues. Study four was a follow-up study of questionnaire # 2. These head teachers were selected because of their inclusive values and because they seemed to be effective according to certain criteria. They were interviewed in January 2012. The results reveal a number of interesting findings. For example, there are both similar and different views among the occupational groups concerning work with children in need of special support. A majority of the respondents in all groups state that children´s individual deficiencies is one common reason why children need special support in preschools/schools. Differences between the occupational groups become especially visible regarding their views of SENCOs‟ work. Critical pragmatism (Cherryholmes, 1988) is applied as a theoretical point of departure. Skrtic´s (1991) critical reading and analysis of special education relative to general education is specifically used to interpret and discuss the outcome of the studies. Additionally, Abbott´s (1988) reasoning concerning the “division of expert labor” is used to discuss the occupational groups´ replies concerning “who should do what to whom”. The findings in the studies are contextualized and theoretically interpreted in the separate articles. However in the first part of this thesis (in Swedish: Kappa), the theoretical interpretations of the empirical outcome are discussed in more detail and the results are further contextualized and synthesised. Inclusion and premises for inclusive education are also discussed in more depth in the first part of the present thesis.

Leukemia and occupational exposure to electromagnetic fields: An incident case-control study

The existence of an association between leukemia and electromagnetic fields (EMF) is still controversial. The results of epidemiologic studies of leukemia in occupational groups with exposure to EMF are inconsistent. Weak associations have been seen in a few studies. EMF assessment is lacking in precision. Reported dose-response relationships have been based on qualitative levels of exposure to EMF without regard to duration of employment or EMF intensity on the jobs. Furthermore, potential confounding factors in the associations were not often well controlled. The current study is an analysis of the data collected from an incident case-control study. The primary objective was to test the hypothesis that occupational exposure to EMF is associated with leukemia, including total leukemia (TL), myelogenous leukemia (MYELOG) and acute non-lymphoid leukemia (ANLL). Potential confounding factors: occupational exposure to benzene, age, smoking, alcohol consumption, and previous medical radiation exposures were controlled in multivariate logistic regression models. Dose-response relationships were estimated by cumulative occupational exposure to EMF, taking into account duration of employment and EMF intensity on the jobs. In order to overcome weaknesses of most previous studies, special efforts were made to improve the precision of EMF assessment. Two definitions of EMF were used and result discrepancies using the two definitions were observed. These difference raised a question as to whether the workers at jobs with low EMF exposure should be considered as non-exposed in future studies. In addition, the current study suggested use of lifetime cumulative EMF exposure estimates to determine dose-response relationship. The analyses of the current study suggest an association between ANLL and employment at selected jobs with high EMF exposure. The existence of an association between three types of leukemia and broader categories of occupational EMF exposure, is still undetermined. If an association does exist between occupational EMF exposure and leukemia, the results of the current study suggest that EMF might only be a potential factor in the promotion of leukemia, but not its initiation. ^

REGRESSION ANALYSIS FOR STANDARDIZED MORTALITY RATIOS WITH APPLICATION TO OCCUPATIONAL FOLLOW-UP STUDIES

Traditional comparison of standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) can be misleading if the age-specific mortality ratios are not homogeneous. For this reason, a regression model has been developed which incorporates the mortality ratio as a function of age. This model is then applied to mortality data from an occupational cohort study. The nature of the occupational data necessitates the investigation of mortality ratios which increase with age. These occupational data are used primarily to illustrate and develop the statistical methodology.^ The age-specific mortality ratio (MR) for the covariates of interest can be written as MR(,ij...m) = ((mu)(,ij...m)/(theta)(,ij...m)) = r(.)exp (Z('')(,ij...m)(beta)) where (mu)(,ij...m) and (theta)(,ij...m) denote the force of mortality in the study and chosen standard populations in the ij...m('th) stratum, respectively, r is the intercept, Z(,ij...m) is the vector of covariables associated with the i('th) age interval, and (beta) is a vector of regression coefficients associated with these covariables. A Newton-Raphson iterative procedure has been used for determining the maximum likelihood estimates of the regression coefficients.^ This model provides a statistical method for a logical and easily interpretable explanation of an occupational cohort mortality experience. Since it gives a reasonable fit to the mortality data, it can also be concluded that the model is fairly realistic. The traditional statistical method for the analysis of occupational cohort mortality data is to present a summary index such as the SMR under the assumption of constant (homogeneous) age-specific mortality ratios. Since the mortality ratios for occupational groups usually increase with age, the homogeneity assumption of the age-specific mortality ratios is often untenable. The traditional method of comparing SMRs under the homogeneity assumption is a special case of this model, without age as a covariate.^ This model also provides a statistical technique to evaluate the relative risk between two SMRs or a dose-response relationship among several SMRs. The model presented has application in the medical, demographic and epidemiologic areas. The methods developed in this thesis are suitable for future analyses of mortality or morbidity data when the age-specific mortality/morbidity experience is a function of age or when there is an interaction effect between confounding variables needs to be evaluated. ^

Employee group memberships and organisational communication during organisational change

The preset study adopted an intergroup approach to information sharing and communication in three organisational samples during change. In Study 1, employees from a public hospital (N = 142) completed a survey measuring perceptions of organisational communication and strength of identification with the work unit and the organisation as a whole. Consistent with predictions, team members rated communication from double ingroup members (same work unit/same occupational group) more favourably than communication from partial group members (same work unit/different occupational group). Also as predicted, work unit identification was related to favourable ratings of work unit communication across occupational groups, whereas occupational identification was related to favourable ratings of work unit communication within occupational groups. In Study 2, strength of identification with three organisational groups was associated with positive ratings of communication among employees from the same public hospital (N = 189) and a military organisation (N = 2119). Based on these results, intergroup strategies for the management of information sharing and organisational communication during change are discussed.

Social work, stress and burnout: A review

Stress and burnout for health care professionals have received increasing attention in the literature. Significant administrative, societal and political changes have impacted on the role of workers and the responsibilities they are expected to assume. Most writers suggest that social work is a highly stressful occupation, with stress deriving in particular from role conflict between client advocacy and meeting agency needs. This article reviewed the social work literature with two questions in mind: Are social workers subject to greater stress than other health professionals? What factors contribute to stress and burnout among social workers? We found that most of the literature was either anecdotal or compared social worker stress with general population norms rather than with stress levels of workers in comparable professions. Such empirical research as is available suggests that social workers may experience higher levels of stress and resulting burnout than comparable occupational groups. Factors identified as contributing to stress and burnout included the nature of social work practice, especially tension between philosophy and work demands and the organization of the work environment. There was some evidence that supervision and team support are protective factors.

Coal dust exposures in the longwall mines of New South Wales, Australia: a respiratory risk assessment

This paper presents an analysis of personal respirable coal dust measurements recorded by the Joint Coal Board in the underground longwall mines of New South Wales from 1985 to 1999. A description of the longwall mining process is given. In the study, 11 829 measurements from 33 mines were analysed and the results given for each occupation, for seven occupational groups, for individual de-identified mines and for each year of study. The mean respirable coal dust concentration for all jobs was 1.51 mg/m(3) (SD 1.08 mg/m(3)). Only 6.9% of the measurements exceeded the Australian exposure standard of 3 mg/m(3). Published exposure-response relationships were used to predict the prevalence of progressive massive fibrosis and the mean loss of FEV1, after a working lifetime (40 years) of exposure to the mean observed concentration of 1.5 mg/m(3). Prevalences of 1.3 and 2.9% were predicted, based on data from the UK and the USA, respectively. The mean loss of FEV1 was estimated to be 73.7 ml.