30472 research outputs found
Sort by
Contextualising the job demands-resources model: a cross-sectional study of the psychosocial work environment across different healthcare professions
Get PDFBackground: The deteriorating psychosocial work environment among healthcare workers in Sweden, influenced by demanding working conditions and resource constraints, affects individual well-being and patient care quality. Healthcare workers, including physicians, registered nurses, and nursing assistants, often work interdependently and share workplaces, yet are three completely different professions. Nonetheless, comprehensive studies comparing their psychosocial work environments are scarce; often focusing on healthcare workers either separately or as a homogenous group, but rarely comparative.
Aim: Utilising the job demands–resources model, this study investigated variations in the psychosocial work environment among Swedish healthcare workers. We wanted to identify how the antecedents of individual well-being, in the form of demands and resources, differed between healthcare workers.
Method: Data from the 2022 Longitudinal Occupational Health Survey for Health Care in Sweden were analysed; the participants included 7589 physicians, registered nurses, and nursing assistants. The analysis involved descriptive statistics, including measures of means and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), employing the Bonferroni correction for multiple post hoc comparisons. The ANCOVA was also stratified by working factors, including years of work experience and employment within the private/public sector.
Results: The study revealed significant variations in how healthcare workers perceive their psychosocial work environment. Physicians faced the highest level of Quantitative Demands (mean (x̄) 3.15; 95% CI 3.11–3.19), while registered nurses reported the most Emotional Demands (x̄ 3.37; 95% CI 3.32–3.41). Nursing assistants had the highest grand means for the imbalance between Efforts and Rewards (Effort Reward Imbalance) (x̄ 1.49; 95% CI 1.49–1.49) and an imbalance between Work and Private Life (Work–Life Interference) (x̄ 3.20, 95% CI 3.15–3.25), along with limited resources. The stratified analysis showed that years of experience and the sector affected healthcare workers' perceptions of their psychosocial working environment. For example, registered nurses working in the private sector reported better working conditions than registered nurses working in the public sector. The situation for nursing assistants was reversed.
Conclusion: Psychosocial work environments are experienced differently between and within healthcare professions in Sweden. This study provides crucial insights for improving workplace conditions and consequently enhancing healthcare professionals’ well-being and quality of patient care
The use of geochemistry for placing constraints on mantle melting processes and the evolution of mantle heterogeneity
No full textIn this Chapter we provide examples regarding how researchers use the major element, trace element and radiogenic isotope compositions of volcanic rocks, together with experimental constraints, to distinguish which modern and ancient magmatic processes contribute to the compositional heterogeneity displayed by mantle-derived rocks. These processes include: extraction of melts from the mantle to produce oceanic and continental crust and complementary depleted mantle reservoirs; fertilization of the mantle by migrating basaltic melts; and recycling of crust back into the mantle during subduction and delamination. We provide a critical assessment regarding the use of various proxies and modelling techniques for placing constraints on the magmatic processes that contribute to the heterogeneity in compositions of magmas erupting at oceanic plateaus, mid-ocean ridges and oceanic islands. In particular, we demonstrate that the expected variability in the partitioning of elements by minerals in the mantle and crust, make it difficult to distinguish between the plethora of processes that have been suggested to contribute to the evolution of mantle heterogeneity
Economic informality and security policy preferences in Mexico and Latin America
Get PDFOne of the fundamental tasks of a state is to protect its citizens from violence. When states fail to do so, or do so unequally, they undermine the social contract by which citizens consent to be governed by and pay taxes to the state in exchange for security and public services. In many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the social contract is under pressure not only from high and rising levels of violent crime, but also from widespread economic informality. In this chapter, we argue that fragile social contracts in LAC have important implications for citizens’ preferences about security policies and governments’ ability to bring violent crime under control. Previous research has found that crime victimisation – a failure of the state to keep a citizen safe – is associated with greater support for punitive security policies (García-Ponce et al 2023; Visconti 2020). Although levels of crime vary significantly across the LAC, iron fist or mano dura approaches to crime fighting have become popular throughout the region, even in countries with low levels of crime such as Chile and Argentina (Rosen and Cutrona 2023). These security policies are often counter-productive, lead to more frequent human rights abuses and serve to further reduce state capacity (Flores-Macias 2018). We argue that economic informality can help to explain continued support for – or at least lack of opposition to - these approaches
Does multilingualism shape personality? An exploratory investigation
Get PDFMultilingual foreign language learners have been found to typically experience
less Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA) and more Foreign Language Enjoyment
(FLE) than their less multilingual peers. Since most existing research was based on single
databases, authors had to be careful to avoid sweeping generalisations about the positive
effect of multilingualism. In order to increase validity, the current paper will investigate the
link between the degree of multilingualism and two learner emotions using three different
existing databases that contained relevant data but where multilingualism was not part of
the research questions in the subsequent papers. Participants who contributed to the first
database were 360 FL learners in a Kuwaiti university, the second database included data
from 502 English Foreign Language (EFL) learners in secondary schools and universities in
Morocco, and the third database included data from 181 pre-teen EFL learners in secondary
schools in France. Separate statistical analyses of the three databases confirmed that multilingualism
was linked to significantly higher FLE in all three databases and to lower FLCA
in two out of the three databases. This suggests that knowing more languages contributes to
more positive and fewer negative emotions in the FL class
Reform of parachute payments in the English Football Championship
Get PDFPurpose: This research seeks to assess the conflicting claims of the merits, or otherwise, of parachute payments made to football clubs relegated from the first tier league of football in England, called the Premier League, and to propose an objective solution.
Design/methodology/approach: The research uses the financial account of football clubs in the second tier league called the Championship together with information on parachute payments made to them for the seasons from 2004/05 to 2021/22 to assess the necessity for these payments and their effect on competition in the Championship.
Findings: The research finds that the system needs to be reformed. Payments are justified for a maximum of only two years, the amounts should be reduced and the ability to abuse the system eliminated. However, the evidence does not support the claim that these payments unfairly distort the competitive balance of the Championship.
Originality/value: Scant attention has been given to this issue in the academic literature but this research provides evidence and recommendations that should be of academic value with regard to the financial regulation of football and of practical value to the English Football League and any regulator that may be appointed for football by the UK Government
A critical review of corpus-based pedagogic perspectives on thesis writing: specificity revisited
Get PDFThesis writing (used here as an umbrella term to cover both master's and doctoral postgraduate-level writing) is a high-stakes genre for postgraduate students. This important student genre has been well-researched from a corpus-based perspective. Corpora of theses and also research articles have been used for data-driven learning (DDL) of this key genre. The purpose of this article is to critically examine key DDL initiatives, some of which take a ‘research into practice’ orientation. Importantly, the discussion is framed around the notion of ‘specificity’ in the context of needs analysis, and whether the initiatives take a wide-angle, narrow-angle or move from a wide-angle to a narrow angle approach. Accounts which focus on DIY (do-it-yourself) mini-corpus compilation and use by students are also reviewed. The final section of the article presents a critique of current pedagogic applications, taking a closer look at the issue of ‘specificity’ within the wider context of needs analysis and mapping out areas for future consideration. It is suggested that an ethnographic perspective may be particularly useful for conceptualising specificity relating to students' present situation needs. The article also considers the impact of AI/ChatGPT on future corpus-based pedagogy of thesis writing
The Anxiety of Prestige in Stephen King’s Stylistics
Get PDFThis paper introduces a term, the anxiety of prestige, to examine
thematic or stylistic textual commentaries by generally considered “popular” fiction authors on issues of literary prestige, with Stephen King as a case study. While, thematically, an anxiety of prestige has been obvious in many of King’s works for decades, we suggest a novel approach: unearthing latent evidence of an anxiety of prestige in King’s stylistics, through corpus query of specific stylistic features suggested by King’s own writing advice book, namely adverbs, the passive voice, and “Swifties”. Through close and distant reading, we interpret these stylistic features as evidence of King’s textual responses to perceptions of “low” and “high” literature, and suggest that the anxiety of prestige can be investigated in larger popular fiction corpora in future work
Was ist also Loben? Nietzsche on the ethics of praise
Get PDFThis paper explores the ethics of praise as discussed in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s occasional remarks on praise are shown to fall onto three broad categories, namely: i) metaphysical; ii) psychological and iii) ethical. During the course of the paper, Nietzsche’s approach is located in wider theoretical context of contemporary work on the ethics of praise and moral philosophy
Tracking the tempo of a continental margin arc: insights from a forearc succession in West Antarctica
Get PDFThe Fossil Bluff Group of eastern Alexander Island records the exceptional preservation of more than 8 km of Mesozoic sedimentary rocks deposited into an accretionary forearc basin that developed unconformably above a late Paleozoic accretionary complex, and in proximity to a continental margin arc during a prolonged phase of enhanced magmatism. Through the Mesozoic, the Fossil Bluff Group evolved from a trench-slope environment to a forearc basin sourced from the continental margin arc. During this period, the Antarctic Peninsula’s convergent margin was characterized by episodes of magmatic flare-ups that developed during tectonic compression, crustal thickening, extension, and uplift. U-Pb and Lu-Hf detrital zircon data are used to determine the provenance of the forearc succession and as a monitor of arc magmatic tempos during the late Mesozoic. The magmatic record in the adjacent arc is poorly preserved or partially absent, but the sedimentary record of the forearc basin preserves a largely uninterrupted record of arc magmatism that can be studied with detrital zircon geochronology and geochemistry. The basal succession of the Fossil Bluff Group is sourced from the adjacent accretionary complex, but thereafter it is strongly controlled by the proximal arc in western Palmer Land and is characterized by a mixed arc/recycled signature during episodes of renewed sedimentation. However, the main phases of deposition during the Early Jurassic (ca. 180 Ma), Early Cretaceous (141–131 Ma), and mid-Cretaceous (125–102 Ma) are dominated by arc-only sources. The Lu-Hf isotopic record supports a transition from convergence to extension and a return to convergence during the Mesozoic, which is consistent with accretionary orogens from elsewhere along the West Gondwanan margin. The provenance record during the depositional history of the basin points overwhelmingly to an autochthonous origin; as such, models for parts of the western province of the Antarctic Peninsula being allochthonous are unsupported
From brain “scar” to “bat shit crazy”: negotiating the madness of sexual violence discourse
Get PDFThis article analyses how people who identify with psychiatric diagnoses in England and Wales make sense of and talk about their experiences of sexual violence. I examine how interview participants engaged with the hegemonic trauma discourse, as well as the consequences of this for meaning-making, affective pain, and the feminist imperative to ‘speak out’. The hegemonic trauma discourse is characterised by leaving a psychological ‘scar’; is premised on a sudden interruption to a ‘good life’; and is considered pathologically unspeakable without intervention. This discourse was both validating and affectively painful for participants, and interventions targeting dissociation were helpful for assuaging distress. However, it was additionally normative and exclusionary, and did not fulfil the political promise of ‘speaking out’, as all participants faced myriad socio-political denial
Data sources:
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Birkbeck Institutional Research Online? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!