Workplace Violence and Workplace Aggression: Evidence Concerning Specific Forms, Potential Causes, and Preferred Targets

1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel H. Neuman ◽  
Robert A. Baron

Contrary to the impression generated by an increasing number of news reports in the past several years, the occurrence of workplace violencemextreme acts of aggression involving direct physical assault represents a relatively rare event in work settings. However, workplace aggression--efforts by individuals to harm others with whom they work or have worked---are much more prevalent and may prove extremely damaging to individuals and organizations. This paper presents empirical evidence on the varied forms of workplace aggression and their relative frequency of occurrence in work settings. We offer a theoretical framework for understanding this phenomenon---one based on contemporary theories of human aggression----and demonstrate how principles associated with this framework may be applied to the management and prevention of all forms of aggression in workplaces.

Author(s):  
Bimala Dhamala ◽  
Prithutam Bhattarai ◽  
Chandrakala Sharma ◽  
Shyam Thapa

Background: Healthcare workplaces are prone to the occurrence of violence of varying types and degrees. This study assessed the prevalence of violence experienced by nursing staff at a tertiary hospital in urban Nepal. Methods: A self-administered, cross-sectional survey was distributed to the entire nursing staff (N=146) currently working at a large teaching hospital in Kathmandu. The types of violence ascertained included verbal abuse, general harassment, physical assault, and sexual violence. Descriptive and logistic regression were applied to the data analysis. Results: General harassment was the second most commonly experienced; 44% reported having experienced it any time in the past; and 28% reported to have experienced it in the last 12 months. Overall, 68% of all the respondents reported having experienced any type of violence, and 47% reported having experienced it any time in the last 12 months. Compared to single nurses/respondents, married nurses were particularly more likely to experience violence. Conclusion: Development of workplace standards, orientation for all staff members, and the establishment of an effective monitoring and enforcement system are needed to minimize workplace violence at the study site, and most likely elsewhere in Nepal as well.


2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 190-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto Panadero ◽  
Sanna Järvelä

Abstract. Socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL) has been recognized as a new and growing field in the framework of self-regulated learning theory in the past decade. In the present review, we examine the empirical evidence to support such a phenomenon. A total of 17 articles addressing SSRL were identified, 13 of which presented empirical evidence. Through a narrative review it could be concluded that there is enough data to maintain the existence of SSRL in comparison to other social regulation (e.g., co-regulation). It was found that most of the SSRL research has focused on characterizing phenomena through the use of mixed methods through qualitative data, mostly video-recorded observation data. Also, SSRL seems to contribute to students’ performance. Finally, the article discusses the need for the field to move forward, exploring the best conditions to promote SSRL, clarifying whether SSRL is always the optimal form of collaboration, and identifying more aspects of groups’ characteristics.


2021 ◽  
pp. 097133362199044
Author(s):  
Henry S. R. Kao ◽  
Min Xu ◽  
Tin Tin Kao

Our research in the past 40 years has identified beneficial effects of Chinese calligraphy handwriting (CCH) practice on visual attention, cognitive activation, physiological slowdown, emotional relaxation and behavioural change. We hypothesised that these outcomes may constitute a compressive set of foundations which could impact several traits of Chinese personality within the context of Confucian culture and values. Here, we give a brief overview of the background of CCH and its effect in the cognitive, physiological and bio-emotional domains. We then provide empirical evidence showing strong association of CCH and personality traits and discuss the results in the contexts of calligraphy practice and Confucian literati personality, Confucianism and Chinese personalities as well as calligraphy writing and tool-using psychological theory.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Michela Fazzolari ◽  
Francesco Buccafurri ◽  
Gianluca Lax ◽  
Marinella Petrocchi

Over the past few years, online reviews have become very important, since they can influence the purchase decision of consumers and the reputation of businesses. Therefore, the practice of writing fake reviews can have severe consequences on customers and service providers. Various approaches have been proposed for detecting opinion spam in online reviews, especially based on supervised classifiers. In this contribution, we start from a set of effective features used for classifying opinion spam and we re-engineered them by considering the Cumulative Relative Frequency Distribution of each feature. By an experimental evaluation carried out on real data from Yelp.com, we show that the use of the distributional features is able to improve the performances of classifiers.


2015 ◽  
Vol 370 (1681) ◽  
pp. 20140267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Ferraro ◽  
Merlin M. Hanauer

To develop effective protected area policies, scholars and practitioners must better understand the mechanisms through which protected areas affect social and environmental outcomes. With strong evidence about mechanisms, the key elements of success can be strengthened, and the key elements of failure can be eliminated or repaired. Unfortunately, empirical evidence about these mechanisms is limited, and little guidance for quantifying them exists. This essay assesses what mechanisms have been hypothesized, what empirical evidence exists for their relative contributions and what advances have been made in the past decade for estimating mechanism causal effects from non-experimental data. The essay concludes with a proposed agenda for building an evidence base about protected area mechanisms.


BMJ Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. e017757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Hjulstad Johansen ◽  
Valborg Baste ◽  
Judith Rosta ◽  
Olaf G Aasland ◽  
Tone Morken

ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to investigate whether reported prevalence of experienced threats, real acts of violence and debilitating fear of violence among Norwegian doctors have increased over the last two decades.DesignRepeated cross-sectional survey.SettingAll healthcare levels and medical specialties in Norway.ParticipantsRepresentative samples of Norwegian doctors in 1993 (n=2628) and 2014 (n=1158).Main outcome measuresRelative risk (RR) of self-reported prevalence of work-time experiences of threats and real acts of violence, and of being physically or psychologically unfit during the last 12 months due to fear of violence, in 2014 compared with 1993, adjusted by age, gender and medical specialty.ResultsThere were no differences in self-reported threats (adjusted RR=1.01, 95% CI 0.95 to 1.08) or real acts (adjusted RR=0.90, 95% CI 0.80 to 1.03) of violence when comparing 2014 with 1993. The proportion of doctors who had felt unfit due to fear of violence decreased from 1993 to 2014 (adjusted RR=0.53, 95% CI 0.39 to 0.73). Although still above average, the proportion of doctors in psychiatry who reported real acts of violence decreased substantially from 1993 to 2014 (adjusted RR=0.75, 95% CI 0.60 to 0.95).ConclusionsA substantial proportion of doctors experience threats and real acts of violence during their work-time career, but there was no evidence that workplace violence has increased over the last two decades. Still, the issue needs to be addressed as part of the doctors’ education and within work settings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos-María Alcover ◽  
Ramón Rico ◽  
Michael West

Abstract After more than 80 years in predicting organizational performance, empirical evidence reveals a science of teams that seems unable to consistently implement solutions for teams performing in real work settings –outside and away from the isolated teams breeding in research laboratories in the academic context. To bridge this growing practitioners-researchers divide, we first identify five main challenges involved in working with teams today (purposeful team staffing; proper task design and allocation; task and interaction process functionality; appropriate affective tone; and suitable team assessment). And second, we offer a toolbox of interventions (empowering and restorative) to help practitioners to transform the potential threats inherent in these challenges into opportunities for team effectiveness. Our five-challenge diagnosis and proposed intervention toolbox contribute to better address research questions and theoretical falsifiability using teams performing in real work settings, and to assess and intervene in teams by adjusting their internal functioning to contextual conditions and constraints.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 10795-10806 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. H. Aumann ◽  
A. Ruzmaikin

Abstract. Deep convective clouds (DCCs) have been widely studied because of their association with heavy precipitation and severe weather events. Changes in the properties of DCCs are likely in a changing climate. Ten years of data collected by Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) allow us to identify decadal trends in frequency of occurrence of DCCs over land and ocean. In the past, DCCs have been identified in the thermal infrared by three methods: (1) thresholds based on the absolute value of an atmospheric window channel brightness temperature; (2) thresholds based on the difference between the brightness temperature in an atmospheric window channel and the brightness temperature centered on a strong water vapor absorption line; and (3) a threshold using the difference between the window channel brightness temperature and the tropopause temperature based on climatology. Simultaneous observations of these infrared identified DCCs with the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit–Humidity Sounder for Brazil (AMSU-HSB) using 183 GHz water channels provide a statistical correlation with microwave deep convection and overshooting convection. In the past 10 years, the frequency of occurrence of DCCs has decreased for the tropical ocean, while it has increased for tropical land. The area of the tropical zone associated with DCCs is typically much less than 1%. We find that the least frequent, more extreme DCCs show the largest trend in frequency of occurrence, increasing over land and decreasing over ocean. The trends for land and ocean closely balance, such that the DCC frequency changed at an insignificant rate for the entire tropical zone. This pattern of essentially zero trend for the tropical zone, but opposite land/ocean trends, is consistent with measurements of global precipitation. The changes in frequency of occurrence of the DCCs are correlated with the Niño34 index, which defines the sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly in the east-central Pacific. This is also consistent with patterns seen in global precipitation. This suggests that the observed changes in the frequency are part of a decadal variability characterized by shifts in the main tropical circulation patterns, which does not fully balance in the 10-year AIRS data record. The regional correlations and anti-correlations of the DCC frequency anomaly with the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) provide a new perspective for the regional analysis of past events, since the SST anomaly in the Nino34 region is available in the form of the extended MEI from 1871.


1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders G. Askenfelt ◽  
Britta Hammarberg

The performance of seven acoustic measures of cycle-to-cycle variations (perturbations) in the speech waveform was compared. All measures were calculated automatically and applied on running speech. Three of the measures refer to the frequency of occurrence and severity of waveform perturbations in special selected parts of the speech, identified by means of the rate of change in the fundamental frequency. Three other measures refer to statistical properties of the distribution of the relative frequency differences between adjacent pitch periods. One perturbation measure refers to the percentage of consecutive pitch period differences with alternating signs. The acoustic measures were tested on tape recorded speech samples from 41 voice patients, before and after successful therapy. Scattergrams of acoustic waveform perturbation data versus an average of perceived deviant voice qualities, as rated by voice clinicians, are presented. The perturbation measures were compared with regard to the acoustic-perceptual correlation and their ability to discriminate between normal and pathological voice status. The standard deviation of the distribution of the relative frequency differences was suggested as the most useful acoustic measure of waveform perturbations for clinical applications.


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