An Exploration of New Zealand Crown Prosecutors' Experiences of Working with Potentially Traumatic Material and Emotions in the Courtroom

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Kim
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Negative Symptoms ◽  
Protective Measure ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
Emotional Labour ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Occupational Risks ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Exposure To Trauma

<p>The occupational exposure to trauma and its potential impacts among legal professionals working in the criminal justice system is an area that has historically been neglected and has only gained traction in recent years. Crown prosecutors, as a subset of practising criminal lawyers in New Zealand working with potentially traumatic material (PTM), are arguably at heightened risk of vicarious trauma (VT) and the need to engage in emotional labour (EL). The current study qualitatively investigated New Zealand Crown prosecutors’ experiences of working with PTM and emotions in their role through three key research questions: 1) What are New Zealand Crown prosecutors’ experiences of working with PTM? 2) What sort of EL do Crown prosecutors experience, if any, through working in the criminal courts? 3) What factors in their personal and professional lives might exacerbate or alleviate VT symptoms? Nineteen Crown prosecutors from four Crown Solicitor firms across New Zealand participated in the study. The data was analysed using thematic analysis to identify recurring themes across datasets. Crown prosecutors outlined the various negative symptoms they experienced from their work-related exposure to trauma (VT), as well as the different workplace and personal factors that both protected and exacerbated such symptoms. Further, they described routinely and mandatorily engaging in EL to mask their emotions as a function of their professional duties. EL also doubled as a protective measure for Crown prosecutors in the difficulties they faced in their role. These findings add to the growing body of literature on legal professionals which has preliminarily indicated they are an at-risk population for the negative impacts of VT and EL, which can be significant and enduring. More research must be dedicated to this population to understand the unique etiological pathways for both consequences of working with PTM and ultimately, provide empirically-sound recommendations that proactively address these occupational risks.</p>

An Exploration of New Zealand Crown Prosecutors' Experiences of Working with Potentially Traumatic Material and Emotions in the Courtroom

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Kim
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Negative Symptoms ◽  
Protective Measure ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
Emotional Labour ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Occupational Risks ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Exposure To Trauma

<p>The occupational exposure to trauma and its potential impacts among legal professionals working in the criminal justice system is an area that has historically been neglected and has only gained traction in recent years. Crown prosecutors, as a subset of practising criminal lawyers in New Zealand working with potentially traumatic material (PTM), are arguably at heightened risk of vicarious trauma (VT) and the need to engage in emotional labour (EL). The current study qualitatively investigated New Zealand Crown prosecutors’ experiences of working with PTM and emotions in their role through three key research questions: 1) What are New Zealand Crown prosecutors’ experiences of working with PTM? 2) What sort of EL do Crown prosecutors experience, if any, through working in the criminal courts? 3) What factors in their personal and professional lives might exacerbate or alleviate VT symptoms? Nineteen Crown prosecutors from four Crown Solicitor firms across New Zealand participated in the study. The data was analysed using thematic analysis to identify recurring themes across datasets. Crown prosecutors outlined the various negative symptoms they experienced from their work-related exposure to trauma (VT), as well as the different workplace and personal factors that both protected and exacerbated such symptoms. Further, they described routinely and mandatorily engaging in EL to mask their emotions as a function of their professional duties. EL also doubled as a protective measure for Crown prosecutors in the difficulties they faced in their role. These findings add to the growing body of literature on legal professionals which has preliminarily indicated they are an at-risk population for the negative impacts of VT and EL, which can be significant and enduring. More research must be dedicated to this population to understand the unique etiological pathways for both consequences of working with PTM and ultimately, provide empirically-sound recommendations that proactively address these occupational risks.</p>

scholarly journals 8C.001 Towards decent, safe work: learnings from work-related fatal injury in New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebbecca Lilley ◽  
Bronwen McNoe ◽  
Gabrielle Davie ◽  
Simon Horsburgh ◽  
Tim Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Fatal Injury ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Safe Work

scholarly journals O2B.3 Work related stress for new zealand workers in high risk sectors: what can we learn from a demographic analysis?

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. A15.1-A15
Author(s):  
Kirsten Lovelock ◽  
Trang Khieu
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Work Performance ◽  
Health Behaviours ◽  
Psychosocial Health ◽  
Work Related Stress ◽  
Safety Attitudes ◽  
Work Related ◽  
High Staff Turnover ◽  
Related Stress

The physical and psychological outcomes of work related stress place a burden on individuals, their families, workplaces and communities. Work related stress is a health and socio-economic and political problem. It reduces work performance; drives higher rates of absenteeism or sick leave; can increase rates of injury; prompt high staff turnover; and, can prompt poor health behaviours such as excessive drinking or taking of drugs. The research record focussing on work related stress in New Zealand (NZ) is small and uneven, but growing. The aim of this study was to explore the prevalence of work-related stress among workers by a set of demographic characteristics. The study used data from the Health and Safety Attitudes and Behaviour Survey (HSABS) 2016. A total of 2190 workers in the four high risk industries (agriculture, forestry, construction and manufacturing) were interviewed about their perceptions towards work-related stress. Weighting was conducted to control inherent biases. Differences between workers were examined by age, sex, ethnicity, qualifications and migrant factors (e.g. being born in NZ or arriving in NZ within five years). Overall, 11% of workers responded that they had experienced with work-related stress in the last 12 months. Work-related stress was more statistically prevalent among people from 25 to 34 years of age or those having a bachelor’s degree. Also, people being females or Maori or not born in NZ or first arrived in NZ in the last five years were more likely to have work-related stress. Findings from the study could allow better targeted and informed psychosocial health interventions to be implemented at workplace.

scholarly journals Understanding employee turnover in humanitarian organizations

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 208-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rameshwar Dubey ◽  
Angappa Gunasekaran ◽  
Nezih Altay ◽  
Stephen J Childe ◽  
Thanos Papadopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Employee Turnover ◽  
Factor Loading ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Humanitarian Organizations ◽  
Using Data ◽  
High Level

Purpose – At a time when the number and seriousness of disasters seems to be increasing, humanitarian organizations find that besides their challenging work they are faced with problems caused by a high level of turnover of staff. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the 24 variables leading to employee turnover identified by Cotton and Tuttle (1986) the authors analyse the work-related, external and personal factors affecting employee turnover in humanitarian organizations, using a survey of members of the Indian National Institute of Disaster Management. Findings – Results indicated that the three factors are present. Of the external factors, only employment perception had a factor loading over 0.7; of the work-related factors, all were significant; of the personal factors, biographical information, marital status, number of dependants, aptitude and ability and intelligence had the highest loadings. It was also shown that behavioural intentions and net expectation were not significant. Originality/value – Only a few studies reported on employee turnover and its reasons are not well understood in the context of humanitarian organizations. To address this need, the aim of this paper is to explore the personal reasons impacting employee turnover in humanitarian organizations. In the study the authors have adopted 24 variables used in Cotton and Tuttle (1986) and classified into constructs to explain turnover, and further tested the model using data gathered from humanitarian organizations.

The Impact of Organisational, Social Environmental and Job Content Stressors on the Work Related Strains of Probation Officers

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare O'donnell ◽  
Christine Stephens
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Workplace Stress ◽  
Probation Officers ◽  
Curvilinear Relationship ◽  
Work Stressors ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Job Content ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

In recent years workplace stress has been seen as an important occupational health and safety problem and probation officers in New Zealand have been identified as suffering from increasing perceptions of stress. Accordingly, the present study was undertaken with a sample of 50 New Zealand Probation Officers in three offices to examine the relationship of individual, organisational and work stressors with work related strains. It was predicted that work stressors would be positively related to strains and that individual differences (e.g., age or gender) would have a moderating effect on the relationship between stressors and strains. The results showed that stressors caused by organisational problems, such as role boundary and overload, were related to strains, more strongly than job content problems, such as difficult clients. Secondly, age may have a curvilinear relationship to strains. Thirdly, the office, or place of work, moderates the stressor strain relationship.

scholarly journals Coping with emotion in New Zealand Business schools

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alice Scahill
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Coping Strategies ◽  
Business Schools ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Specific Level ◽  
Systemic Factors ◽  
Emotional Demands ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Using Data

<p>Emotion is an integral aspect of organisational life and this thesis examines the emotional demands that academics experience in their workplace and the consequences this has for them. At a more specific level, the thesis examines the strategies that academics use to cope with these emotional demands, and how these strategies develop and change over the duration of their career. Using data collected from interviews with academics from business schools across the New Zealand tertiary education sector, findings are presented which demonstrate how academics develop coping strategies and how the organisation provides support. The implications from these findings could have significant effects for organisational practice. Firstly, these findings illustrate that academics experiences emotion in relation to personal, interpersonal, and systemic factors. Secondly, academics adopt a wide array of coping strategies, which have been personally developed by each individual over time. They are not given any organisational training or support for their development of these strategies. In addition, academics use coping strategies both in the workplace and at home in order to attempt to mitigate the negative impacts of the emotional demands of their roles. Finally, academics in their early career lack adequate coping strategies, and appear to have the lowest levels of organisational commitment.</p>

scholarly journals Emotional labour in the parenthood

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-238
Author(s):  
Petra Daňsová ◽  
◽  
Lenka Lacinová ◽  
Dana Seryjová Juhová
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Mental Functioning ◽  
Measurement Instruments ◽  
Emotional Labour ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
Parent Experiences ◽  
Parent Role ◽  
Reliable Instrument ◽  
Negative Impacts

This study introduces the concept of emotional labour, the theoretical underpinnings of its delineation and connections to emotion regulation and brings it into the context of parenthood. Emotional labour was originally described by sociologists in the context of a work environment which requires one to consciously influence one’s emotions when interacting with a customer or a client. The connection of emotional labour with psychological theories of emotion regulation allowed for a better understanding and grasp the mechanisms through which emotional labour can lead to “burning out” or stress. Currently, parents are exposed to a great amount of information about how to “correctly” parent their children, which together with their own idea of a good parent, the influence of their family and close friends as well as other people, creates high demands precisely in the area of experiencing and expressing emotions in their interactions with their children. Today, the parent role approaches that of the job in several aspects. Its demands for emotional labour can be linked to negative impacts on mental health. The concept of emotional labour can be considered to be appropriate for a better understanding of what a parent experiences with the child in mundane situations and how parents handle the emotions. The perspective of emotional labour can therefore bring important information about emotions in parenthood and about the influence of intentionally working with these emotions on the mental functioning of parents even beyond the explanatory confines of emotion regulation. This study also introduces measurement instruments used to capture emotional labour and its dimensions. For future research of emotional labour in parenthood, creating a valid and reliable instrument, which has so far been lacking both in the Czech and international contexts, is a necessity.

scholarly journals Exploring, modelling, and simulating the Feeling of Comfort in residential settings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
German Molina
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Building Science ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The People ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind

<p><b>The fact that comfort is a subjective state of the mind is widely accepted by engineers, architects and building scientists. Despite this, capturing all the complexity, subjectivity and richness of this construct in models that are useful in building science contexts is far from straightforward. By prioritizing usability, building science has produced models of comfort (e.g., acoustic, visual and thermal) that overly simplify this concept to something nearly objective that can be directly associated with people’s physiology and measurable and quantifiable environmental factors. This is a contradiction because, even if comfort is supposed to be subjective, most of the complexity of “the subject” is avoided by focusing on physiology; and, even if comfort is supposed to reside in the mind, the cognitive processes that characterize the mind are disregarded. This research partially mitigates this contradiction by exploring people’s non-physical personal factors and cognition within the context of their comfort and by proposing a way in which they can be incorporated into building science research and practice. This research refers to these elements together—i.e., people’s non-physical personal factors and cognition—as “the mind”.</b></p> <p>This research proposes a new qualitative model of the Feeling of Comfort that embraces “the mind”. This model was developed from the results of a first study in which 18 people—from Chile and New Zealand—were asked to describe “a home with good daylight” and “a warm home” in their own words. These results were then replicated in a second study in which another group of 24 people—also from Chile and New Zealand—described “a home with good acoustic performance”, “a home with good air quality” and “a pleasantly cool home”. The Feeling of Comfort model not only was capable of making sense of the new data (gathered in this second study) but also proved to be simple enough to be useful in the context of comfort research and practice. For instance, it guided the development of a quantitative Feeling of Comfort model and also of a prototype building simulation tool that embraces “the mind” and thus can potentially estimate people’s Feeling of Comfort.</p> <p>This research concludes that embracing “the mind” is not only possible but necessary. The reason for this is that “the mind” plays a significant role in the development of people’s comfort. Thus, theories and models of comfort that ignore it fail to represent properly the concept of comfort held by the people for whom buildings are designed. However, incorporating “the mind” into building science’s research and practice implies embracing tools, research methods and conceptual frameworks that have historically not been used by such a discipline. Specifically, it concludes that building science should normalize a more holistic view of comfort and perform more exploratory and qualitative research.</p>

scholarly journals Bioacoustic monitoring of New Zealand avifauna before and after aerial 1080 operations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Roald Egbert Harro Bomans
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Conservation Practice ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Mammalian Predators ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Scale Population ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Native Birds

<p>Introduced mammalian predators, namely possums, stoats and rats, are the leading cause of decline in native avifauna in New Zealand. The control of these species is essential to the persistence of native birds. A major component of mammal control in New Zealand is carried out through the aerial distribution of the toxin sodium monofluoroacetate (otherwise known as 1080). The use of this toxin, however, is subject to significant public debate. Many opponents of its use claim that forests will ‘fall silent’ following aerial operations, and that this is evidence of negative impacts on native bird communities. With the continued and likely increased use of this poison, monitoring the outcomes of such pest control operations is necessary to both address these concerns and inform conservation practice. The recent growth in autonomous recording units (ARUs) provides novel opportunities to conduct monitoring using bioacoustics. This thesis used bioacoustic techniques to monitor native bird species over three independent aerial 1080 operations in the Aorangi and Rimutaka Ranges of New Zealand.  In Chapter 2, diurnal bird species were monitored for 10-12 weeks over two independent operations in treatment and non-treatment areas. At the community level, relative to non-treatment areas, the amount of birdsong recorded did not decrease significantly in treatment areas across either of the operations monitored. At the species level, one species, the introduced chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs), showed a significant decline in the prevalence of its calls in the treatment areas relative to non-treatment areas. This was observed over one of the two operations monitored. Collectively, these results suggest that diurnal native avifaunal communities do not ‘fall silent’ following aerial 1080 operations.  The quantity of data produced by ARUs can demand labour-intensive manual analysis. Extracting data from recordings using automated detectors is a potential solution to this issue. The creation of such detectors, however, can be subjective, iterative, and time-consuming. In Chapter 3, a process for developing a parsimonious, template-based detector in an efficient, objective manner was developed. Applied to the creation of a detector for morepork (Ninox novaeseelandiae) calls, the method was highly successful as a directed means to achieve parsimony. An initial pool of 187 potential templates was reduced to 42 candidate templates. These were further refined to a 10-template detector capable of making 98.89% of the detections possible with all 42 templates in approximately a quarter of the processing time for the dataset tested. The detector developed had a high precision (0.939) and moderate sensitivity (0.399) with novel recordings, developed for the minimisation of false-positive errors in unsupervised monitoring of broad-scale population trends.  In Chapter 4, this detector was applied to the short-term 10-12 week monitoring of morepork in treatment and non-treatment areas around three independent aerial 1080 operations; and to longer-term four year monitoring in two study areas, one receiving no 1080 treatment, and one receiving two 1080 treatments throughout monitoring. Morepork showed no significant difference in trends of calling prevalence across the three independent operations monitored. Longer-term, a significant quadratic effect of time since 1080 treatment was found, with calling prevalences predicted to increase for 3.5 years following treatment. Collectively, these results suggest a positive effect of aerial 1080 treatment on morepork populations in the lower North Island, and build on the small amount of existing literature regarding the short- and long-term response of this species to aerial 1080 operations.</p>

scholarly journals Exploring, modelling, and simulating the Feeling of Comfort in residential settings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
German Molina
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Building Science ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The People ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind

<p><b>The fact that comfort is a subjective state of the mind is widely accepted by engineers, architects and building scientists. Despite this, capturing all the complexity, subjectivity and richness of this construct in models that are useful in building science contexts is far from straightforward. By prioritizing usability, building science has produced models of comfort (e.g., acoustic, visual and thermal) that overly simplify this concept to something nearly objective that can be directly associated with people’s physiology and measurable and quantifiable environmental factors. This is a contradiction because, even if comfort is supposed to be subjective, most of the complexity of “the subject” is avoided by focusing on physiology; and, even if comfort is supposed to reside in the mind, the cognitive processes that characterize the mind are disregarded. This research partially mitigates this contradiction by exploring people’s non-physical personal factors and cognition within the context of their comfort and by proposing a way in which they can be incorporated into building science research and practice. This research refers to these elements together—i.e., people’s non-physical personal factors and cognition—as “the mind”.</b></p> <p>This research proposes a new qualitative model of the Feeling of Comfort that embraces “the mind”. This model was developed from the results of a first study in which 18 people—from Chile and New Zealand—were asked to describe “a home with good daylight” and “a warm home” in their own words. These results were then replicated in a second study in which another group of 24 people—also from Chile and New Zealand—described “a home with good acoustic performance”, “a home with good air quality” and “a pleasantly cool home”. The Feeling of Comfort model not only was capable of making sense of the new data (gathered in this second study) but also proved to be simple enough to be useful in the context of comfort research and practice. For instance, it guided the development of a quantitative Feeling of Comfort model and also of a prototype building simulation tool that embraces “the mind” and thus can potentially estimate people’s Feeling of Comfort.</p> <p>This research concludes that embracing “the mind” is not only possible but necessary. The reason for this is that “the mind” plays a significant role in the development of people’s comfort. Thus, theories and models of comfort that ignore it fail to represent properly the concept of comfort held by the people for whom buildings are designed. However, incorporating “the mind” into building science’s research and practice implies embracing tools, research methods and conceptual frameworks that have historically not been used by such a discipline. Specifically, it concludes that building science should normalize a more holistic view of comfort and perform more exploratory and qualitative research.</p>

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