Perceived Symptoms of Depression, Anxiety and Stress amongst Staff in a Malaysian Public University: A Workers Survey

Mental health conditions are a major part of workers’ health that predisposes to poor self-motivation for sustaining productivity. This study was aimed to determine the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress among staff in a Malaysian public university and its associated factors. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 459 staff from the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) between April and June 2019. A questionnaire that consisted of items on socio-demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, employment description, lifestyle risk behaviors, personal medical history, and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress was administered to participants. Descriptive and inferential statistics were conducted using SPSS version 22.0. The prevalence of perceived symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress among the respondents was 28.7%, 50.1%, and 14.8%, respectively. Over one-quarter (26.5%) of the participants presented symptoms of two or more mental disorders. Women, those aged less than 40 years old, and non-academic professionals were more likely to exhibit depressive symptoms, while those with medical conditions that required hospitalizations sustained anxiety symptoms. Perceived stress was more likely to be prevalent among staff with secondary education or less and smokers. Proactive support for staff needs to be offered in sustaining their emotional well-being.

Influencing Factors and Strategies of the Flow of Academic Professionals in Colleges and Universities Based on Convolutional Neural Networks

The influencing factors of academic professional mobility in colleges and universities are complex and diverse, and the intensity of each influencing factor has obvious characteristics of differentiation. However, scholars have few relevant studies based on the intensity of factors affecting the flow of academic professionals in colleges and universities. Therefore, this article aims to study and analyze the influence of different factors on the flow of academic professionals in different types of colleges and universities, which is of great significance for promoting the rational and orderly flow of academic professionals. This paper proposes a comprehensive application of multiple methods, such as questionnaire surveys and data statistics, based on ERG theory, based on the four types of universities and colleges: research-oriented, teaching research, teaching, and application. The influence intensity of the flow-influencing factors is comparatively studied. It clarified the differences in the influence of spiritual factors, economic factors, and social factors on the mobility of academic professionals in colleges and universities, established a mobility factor model, and put forward policy recommendations for colleges and universities to promote the rational and orderly mobility of academic professionals. A total of 2042 questionnaires on “Policy Improvement Factors Affecting the Flow of Academic Experts in Universities” were released, four academic experts of different levels were assigned to universities, and 1,561 were effectively searched. Among them, there were 336 research universities, 157 educational research universities, 404 educational universities, and 164 applied universities. The experimental results of this article show that the factors affecting the flow of academic professionals in universities include economic strength factor of 0.4945, social strength factor of 0.5456, and intellectual strength factor of 0.52. Therefore, the factors affecting the mobility of university scholars can be used in strategic research.

Academic professionals: The changing face of teaching, research, and service in the American research university

This exploratory study responds to the criticism that non-instructional faculty or “academic professionals” at American universities are the cause of “administrative bloat.” The purpose of the study was to build from the work of Rhoades (1998) and Kane (2007) to examine whether academic professionals at an R-1 (very-high research activity university) performed core university work of research, teaching, and/or public service. A survey of 1036 academic professionals suggested that many of these individuals were routinely and directly contributing to research, teaching, and public service instead of administrative work, failing to contribute to any notions of “administrative bloat.” In addition to the three areas of core work, academic professionals often had advanced degrees, published in peer-reviewed journals, had specialized skills and bodies of knowledge, applied for grants, and engaged in entrepreneurial activities. The study concludes with a discussion of academic professionals in European countries and the role of disruptive innovation and new professionalism in compelling universities to expand the use of academic professionals in order to produce cheaper degree alternatives and generate new sources of funding .

Tourism-related Coronaneologisms

In linguistic research, there have been numerous recent attempts to extract and analyse covidneologisms, yet the field of languages for specific purposes is to the date left unresearched. Coronaneologisms are neologisms in the neologistic phase of the word life cycle at the time of the recent catastrophic COVID -19 outbreak, which was particularly devastating in the tourism sector. The paper is therefore concerned with the emergence of new tourism-related coronaneologisms. It extracts them by analysing previous academic research on the subject, by observing tourism-related sources on the Internet and by conducting interviews with academic professionals in the field of tourism at The Faculty of Tourism Studies - Turistica in Slovenia as an active tourism discourse community. The list of tourism-related coronaneologisms contributes to the understanding of current languages for specific purposes in general and examines the new lexis from the perspective of the current socio-cultural challenges tourism is facing.

Teaching Anxiety, Stress and Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evaluating the Vulnerability of Academic Professionals in Mexico Through the Adapted COVID-19 Stress Scales

To mitigate the COVID-19 infection, many world governments endorsed the cessation of non-essential activities, such as the school attendance, forcing a shift of the teaching model to the virtual classroom. From this shift, several changes in the teaching paradigm derived, in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, which could have an impact in academic professional's mental health. In the present work we show the application of a modified version of the adapted COVID-19 stress scales (ACSS) which also included teaching anxiety and preparedness, and resilience for academic professionals in Mexico. These scales were applied during the unprecedented transformation of the education system undergone in the COVID-19 quarantine. Most of the studied variables: gender, age, academic degree, household occupants, having a disease, teaching level, teaching mode, work hours, resilience, teaching anxiety and preparedness, and fear of being an asymptomatic patient (FOBAP), showed significant statistical correlation between each other (p < 0.050) and to the 6 areas of the ACSS (danger, contamination, social economical, xenophobia, traumatic stress, and compulsive checking). Our results further showed that the perceived stress and anxiety fell into the category of Absent to Mild, with only the danger section of the ACSS falling into the Moderate category. Finally, the resilience generated throughout the quarantine was very high, which seems to be a predictor of adaptation the academic professional has undergone to cope with stress.

Assessing the key enablers for Industry 4.0 adoption using MICMAC analysis: a case study

PurposeThe aim of this research is to assess the key enablers of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) in the context of the Indian automobile industry. It is done to apprehend their comparative effect on executing I4.0 concepts and technology in manufacturing industries, in a developing country context. The progression to I4.0 grants the opportunity for manufacturers to harness the benefits of this industry generation.Design/methodology/approachThe literature related to I4.0 has been reviewed for the identification of key enablers of I4.0. The enablers were further verified by academic professionals. Additionally, key executive insights had been revealed by using interpretive structural modelling (ISM) model for the vital enablers unique to the Indian scenario. The authors have also applied MICMAC analysis to group the enablers of I4.0.FindingsThe analysis of this study’s data from respondents using ISM provided us with seven levels of enabler framework. This study adds to the existing literature on I4.0 enablers and findings highlight the specificities of the territories in India context. The results show that top management is the major enabler to I4.0 implementation. Infact, it occupies the 7th layer of the ISM framework. Subsequently, government policies enable substantial support to develop smart factories in India.Practical implicationsThe findings of this work provide implementers of I4.0 in the automobile industry in the form of a robust framework. This framework can be followed by the automobile sector in enhancing their competency in the competitive market and ultimately provide a positive outcome for the Indian economic development led by these businesses. Furthermore, this work will guide decision-makers in enabling strategic integration of I4.0, opening doors for the development of new business opportunities as well.Originality/valueThe study proposes a framework for Indian automobile industries. The automobile sector was chosen for this study as it covers a large percentage of the market share of the manufacturing industry in India. The existing literature does not address the broader picture of I4.0 and most papers do not provide validation of the data collected. This study thus addresses this research gap.

Teaching Anxiety, Stress and Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evaluating the Vulnerability of Academic Professionals in Mexico through the Adapted COVID-19 Stress Scales

To mitigate the COVID-19 infection, many world governments endorsed the cessation of non-essential activities, such as the school attendance. Thereby, forcing the evolution of the teaching model to the virtual classroom. In the present work we show the application of a modified version of the adapted COVID-19 stress scales (ACSS) which also included teaching anxiety and preparedness, and resilience for academic professionals in Mexico, during the unprecedented transformation of the education system undergone in the COVID-19 quarantine. Most of the studied variables: gender, age, academic degree, household occupants, having a disease, teaching level, teaching mode, work hours, resilience, teaching anxiety and preparedness, and fear of being an asymptomatic patient (FOBAP), showed significant statistical correlation between each other (p<0.050) and to the 6 areas of the ACSS (danger, contamination, social economical, xenophobia, traumatic stress and compulsive checking). Our results further showed that the perceived stress and anxiety, fell into the category of absent to mild with only the danger section of the ACSS falling into the moderate category. Finally, resilience generated throughout the quarantine, seems to be a predictor of the adaptation the academic professional has undergone to cope with stress.

Aspectual Analysis of Digital Transformation and New Academic Professionals

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are currently developing a significant research interest in transferring from traditional to novel practices in teaching and learning through the use of modern technological tools and platforms. The integration of digital technologies in higher education has tended to focus on improving academic professionals in developing countries like Saudi Arabia. This chapter was driven by a desire to understand ICT implementation in higher education institutions (HEIs) by professionals using digital transformation in Saudi Arabia. This chapter discusses the implementation of digital transformation in teaching and learning at HEIs in Saudi Arabia. This aim is achieved throughout several objectives, beginning by reviewing the related literature and presenting theoretical frameworks. The literature review will provide the possibility of identifying the focal trends related to the topic.

Rife Information Pollution (Infollution) and Virtual Organizations in Industry 4.0

Information pollution, which usually refers to the overabundance of irrelevant, unsolicited, unwanted messages, is a major cause of concern for practitioners and academic researchers. Advances in the information and communication technologies has proliferated the production of information. Consequently, people are suffering from information pollution. Information pollution has made it difficult for employees and individuals to find the quality information quickly and conveniently from diverse information sources including print and electronic sources. This chapter sheds light on the relevant literature of information pollution and analyzes its causes in the Industry 4.0 era and puts forward suggestions for tackling this problem. This chapter emphasizes the significance of concrete efforts from computer scientists, academic professionals, and information professionals to devise strategies and techniques for refuting the effects of information pollution.

Black Joy as Emotional Resistance

This research situates the experiences of two married Black Queer women from working-class backgrounds, who are young academic professionals working in contingent positions in the Midwest during Trump's first year in office. Using a critical collaborative autoethnography, the authors situate their social media posts, reflections, and stories in the broader literature that denotes the challenges of spousal accommodations and diversity positions in corporatized universities for faculty and staff of color. The findings extend the literature by outlining the various ways in which we experience oppression as married Black Queer women in the university, surrounding community, and are burdened with diversity work without systemic intervention and institutional buy-in, in the Midwest. They share their stories to combat the silencing of their struggles and provide a path toward survival under these circumstances. They outline how the use of social media, writing, and creating intentional spaces of Black Joy have aided them as they move through their careers.