Assessing the Role of Collective Efficacy Beliefs During Participative Occupational Health Interventions

Background: For group-based participatory interventions in the context of occupational health, no questionnaires exist to assess the participants' active engagement in the interventions. On the basis of the construct of collective efficacy beliefs, this study has developed a questionnaire with which the group-related efficacy beliefs can be assessed as a precondition for participants actively engaging in participative interventions.Methods: Participants were drawn from a two-arm cluster-randomized intervention study to fill out the questionnaire. A Factor analysis and an initial psychometric calibration were performed. In a second step, the group-related properties of the questionnaire were validated using a Multilevel analysis.Results: The factorial structure of the questionnaire is consistent with the theory of efficacy beliefs according to A. Bandura. Furthermore, the collective efficacy expectations of the interventions' participants are lowered in the absence of appreciation and support in the psychosocial environment of the worksite.Conclusions: Assessing participant's quality of interventional activity in participatory interventions by collective efficacy can be valuable in understanding the amount of interventional activity. In addition, it is recommended to consider the influence of the worksite's psychosocial environment on collective efficacy beliefs when implementing participatory interventions.Clinical Trial Registration: Registration trial DRKS00021138 on the German Registry of Clinical Studies (DRKS), retrospectively registered on 25 March, 2020.

PANDEMIA DA COVID-19: indicadores do impacto na saúde mental de adolescentes

The COVID-19 pandemic is imposing major changes in the psychosocial environment of the affected countries, impacting their whole population. The aim of this article is to analyze adolescents’ anxiety, stress and depression levels during the COVID-19 pandemic and to correlate anxiety, stress and depression levels with the adolescents’ perception about the impact of the pandemic in their lives. The research was quantitative, correlational and cross-sectional. The sample consisted of 77 brazilian adolescentes, between the ages of 12 and 18 who accepted to participate in the online research. All the ethical procedures were adopted and the participants were asked to answer a sociodemographic questionnaire, a questionnaire composed of specific questions related to their perception about the impact of the pandemic, and the DASS-21 scale. The data analysis showed symptoms considered extremely severe and severe of anxiety in 33,8% of the adolescents, of depression in 36,4% and stress in 36,1%. These symptoms were positively correlated to feelings of helplessness in mental health care and family conflicts. These results show that the pandemic can be faced by adolescents as a complicated period that can cause suffering, intensifying their vulnerabilities and limiting access to support systems.

Is Stress in Contact Centers Inevitable?

It is broadly acknowledged that contact center employees are subject to high levels of stress. In this profession, there is a distinction between back-office and front-office employees. In addition, employees may perform duties in various companies with different characteristics (i.e., human resources practices, job characteristics, social support, work–personal life relationship, among others). Thus, this study focuses on the analysis of the contact centers’ (CC) psychosocial work environment and employees’ levels of stress and well-being, seeking to understand whether they change due to the specific nature of the duties they perform and the characteristics of the company. This study involved 1440 participants from 15 companies. The results indicate that front-office and back-office duties influence the perception of some job characteristics and their environment and, consequently, the stress and well-being of these employees. Furthermore, the exhaustion and general well-being of employees are seemingly independent of the duties performed and common to all companies. However, the job characteristics, psychosocial environment and employees’ levels of cynicism, work engagement and general stress were found to change according to the company in which they worked, thus highlighting the need for action in the psychosocial environment of these work duties.

Workplace environment and performance of nurses in a tertiary level hospital

Workplace environment is an integral part of a hospital. The workplace environment influences on nurses’ performance both positively and negatively. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Chittagong Medical College Hospital, Chittagong from 1st January to 31st December 2017 with the aim to assess the workplace environment and performance of nurses. Total respondents in this study were 210 nurses. Samples were selected by purposive sampling technique. After taking written consent from the respondents, data collection was done by face to face interview using a semi-structured questionnaire with the help of Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire II and Performance Evaluation Rating Scale. Data were analyzed using SPSS. The study findings revealed that 43.3% had good, 51.4% average and 5.2% poor state of physical environment and 10.0% had good, 88.1% average and 1.9% poor state of psychosocial environment. Therefore 70.5% respondents’ performance needed some improvement. The results revealed that there was a significant relationship between educational qualification and workplace performance of nurses (p< 0.001; pulled from χ2 text) and psychosocial environment and workplace performance of nurses (p<0.015; pulled from χ2 text). So, a conducive workplace environment is very crucial in every hospital to improve nurses’ performance and provide quality care. Asian J. Med. Biol. Res. December 2020, 6(4): 705-713

THE MEDIATING EFFECT OF WORK MOTIVATION BETWEEN THE PSYCHOSOCIAL ENVIRONMENT AND NURSES JOB PERFORMANCE

Introduction:This study aimed to determine the level of motivation, psychosocial work environment support, and job performance. Further, it aimed to determine the relationship of motivation, psychosocial work environment, and job performance, and the mediating effect of motivation to psychosocial work environment, and job performance. Methods: The researchers employed a quantitative-cross sectional approach involving the 245 nurses working at the government hospitals of Hail city, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The 245 participantswere generated through snowball sampling. Descriptive statistics were used for the demographic profile. The path analysis using analysis of moment structures was utilized to determine the significance between psychosocial work environment, motivation, and job performance, and the mediating effect of work motivation on the psychosocial environment and job performance. Results:There is a high psychosocial work environment support level (x=4.70±1.050), moderate work motivation (x=3.87± 0.859) and good (33.5%) to excellent (33.5%) work performance of nurses. The psychosocial work environment support found no significant difference to motivation (p>0.029) but significant to job performance (p< 0.002).Meanwhile, the motivation on job performance found not significant (p>0.342). There is no mediating effect of motivation to psychosocial work environment support and job performance. Conclusion:The psychosocial work environment significantly relates to job performance, however, the psychosocial environment on motivation and job performance were found not significant. Conversely, there was no mediating effect of motivation on psychosocial work environment and job performance.

Polygenic risk score, psychosocial environment and the risk of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

The objective of the present study was to investigate whether the polygenic liability for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and the psychosocial environment impact the risk of ADHD in interaction or independently of each other. We conducted a register- and biobank-based cohort study of 13,725 individuals with ADHD and 20,147 randomly drawn population-based controls. These 33,872 cohort members were genotyped on the Infinium PsychChip v1.0 array (Illumina). Subsequently, we calculated the polygenic risk score (PRS) for ADHD and extracted register data regarding the following risk factors pertaining to the psychosocial environment for each cohort member at the time of birth: maternal/paternal history of mental disorders, maternal/paternal education, maternal/paternal work status, and maternal/paternal income. We used logistic regression analyses to assess the main effects of the PRS for ADHD and the psychosocial environment on the risk of ADHD. Subsequently, we evaluated whether the effect of the PRS and the psychosocial environment act independently or in interaction upon the risk of ADHD. We found that ADHD was strongly associated with the PRS (odds ratio: 6.03, 95%CI: 4.74–7.70 for highest vs. lowest 2% liability). All risk factors pertaining to the psychosocial environment were associated with an increased risk of ADHD. These associations were only slightly attenuated after mutual adjustments. We found no statistically significant interaction between the polygenic liability and the psychosocial environment upon the risk of ADHD. In conclusion, we found main effects of both polygenic liability and risk factors pertaining to the psychosocial environment on the risk of ADHD—in the expected direction.