Individualized behavior-based safety-leadership training: A randomized controlled trial

INTRODUCTION

Construction site managers play a critical role in occupational safety in the construction industry. This study aimed to develop and test a method for training construction site managers in positive feedback and active listening by incorporating the behavioral training components of behavior analysis, goal setting, practice with behavior feedback, homework, and maintenance planning into individualized behavior-based safety-leadership training (IBST), and to assess the effect of IBST on construction site managers' safety-leadership behaviors and performance.

METHOD

In a naturalistic randomized controlled trial, construction site managers were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 16) or a control group (n = 19). The experimental-group managers received IBST, while the control-group managers received no training. Paired sample t-tests on pre- to post-training (i.e., six weeks after the final training session) were performed separately for the experimental- and control-group managers.

RESULTS

The safety-leadership behaviors of the experimental-group managers improved in terms of favorable feedback (d = 0.99, p <.01), safety-specific feedback (d = 0.89, p =.02), behavior-specific feedback (d = 0.66, p =.02), antecedent listening (d = 0.68, p =.02), and consequential listening (d = 0.78, p =.01). In addition, safety-leadership performance improved in terms of transformational leadership (d = 0.78, p =.01) and contingent-reward leadership (d = 0.64, p =.02). No significant change was found for the control-group managers.

CONCLUSIONS

The results indicate that behavior analysis, goal setting, practice with behavior feedback, homework, and maintenance planning are effective behavioral training components of safety-leadership training. Positive feedback and active listening were also found to be important behavioral requisites for transformational and contingent-reward leadership.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

IBST can be used to develop occupational safety in the construction industry by improving construction site managers' safety-leadership behaviors and performance.

Mea Culpa! The Role of Guilt in the Work-Life Interface and Satisfaction of Women Entrepreneur

The purpose of this study is to analyze the role of mediator of Guilt (in both directions: Family Interference with Work (FIW) and Work Interference with Family (WIF)) in the relationship between Conflict, Job and Life Satisfaction, also investigating the role of Enrichment as moderator. Using PROCESS Macro, the hypothesized models are tested on a sample of 161 women entrepreneurs. Both the mediating role of guilt and the moderating role of enrichment were analyzed through models of mediation and moderate mediation. Results from the analysis support the hypothesized models. Guilt FIW and Guilt WIF mediate the relationship between work Conflict and Job satisfaction, as well the relationship between Conflict and Life satisfaction, and at the same time, Enrichment moderated the mediating processes by which the Conflict affects Job and Life satisfaction via Guilt FIW and Guilt WIF. This study is one of the few that takes into consideration both Conflict and Enrichment in a sample of women entrepreneurs and examines Guilt, which many times presents itself as an "invisible" factor in studies on the work-family interface.

Gender and Entrepreneurship in Pandemic Time: What Demands and What Resources? An Exploratory Study

Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, global economies have suffered an exogenous shock never seen before with a strong economic and psychosocial impact on organizations. Italy, in the context of the research, has been severely affected. The economic crisis has mainly affected women. In this scenario, entrepreneurial perceived success (objective and subjective) is influenced by increasingly burdensome job demands that entrepreneurs have to face up. Using the job demand-resources model, the study aims to broaden the knowledge of the determinants of entrepreneurial perceived success in the current emergency moment. In particular, as regards of the demands, alongside the specific entrepreneurial demands (time demands, uncertainty and risk, and responsibility), we also decided to include the negative interface family–work in both directions from-family-to-work (NEGWIF) and from-work-to-family (NEGFIW). Regarding the resources, we considered entrepreneurial self-efficacy (researching, planning, marshaling, implementing people, and implementing financial), proactive and elaborate social strategies (SS), and both directions of the positive interface: from-family-to-work (POSWIF) and from-work-to-family (POSFIW). All participants are women entrepreneurs (N = 137) who have completed a self-report questionnaire. We explored the associations between demands, resources, and the dimensions of success through hierarchical regressions. As for the demands, time demands, uncertainty and risk, NEGWIF, and NEGFIW negatively influenced the perceived entrepreneurial success. Regarding resources, planning, implementing financial, proactive and elaborate SS positively influenced the perceived entrepreneurial success.

Creative utterances about person-centered care among future health care professionals are related to reward dependence rather than to a creative personality profile

Background

Creativity can be defined as the creation of something that is novel, useful, and valuable for society (i.e., high-level creativity) and/or everyday life. In this context, people have implicit theories of creativity as being either non-malleable (i.e., a fixed creative mindset) or malleable (i.e., a growth creative mindset). Our aim was twofold: (1) to test an improved creative mindset priming paradigm (i.e., adding high-level/everyday creativity perspectives and using an organizational important task) by assessing if participants used different ways to answer to the prime and (2) to analyse the relationship between personality and creative utterances regarding an important topic in participants' future professions.

Method

Students (N = 73) from different health care professions were randomly assigned to the non-malleable or malleable creative mindset priming paradigm (i.e., fixed vs. growth) and then asked to write about (a) their own creativity, (b) person-centered care in their professions (i.e., unusual use test), and to (c) self-rate their personality (Temperament and Character Inventory). We used natural language processing methods (i.e., Latent Semantic Algorithm) to analyse participants' responses in the different conditions and also responses in relation to self-reported personality.

Results

The fixed versus growth condition was predicted (r = .55, p < 0.0001), following Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons by participants' descriptions about creativity. Although the condition was not predicted (r = .07, p < 0.2755) by participants' utterances about person-centered care, a t-test suggested that participants used words that were semantically different depending on the condition they were randomly assigned to (t(2371) = 5.82, p = .0000). For instance, participants in the growth condition used verbs more frequently, while those in the fixed condition used the personal pronoun I more often. Finally, only the temperament trait of reward dependence (r = .32, p < 0.01) predicted the person-centered care utterances.

Conclusion

We argue that the paradigm successfully primed participants to write about creativity and person-centered care using narratives with different semantic content. However, individuals' ambition to be socially accepted, rather than creative personality traits, elicited the utterances about person-centered care. The creative mindset priming paradigm presented here along language processing methods might be useful for measuring creative potential at work. We suggest that if health care personnel's notions of the activities related to care are generated from their drive to be socially accepted and not from a truly creative profile, the activities might be self-serving and not person-centered.

IRT analyses of the Swedish Dark Triad Dirty Dozen

Background

The Dark Triad (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) can be captured quickly with 12 items using the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen (Jonason and Webster, 2010). Previous Item Response Theory (IRT) analyses of the original English Dark Triad Dirty Dozen have shown that all three subscales adequately tap into the dark domains of personality. The aim of the present study was to analyze the Swedish version of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen using IRT.

Method

570 individuals (n_males = 326, n_females = 242, and 2 unreported), including university students and white-collar workers with an age range between 19 and 65 years, responded to the Swedish version of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen (Garcia et al., 2017a,b).

Results

Contrary to previous research, we found that the narcissism scale provided most information, followed by psychopathy, and finally Machiavellianism. Moreover, the psychopathy scale required a higher level of the latent trait for endorsement of its items than the narcissism and Machiavellianism scales. Overall, all items provided reasonable amounts of information and are thus effective for discriminating between individuals. The mean item discriminations (alphas) were 1.92 for Machiavellianism, 2.31 for narcissism, and 1.99 for psychopathy.

Conclusion

This is the first study to provide IRT analyses of the Swedish version of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen. Our findings add to a growing literature on the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen scale in different cultures and highlight psychometric characteristics, which can be used for comparative studies. Items tapping into psychopathy showed higher thresholds for endorsement than the other two scales. Importantly, the narcissism scale seems to provide more information about a lack of narcissism, perhaps mirroring cultural conditions.

Factor analysis of the Swedish version of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen

The aim of this study was to test the proposed three-factor structure of the Swedish version of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen measure. A confirmatory factor analysis showed mixed evidence for model fit. In contrast to expectations, men did not score significantly higher than women in Machiavellianism and narcissism. Nevertheless, men scored higher than women in psychopathy.

Cognitive disability in alzheimer's disease and its management

Cognitive disability linked to neurodegenerative diseases and in particular to Alzheimer's disease, remains an increasing cause for concern through a dramatic prevalence increment and associated socio-economic burdens. Initially Alzheimer's disease develops asymptomatically with primary clinical signs, such as memory impairment, decline of spatial and perceptual abilities, occurring at a later stage. This delay implies the possibility of promoting early interventions during the pre-symptomatic stage of the disease. Different strategies have been applied in order to prevent/delay onset of Alzheimer's disease or at least to improve quality of life and health conditions of Alzheimer's disease patients and their caregivers, especially in the absence of current viable therapies. Multidomain interventions, aimed at affecting several risk factors simultaneously, offer a versatility that may attain improved outcomes in comparison with single-domain prevention trials. These multidomain interventions involve diet, physical exercise, cognitive training and social activities, while music therapy, improving self-consciousness and reducing neurofibrils, may contribute to deceleration/delay onset of Alzheimer's disease progression. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) provides broad applications to improve quality of life and well-being of Alzheimer's disease patients and caregivers, suffering from psychological distress, as well as reducing additional public health costs.

Cognitive Benefits of Exercise Intervention

Exercise, as a potent epigenetic regulator, implies the potential to counteract pathophysiological processes and alterations in most cardiovascular/respiratory cells and tissues not withstanding a paucity of understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms and doseresponse relationships. In the present account, the assets accruing from physical exercise and its influence upon executive functioning are examined. Under conditions of neuropsychiatric and neurologic ill-health, age-related deterioration of functional and biomarker indicators during healthy and disordered trajectories, neuroimmune and affective unbalance, and epigenetic pressures, exercise offers a large harvest of augmentations in health and well-being. Both animal models and human studies support the premise of manifest gains from regular exercise within several domains, besides cognitive function and mood, notably as the agency of a noninvasive, readily available therapeutic intervention.

Gambling and the need for new responses in Public Health with an addiction "sine substantia"

BACKGROUND

The Gambling Disorder (GD) was recently defined as a behavioral addiction by the "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV"( DSM-V) since the clinical, neurobiological and psychopathological similarities led it to be defined it as an addiction "sine substantia". The aim of this study is to formulate an "identikit" of the gambler, to evaluate a possible association between GD / emotional specific factors and the correlation between GD / substance abuse, GD / suicide.

METHOD

In the study, 41 subjects were included (31 males and 10 females) and all were diagnosed with GD. A questionnaire was distributed containing 24 questions deriving from South Oaks Gambling Screen and the DSM-IVTR.

RESULTS

The study showed that 51% of the respondents makes use of alcohol and / or drugs; that 73% of the patients started playing in order to relieve feelings of dysphoria and suffering consequences on work as well as family life (51%). A great deal of the respondents were indebted (39%) to the extent of needing to ask for loans from usurer (17%). Furthermore, 41% of the respondents in the sample showed that GD could be transformed into an alarming risk of suicide.

DISCUSSION

The correlation between GD and drug abuse may depend on the brain function and the neural circuits that support impulsive behavior and the gratification mechanisms. Emotional experiences (stress, low level of education, divorce, poor social support) could constitute a possible risk factor that increases the GD. The committed offenses related to gambling could be explained by "loss of control".

CONCLUSIONS

The results of the present study contributes to the body of knowledge regarding the size of phenomenon from a statistical and epidemiological point of view, suggesting the necessity for targeted information on the risks connected to GD in order to capture early warning signs which enables the intervention with suitable strategies.

Legal medical consideration of Alzheimer&rsquo;s disease patients&rsquo; dysgraphia and cognitive dysfunction a 6 month follow up

Background

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients to express intentions and desires, and their decision-making capacity. This study examines the findings from a 6-month follow-up of our previous results in which 30 patients participated.

Materials and methods

The patient’s cognition was examined by conducting the tests of 14 questions and letter-writing ability over a period of 19 days, and it was repeated after 6 months. The difference between these two cognitive measures (PQ1 before–PQ2 before), tested previously and later the writing test, was designated DΔ before. The test was repeated after 6 months, and PQ1 after–PQ2 after was designated DΔ after.

Results

Several markedly strong relationships between dysgraphia and other measures of cognitive performance in AD patients were observed. The most aged patients (over 86 years), despite less frequency, maintain the cognitive capacity manifested in the graphic expressions. A document, written by an AD patient presents an honest expression of the patient’s intention if that document is legible, clear, and comprehensive.

Conclusion

The identification of impairment/deficits in writing and cognition during different phases of AD may facilitate the understanding of disease progression and identify the occasions during which the patient may be considered sufficiently lucid to make decisions.