The influence of risk and protective factors on burnout experienced by those who work with maltreated children

The aim of the study was to explore the degree (and type) of burnout and trauma symptoms, personal histories and coping strategies retrospectively reported by those who work with maltreated children and their families. A self‐selected sample of workers (N = 44) completed a self‐report questionnaire assessing childhood maltreatment, family background characteristics, current adjustment, coping strategies and burnout. Workers reported high levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and a low to moderate sense of personal accomplishment. Family background characteristics predicted the occurrence of maltreatment and current adjustment, and a personal history of maltreatment predicted current trauma symptoms, but not burnout. Workers most frequently used problem‐focused coping strategies and sought social support; however, coping strategies were not associated with the level of either trauma symptoms or burnout. Despite employing positive coping strategies, their efficacy may be affected by other interpersonal, intra‐individual and job resource issues. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neuroticism,Negative Thinking,and Coping With Respect to Career Decision State

Using structural equation modeling, the present study investigated relationships between neuroticism, coping strategies, and negative career thoughts within the context of attaining a positive career decision state. Results from the initial model, based on a sample of college students (119 women, 113 men; M = 20.3 years) enrolled in a career development course, revealed that coping strategies were not a significant contribution to the model. The final model, without coping strategies, showed that neuroticism had a significant indirect effect on career decision state through negative thinking and that the relationship between neuroticism and career decision state was also significant. Findings also indicate that in the presence of negative career thoughts, neuroticism becomes associated with a more positive career decision state. Practical implications include suggestions that counselors intervene on clients' negative career thoughts to potentially render their neurotic tendencies more productive in reaching a desired career decision state.     

Explaining Men's Entry into Female‐Concentrated Occupations: Issues of Masculinity and Social Class

This article seeks to add to an understanding of why some men enter female‐concentrated occupations (and why the majority do not). Drawing on the results of in‐depth interviews with 27 men in a range of occupations, I illustrate and interpret the complex and often contradictory ways in which men approach the notion of working in female‐concentrated occupations and examine the impact that this has on their occupational outcomes. The data suggest that different attitudes to female‐concentrated work cannot in themselves explain men's presence there. Consequently I explore, with particular reference to social class, the context in which attitudes around gender, work and occupational destinations, are framed. I conclude that men's entry to female‐concentrated occupations may best be approached, not as an issue of ‘masculinity’ but as one of social mobility operating within a gendered labour market.     

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Suicidal Ideation Among Sexually Abused Adolescent Girls: The Mediating Role of Shame

ABSTRACT

Sexual abuse is associated with a host of negative repercussions in adolescence. Yet the possible mechanisms linking sexual abuse and negative outcomes are understudied. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among self-blame, shame, coping strategies, posttraumatic stress disorder, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation. The sample included 147 sexually abused adolescent girls between 14 and 18 years of age. A total of 66% of girls reached clinical score for posttraumatic stress disorder, and 53% reached clinical score for depressive symptoms. Close to half (46%) reported suicidal thoughts in the past 3 months. Shame was found to partially mediate the relationship between self-blame and posttraumatic stress disorder. Shame and depressive symptoms were also found to partially mediate the relationship between self-blame and suicidal ideation. Results suggest that shame is a crucial target in interventions designed for sexually abused adolescent girls.     

Gender,the Work‐Life Interface and Wellbeing: A Study of Hospital Doctors

Long and unsociable hours and intensive work pressure have been dominant features of the medical profession, especially in hospital work. The increased presence of women in medical occupations, however, has stimulated debate about the nature and consequences of such work practices on doctors' wellbeing. Against the backdrop of this debate the article explores how factors relating to the work–lfe interface affect the wellbeing of a sample of hospital doctors. A key aim is to assess whether gender differences are discernible in the pattern of factors associated with perceptions of job burnout and intentions to quit. The research suggests that female doctors were more likely to experience job burnout than male doctors. It also shows that aspects of the work–life interface affect the wellbeing of all doctors but women tend to rely on different forms of social support from men to alleviate burnout and reduce the likelihood of leaving their job.     

Predictors of Job Satisfaction and Burnout in Child Abuse Professionals: Coping,Cognition, and Victimization History

ABSTRACT

This study investigated coping style, work-related cognition, and victimization history as predictors of job satisfaction and burnout in child abuse professionals. Subjects were 215 participants in a conference on sexual abuse victim treatment. We developed a questionnaire assessing a variety of cognitions related to work with human services clients. One of the findings was that job satisfaction showed no relation to items portraying simple optimism or pessimism about helping clients, but satisfaction was related to a number of cognitions that combined realism and hope in a distinctive fashion. The coping strategies of Planful Problem Solving, Positive Reappraisal, and Seeking Social Support were associated with positive work experience, and the coping mechanisms of Confrontive Coping, Escape/Avoidance, and Accepting Responsibility were associated with negative work experience. Job satisfaction was higher in subjects reporting a childhood history of sexual abuse or neglect.     

Current State of the Sociology of Occupations

This report is a review of the recent literature (mostly since the mid 60s) of the sociology of occupations. The notion of measuring professionalism, especially as represented by the attribute approach, has failed to deal with crucial sociological issues. The sociology of occupations has been criticized for being without an overall theory, but the search for such a theory may not be a justified goal. Work in this field has produced many interesting and useful generalizations of a more limited range. Studies of this field are numerous, but they are distributed unevenly over the range of occupations and work issues. The strong point is the numerous detailed case studies of occupations. However, there are also some good examples of efforts to relate occupational behavior to a larger societal perspective.     

Controlling Anger and Happiness at Work: An Examination of Gender Differences

This article examines gender differences in the emotion management of men and women in the workplace. The belief in American culture that women are more emotional than men has limited women's opportunities in many types of work. Because emotional expression is often tightly controlled in the workplace, examining emotion management performed at work presents an opportunity to evaluate gender differences in response to similar working conditions. Previous research suggests that men and women do not differ in their experiences of emotion and the expression of emotion is linked to status positions. An analysis of survey data collected from workers in a diverse group of occupations illustrates that women express anger less and happiness more than men in the workplace. Job and status characteristics explain the association between gender and anger management at work but were unrelated to the management of happiness expressions in the workplace.     

The nature of work and the stress of higher status

Are occupational and work conditions associated with work-to-home conflict? If so, do those associations vary by gender? Among a sample of adults in Toronto, Canada, we found that men and women in higher-status occupations reported higher levels of work-to-home conflict than workers in lower-status jobs. In addition, we observed higher levels of work-to-home conflict among workers who are self-employed and among those with more job authority, demands, involvement, and longer hours. The only significant gender-contingent effect was found for nonroutine work, which is associated positively with work-to-home conflict among men but not women. Higher levels of job demands, involvement, and hours among individuals in higher-status occupations significantly contribute to occupation-based differences in work-to-home conflict. Moreover, despite some overlap, these work conditions have largely independent associations with work-to-home conflict. Results generally support the "stress of higher status " hypothesis among both women and men. Although higher-status positions yield many rewards, such positions are not impervious to inter-role stress, and this stress may offset those rewards.     

The role of self-care on compassion satisfaction,burnout and secondary trauma among child welfare workers

Child welfare workers are routinely exposed to multiple traumatic events when working with children and families, and are at an increased risk of experiencing burnout and secondary trauma. Self-care is often recommended as a restorative or protective activity against the negative effects of working with traumatized individuals, although few studies have examined the benefit of self-care empirically. Trauma-informed self-care (TISC) includes being aware of one's own emotional experience in response to exposure to traumatized clients and planning/engaging in positive coping strategies, such as seeking supervision, attending trainings on secondary trauma, working within a team, balancing caseloads, and work–life balance. Compared with generic personal care activities, TISC is likely to be especially relevant for child welfare workers. This study examined the role of TISC on compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary trauma which was assessed by administering surveys to a sample of 104 child welfare case managers and supervisors. Almost one third of the sample reported high levels of burnout (29.8%) and secondary trauma (28.8%), and low levels of compassion satisfaction (31.7%). Results suggested that workers who engaged in higher levels of TISC experienced higher levels of compassion satisfaction and lower levels of burnout, although there was no relationship with secondary trauma. Findings provide preliminary evidence that TISC may be a beneficial practice to reduce risk of burnout and preserve workers' positive experience of their job, however workers experiencing secondary trauma are likely to need additional specialized intervention to assist them with their recovery.     

Making It In and Making Out: Women in Professional Occupations in Britain and France

The relationship between gender, work and organization in professional occupations can be shown to vary according to different work environments and national contexts. The career patterns of women in chartered accountancy and law in Britain and France are explored in different types of organization in order to determine whether the societal structuring of these occupations is gendered and whether women fare better in small professional practices or large bureaucratic organizations. The findings are derived from a comparative study which combined macro-level data with in-depth qualitative analysis of work and family life histories of a small number of women professionals. While women in the two countries and two occupations were found to share many of the same problems in establishing and pursuing a career, the evidence suggests that women in France may have a marginal advantage over their British counterparts, not so much because they have access to more extensive statutory employment rights but rather because they are more often employed in small practices where they are able to use their independence and their control over working conditions and work-time arrangements to structure their careers according to their own requirements and interests.     

Doing Gender Well and Differently in Dirty Work: The Case of Exotic Dancing

This article explores how a group of exotic dancers do gender and manage the stigma associated with their work and identities. We draw upon stigma management strategies from the dirty work literature and illuminate the doing of gender in these strategies. We also contribute to the debate that gender can be done well and differently through simultaneous, multiple enactments of femininity and masculinity. We consider the experiences of 21 exotic dancers working in a chain of UK exotic dancing clubs and conclude that in order to be good at their job, exotic dancers are expected to do gender well, that is, perform exaggerated expressions of femininity. However, we also theorize that for some dirty workers, specifically exotic dancers as sex workers, doing gender well will not be enough to reposition bad girls (bad, dirty work) into good girls (good, clean work). Finally, we propose that doing gender well will have different consequences in different types of work, thereby extending our findings to other dirty work occupations and organizations in general.     

Happy Doing Good? How Workers' Career Orientations and Job Satisfaction Relate in Grassroots Human Services

ABSTRACT

Job satisfaction has long been a focus of human services managers and researchers. Yet recent trends in what workers want from their jobs and careers may challenge the current understanding of this important phenomenon. There is limited understanding, in particular, of human services workers' potentially diverse orientations toward their work and how those preferences relate to job satisfaction. These factors are considered using unique data from a population of domestic violence agencies. Results show that newer human services employees report valuing opportunities for entrepreneurialism at work more than their veteran coworkers, while senior staff state stronger preferences for jobs that facilitate work-life balance. Across all employees, a preference for work seen as advancing a social cause is positively linked to job satisfaction, while a desire for job autonomy is negatively related to satisfaction. Finally, the work-life balance preferences only of newer staff are positively related to their satisfaction. The article concludes with a discussion of strategies for managing employees' multidimensional preferences for work.     

SEX-SEGREGATED WORK IN THE SYSTEM OF PROFESSIONS:

Assessing an occupation's prospects for gaining full professional status requires an understanding of the complex forces contributing to or working against such a possibility. My goal in this article is to broaden our understanding of how jurisdictional disputes are resolved in the system of professions. Occupations employing similar tactics experience different outcomes as the result of existing social divisions. This is particularly evident with female-dominated or sex-segregated occupations, such as nursing, and is important given the impending changes in the delivery of health care. Proposed changes may work to further weaken the medical profession's dominance. But without a change in gender ideology, nursing will continue to be seen as caring work suitable only for women and may not present nurses an opportunity to finally gain full professional status.     

Dropout of Hospital Volunteers in Italy

Voluntary work in Charities is a constantly growing reality: in particular, in the last few years, voluntary work in hospitals has become of great importance, marking a substantial increase of commitment in social issues. However, at the same time, volunteering Charities have been plagued by the increase of the phenomenon of dropout, that is, volunteers abandoning the Charitable Association they’re working in, often after a relatively short period of activity. In this study, we attempted to verify if and how active and dropped out volunteers perceive their own activity as a source of anxiety and stress. Our data show that both active and dropped out volunteers show high levels of burnout; in fact, dropped out volunteers show higher levels of burnout, especially of emotional exhaustion, in comparison with active volunteers. Subsequently, we identified the factors potentially assuming the role of mediators or moderators in the direct relation involving the status of voluntary work activity and the levels of anxiety and burnout. Our study demonstrates that coping strategies and the relationship established with hospital workers can be considered good moderators.     

Making work matter: Satisfied detectives and dissatisfied campus police

Dirty work is part of all occupations. A comparison of two low-status occupations — detectives and campus police — revealed that workers in some occupations can surmount the tarnished image that goes along with dirty work, while others cannot. The detectives, but not the campus police, found ways to make their work matter. The former created a valued core identity, found an appreciative audience, and built collegiality. The constraints of campus police work kept the campus police from using the same strategies, and left them feeling that all their work was dirty. Under certain conditions, workers can redefine the core of a bad job into meaningful work.Order of authorship is alphabetical. Support for this research was provided in part by a grant from the University Research Council of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Norfolk, Virginia, 1989. We thank Howard Aldrich, Howard Becker, Carl Klockars, Richard Simpson, Donna K. Darden, and Charles Watson for their comments on earlier drafts.     

Feeling the Beat and Feeling Better: Musical Experience,Emotional Reflection,and Music as a Technology of Mental Health

Using data from the 1999 Arts and Religion Survey, this article builds on the work of Tia DeNora and the understanding of music as a technology of health by focusing on an important aspect of music's impact on mental health, emotional reflection. The study first examines the relationship between musical experiences and the perceived effectiveness of music as a coping tool in everyday life. The results indicate that musical experience is positively associated with the perception of music as an effective coping mechanism, controlling for relevant demographic and artistic factors included in the survey. The analysis then assesses the relationship between music's perceived effectiveness as a coping mechanism and emotional reflection, indicating a positive association between the two. Aesthetic disposition and parental education are also positive predictors of using music to cope and emotional reflection. The study demonstrates that those who value music as a means of coping may be more emotionally reflective and in turn, experience benefits related to positive mental health. The results also highlight the importance of considering both micro‐ and macro‐theoretical approaches to understanding musical practices and their role in health improvement.     

Correlates of drinking and drug use by higher education faculty and staff: implications for prevention

The prevalence and frequency of drug and alcohol abuse among higher education faculty and staff is not known. Higher education is a cultural environment which, on the one hand, is stressful and, on the other, permits a high degree of autonomy. This relationship of stress and autonomy is predicted to produce drug and alcohol abuse. Information is gathered by anonymous, self-report questionnaires, on the frequency and prevalence of faculty and staff drug and alcohol use at a regional university. Responses show alcohol and drug use within the last year and month among four higher education occupational groups: faculty, administrators, clerical staff, and physical plant/custodial staff. While stress was found to be weakly correlated with some drug use in the last month, depression was consistently correlated with drug use and moderately correlated with suicidal thoughts and tendencies, as well as job dissatisfaction. Drug and alcohol abuse is a factor in behavioral problems that affect faculty/staff and can be addressed through Employee Assistance Programs.     

Violence in the workplace and ergonomic prevention

There is a growing problem of violence in the workplace that should not be ignored. An estimated 6,359 deaths occur per year in the workplace [8] and an average one million each year are assaulted while at work [3]. Workplace violence is detrimental to both the employer and employee. It causes decreased worker productivity which results in monetary loss for businesses and the worker. Prevention programs can and should be implemented to address workplace violence. Prevention strategies that incorporate ergonomic and occupational therapy concepts can increase work productivity and job satisfaction. Certain occupations, such as health care and social service workers, are at a high risk for violence in the workplace. Violence in the workplace may never be eliminated, but steps can be taken to hinder the problem from growing.