Occupational stress in universities: Staff perceptions of the causes,consequences and moderators of stress

In recent years, the Australian university sector has undergone large-scale organizational change, including restructuring, downsizing and government funding cuts. At the same time, research from across the globe reports an alarming increase in the occupational stress experienced by university staff. We report on the first phase of a longitudinal investigation of occupational stress. A total of 22 focus groups were conducted with a representative sample of 178 academic and general staff from 15 Australian universities. The groups focused on understanding staff 's experience of occupational stress, and perceptions of the sources, consequences and moderators of stress. Both general and academic staff reported a dramatic increase in stress during the previous 5 years. As a group, academic staff reported higher levels of stress than general staff. Five major sources of stress were identified including: insufficient funding and resources; work overload; poor management practice; job insecurity; and insufficient recognition and reward. The majority of groups reported that job-related stress was having a deleterious impact on their professional work and personal welfare. Aspects of the work environment (support from co-workers and management, recognition and achievement, high morale, flexible working conditions), and personal coping strategies (stress management techniques, work/ non-work balance, tight role boundaries and lowering standards), were reported to help staff cope with stress. The findings provide a timely insight into the experience of stress within universities.     

Immigrants and Employer-provided Training

Much has been written about the labour market outcomes for immigrants in their host countries, particularly with regard to earnings, employment and occupational attainment. However, much less attention has been paid to the question of whether immigrants are as likely to receive employer-provided training relative to comparable natives. As such training should be crucial in determining the labour market success of immigrants in the long run it is a critically important question. Using data from a large-scale survey of employees in Ireland, we find that immigrants are less likely to receive training from employers, with immigrants from the New Member States of the EU experiencing a particular disadvantage. The immigrant training disadvantage arises in part from a failure on the part of immigrants to get employed by training-oriented firms. However, they also experience a training disadvantage relative to natives within firms where less training is provided.     

China's Below‐Replacement Fertility: Recent Trends and Future Prospects

Between 1970 and 1990, China experiencoed a rapid and sharp fertility decline—from total fertility rates of approximately six births to two. The degree to which Chinese fertility has continued to fall after 1990 is controversial. We use survey data from the 1997 National Population and Reproductive Health Survey and from the 2001 Reproductive Health and Family Planning Survey to document recent trends in Chinese fertility. Our estimates provide further evidence that China's fertility is well below‐replacement level at the turn of the twenty‐first century—with TFR levels of approximately 1.5 children per woman. Trends in parity‐specific cohort fertility by age also suggest below replacement completed fertility for cohorts still in the childbearing years. In the article's second section, we identify key components of low period fertility in order to frame our discussion of two questions: 1) in what ways is Chinese low fertility different from/similar to that in other low‐fertility countries? And 2) what are the likely future trends in Chinese fertility?     

Intergroup bigotry and late nineteenth and early twentieth century immigrant competition,exploitation and succession in the United States

Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, this study attempts to emphasize the rivalry and tensions between the various ethnic groups in one of the major phases of immigration into the United States. Not only were these immigrants exploited by employers but the divisions between groups, often exaggerated and manipulated by those employers, also helped to build significant barriers to a strong unionism within the workforce. The overall conclusion of the article is an essentially negative evaluation of the economic and social forces immigrants experienced in these years.     

Bayesian discrete latent spatial modeling of crack initiation in orthopaedic hip replacement bone cement

In this paper, we propose a spatial model for the initiation of cracks in the bone cement of hip replacement specimens. The failure of hip replacements can be attributed mainly to damage accumulation, consisting of crack initiation and growth, occurring in the cement mantle that interlocks the hip prosthesis and the femur bone. Since crack initiation is an important factor in determining the lifetime of a replacement, the understanding of the reasons for crack initiation is vital in attempting to prolong the life of the hip replacement. The data consist of crack location coordinates from five laboratory experimental models, together with stress measurements. It is known that stress plays a major role in the initiation of cracks, and it is also known that other unmeasurable factors such as air bubbles (pores) in the cement mantle are also influential. We propose an identity-link spatial Poisson regression model for the counts of cracks in discrete regions of the cement, incorporating both the measured (stress), and through a latent process, any unmeasured factors (possibly pores) that may be influential. All analysis is carried out in a Bayesian framework, allowing for the inclusion of prior information obtained from engineers, and parameter estimation for the model is done via Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques.     

Analysis of the image repair discourse in the Michael Phelps controversy

The following study reviews the image repair strategies used by Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, his sponsors and the organizations that govern him as an amateur swimmer after a picture of Phelps allegedly smoking from a marijuana pipe appeared in a British tabloid. Additionally, the study reviews media coverage of the controversy to determine whether Phelps was successful in repairing his image. The study concludes that Phelps’ image repair campaign was a success. Implications for public relations practitioners and suggestions for future research also are discussed.