Job stress, job strain, and psychological withdrawal among Dutch university staff: towards a dualprocess model for the effects of occupational stress

This study examined the antecedents of job strain (emotional exhaustion, health complaints) and withdrawal behaviour (e.g. lowered organizational commitment) among a cross-sectional sample of 131 academic staff members of the law department of a large Dutch university. Conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) provided the theoretical background for this study. Strains and withdrawal behaviours were expected to be most prominent among those who reported having few resources and/or who reported high job demands. Structural equation modelling revealed that this was indeed the case. As predicted, differential patterns of effects emerged for job demands and job resources. Analysis of the effects of four job-specific stressors revealed that especially the structural aspects of a staff member's teaching task (e.g. the number of students in their classes) contributed strongly to perceived job demands. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.     

Mood in Daily Contexts: Relationship With Risk in Early Adolescence

Disturbances in affect have been linked to problem behavior in adolescence and future psychopathology, but little is known about how such disturbances manifest themselves in everyday contexts. This study investigated daily mood in Dutch 7th graders, aged 11–14. Cluster analysis of problem measures distinguished high-risk (n=25) and low-risk (n=106) subgroups. Participants completed experience-sampling reports of mood, social context, and location nine times daily for 5 days. Multilevel regression analyses of four mood measures confirmed higher anxiety and depressed mood in the high-risk group. Moods varied by location and social context, with significant differences between groups in two specific social contexts. First, when with family, low-risk adolescents felt less depressed than when alone, whereas high-risk adolescents felt more depressed. Second, high-risk adolescents showed more pronounced anxiety in social situations outside the network of family and friends. These findings point to everyday social contexts in which young adolescents with emotional and behavioral problems appear to be particularly vulnerable.     

Strategic leadership and the chief executive

This article is based on research undertaken among South African chief executives occupying the most senior operational positions in public-quoted companies. In looking at distinctive characteristics in these individuals the research attempts to bring together the activities that shape the chief executive's job and explore possible trends in their background; career route and behaviour patterns, and from the compositie picture to provide guidelines for executive development.     

Constructing press releases, constructing quotations: A case study

This paper reports on empirical research into how press releases are being constructed. It starts from previous discourse-analytic work which has pointed to the 'preformulated' nature of press releases: in particular, it has been shown that through a number of metapragmatic features press releases can easily be copied by journalists in their own news reporting. In this paper we set out to subject one of these features, viz. pseudo-quotations (or so-called constructed direct speech), to a further empirical study, in which we scrutinize the process of constructing the press releases. We propose a detailed analysis of this process by combining ethnographic fieldwork with some of the methodology of cognitive psychology, including think-aloud protocols and on-line registration of the writing process. On the basis of this case study it is concluded that the design and functions of quotations in press releases are more complex than has been assumed so far. In addition, our preliminary results indicate that the combination of methods that we propose in this paper provides a sound starting point for both quantitative and qualitative analysis, allowing for a detailed analysis and interpretation of how press releases are being constructed.     

Associations among altruism, burnout dimensions, and organizational citizenship behaviour

Most studies of burnout have focused on lack of resources, prevalence of burnout, and negative outcomes. In contrast, this study examined the relationships among altruism, burnout and a positive outcome, namely, the engagement in organizational citizenship behaviour. Web questionnaires were distributed to employees in three professional organizations. The results from the 178 respondents indicated that altruism is related to organizational citizenship behaviour. Of the three dimensions of burnout, only reduced personal accomplishment was (negatively) associated with engagement in organizational citizenship behaviours. Implications of the results are discussed and directions for future research are offered.     

Child Survival and Fertility of Refugees in Rwanda

In the 1960s and 1990s, internal strife in Rwanda has caused a mass flow of refugees into neighbouring countries. This article explores the cumulated fertility of Rwandan refugee women and the survival of their children. To this end, we use a national survey conducted between 1999 and 2001 and covering 6,420 former refugee and non-refugee households. The findings support old-age security theories of reproductive behaviour: refugee women had higher fertility but their children had lower survival chances. Newborn girls suffered more than boys, suggesting that the usual sex differential in child survival observed in most populations changes under extreme living conditions.     

A deletion/substitution/addition algorithm for classification neural networks,with applications to biomedical data

Neural networks are a popular machine learning tool, particularly in applications such as protein structure prediction; however, overfitting can pose an obstacle to their effective use. Due to the large number of parameters in a typical neural network, one may obtain a network fit that perfectly predicts the learning data, yet fails to generalize to other data sets. One way of reducing the size of the parmeter space is to alter the network topology so that some edges are removed; however it is often not immediately apparent which edges should be eliminated. We propose a data-adaptive method of selecting an optimal network architecture using a deletion/substitution/addition algorithm. Results of this approach to classification are presented on simulated data and the breast cancer data of Wolberg and Mangasarian [1990. Multisurface method of pattern separation for medical diagnosis applied to breast cytology. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 87, 9193–9196].     

An L1-type estimator of multivariate location and shape

The main goal of the paper is to specify a suitable multivariate multilevel model for polytomous responses with a non-ignorable missing data mechanism in order to determine the factors which influence the way of acquisition of the skills of the graduates and to evaluate the degree programmes on the basis of the adequacy of the skills they give to their graduates. The application is based on data gathered by a telephone survey conducted, about two years after the degree, on the graduates of year 2000 of the University of Florence. A multilevel multinomial logit model for the response of interest is fitted simultaneously with a multilevel logit model for the selection mechanism by means of maximum likelihood with adaptive Gaussian quadrature. In the application the multilevel structure has a crucial role, while selection bias results negligible. The analysis of the empirical Bayes residuals allows to detect some extreme degree programmes to be further inspected.     

Support Between Siblings and Between Friends: Two Worlds Apart?

This research examines whether siblings and friends resemble each other in supportive behavior. Using a Dutch national sample of 6,289 individuals containing 12,578 relationships with siblings and friends, we investigated the relative importance of gender composition, geographical proximity, relationship quality, and contact frequency for support exchange with siblings and friends. Results show that, controlling for other influences, siblings exchange more practical and less emotional support. High relationship quality and contact frequency are positively related to exchange of emotional support with siblings more than with friends, as is—unexpectedly—living further away. Fewer differences exist in practical support exchange. In conclusion, siblings and friends are similar with regard to practical support but different when it comes to emotional support.     

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Turnover Intentions with Organizational Identification and Job Satisfaction*

The social identity approach is a powerful theoretical framework for the understanding of individuals' behaviour. The main argument is that individuals think and act on behalf of the group they belong to because this group membership adds to their social identity, which partly determines one's self‐esteem. In the organizational world, social identity and self‐categorization theories state that a strong organizational identification is associated with low turnover intentions. Because identification is the more general perception of shared fate between employee and organization, we propose that the relationship between identification and turnover will be mediated by job satisfaction as the more specific evaluation of one's task and working conditions. In four samples we found organizational identification feeding into job satisfaction, which in turn predicts turnover intentions.