Anerkennungsgespräche — ein Instrument gesundheitsförderlicher Führung

?Appreciative experience sharing‘ within the scope of appreciation talks is designed as an health-science based instrument for managers. It is a concept for participative monitoring of the social relations at work and the working conditions between employees and managers. At the same time, the appreciation talks show themselves to be a situational-social health resource in enterprises. The exhibited concept was developed and tested, and further developed to a workshop for managers, within the scope of a qualitative study and consulting project in three public urban-transportation companies in Germany. The conception, the results of the project, the workshop concept, and first experiences with ‘appreciative experience sharing’ by managers with direct responsibility for employees are described and discussed.     

The effect of accounting standards on Big Bath behavior

This paper investigates the influence of accounting standards on systematic earnings understatement. To isolate the effect of reporting regulations from those of other institutional drivers of earnings management, Holthausen (2003) proposes analyzing reporting practices in a country undergoing a transition in accounting standards. We respond to this call by analyzing earnings management practices of large German-listed companies before and after their transitions from German GAAP to IFRS. Specifically, we focus on Big Bath behavior following Chief Financial Officer turnovers between 1999 and 2006. Our findings provide evidence of the effect of accounting standards on the existence of this particular earnings understatement pattern. However, while we detect Big Bath behavior for our sample of German GAAP firms, we find no such indication for those firms reporting under IFRS. Controlling for alternative explanations such as self-selection bias does not change our findings. We conclude that accounting standards seem to have a considerable influence on earnings management behavior, independent of managers’ and auditors’ incentives.     

Spectral Estimation of Covolatility from Noisy Observations Using Local Weights

We propose localized spectral estimators for the quadratic covariation and the spot covolatility of diffusion processes, which are observed discretely with additive observation noise. The appropriate estimation for time‐varying volatilities is based on an asymptotic equivalence of the underlying statistical model to a white‐noise model with correlation and volatility processes being constant over small time intervals. The asymptotic equivalence of the continuous‐time and discrete‐time experiments is proved by a construction with linear interpolation in one direction and local means for the other. The new estimator outperforms earlier non‐parametric methods in the literature for the considered model. We investigate its finite sample size characteristics in simulations and draw a comparison between various proposed methods.     

The FARSEEING real-world fall repository: a large-scale collaborative database to collect and share sensor signals from real-world falls

Background

Real-world fall events objectively measured by body-worn sensors can improve the understanding of fall events in older people. However, these events are rare and hence challenging to capture. Therefore, the FARSEEING (FAll Repository for the design of Smart and sElf-adaptive Environments prolonging Independent livinG) consortium and associated partners started to build up a meta-database of real-world falls.

Results

Between January 2012 and December 2015 more than 300 real-world fall events have been recorded. This is currently the largest collection of real-world fall data recorded with inertial sensors. A signal processing and fall verification procedure has been developed and applied to the data. Since the end of 2015, 208 verified real-world fall events are available for analyses. The fall events have been recorded within several studies, with different methods, and in different populations. All sensor signals include at least accelerometer measurements and 58 % additionally include gyroscope and magnetometer measurements. The collection of data is ongoing and open to further partners contributing with fall signals. The FARSEEING consortium also aims to share the collected real-world falls data with other researchers on request.

Conclusions

The FARSEEING meta-database will help to improve the understanding of falls and enable new approaches in fall risk assessment, fall prevention, and fall detection in both aging and disease.

     

A comparison study on modeling of clustered and overdispersed count data for multiple comparisons

Data collected in various scientific fields are count data. One way to analyze such data is to compare the individual levels of the factor treatment using multiple comparisons. However, the measured individuals are often clustered – e.g. according to litter or rearing. This must be considered when estimating the parameters by a repeated measurement model. In addition, ignoring the overdispersion to which count data is prone leads to an increase of the type one error rate. We carry out simulation studies using several different data settings and compare different multiple contrast tests with parameter estimates from generalized estimation equations and generalized linear mixed models in order to observe coverage and rejection probabilities. We generate overdispersed, clustered count data in small samples as can be observed in many biological settings. We have found that the generalized estimation equations outperform generalized linear mixed models if the variance-sandwich estimator is correctly specified. Furthermore, generalized linear mixed models show problems with the convergence rate under certain data settings, but there are model implementations with lower implications exists. Finally, we use an example of genetic data to demonstrate the application of the multiple contrast test and the problems of ignoring strong overdispersion.     

Evaluation of objectivity, reliability and criterion validity of the key indicator method for manual handling operations (KIM-MHO), draft 2007

Upper extremity musculoskeletal symptoms and disorders are common in the working population. The economic and social impact of such disorders is considerable. Long-time, dynamic repetitive exposure of the hand-arm system during manual handling operations (MHO) alone or in combination with static and postural effort are recognised as causes of musculoskeletal symptoms and disorders. The assessment of these manual work tasks is crucial to estimate health risks of exposed employees. For these work tasks, a new method for the assessment of the working conditions was developed and a validation study was performed. The results suggest satisfying criterion validity and moderate objectivity of the KIM-MHO draft 2007. The method was modified and evaluated again. It is planned to release a new version of KIM-MHO in spring 2012.     

‘Show me the money and the party!’ – variation in Facebook and Twitter adoption by politicians

Our study explores the adoption of Facebook and Twitter by candidates in the 2013 German Federal elections. Utilizing data from the German Longitudinal Election Study candidate survey fused with data gathered on the Twitter and Facebook use of candidates, we draw a clear distinction between Facebook and Twitter. We show that adoption of both channels is primarily driven by two factors: party and money. But the impact of each plays out differently for Facebook and Twitter. While the influence of money is homogenous for Facebook and Twitter with the more resources candidates have, the more likely they are to adopt, the effect is stronger for Facebook. Conversely, a party’s impact on adoption is heterogeneous across channels, a pattern we suggest is driven by the different audiences Facebook and Twitter attract. We also find candidates’ personality traits only correlate with Twitter adoption, but their impact is minimal. Our findings demonstrate that social media adoption by politicians is far from homogenous, and that there is a need to differentiate social media channels from one another when exploring motivations for their use.