Irritation: analysis of an instrument to assess stress at work

The aim of this investigation is to verify the factorial validity of the "Scale Irritation" in a sample of 181 teachers of Secondary Education from the center of Spain. At the same time, the investigation tries to verify the validity of construct of the scale correlating the results with the burnout evaluated through the Brief Questionnaire of Burnout adapted for teachers. The results obtained by means of the exploratory factor analysis of the Scale Irritation confirm the presence of two factors, as it appears in other international investigations. The confirmatory analysis verifies the proposal of a model of two factors. The significant correlation obtained among the Irritation Scale and the burnout confirms the validity of construct and verifies that a high irritation is associated significantly to the burnout, as it is foreseen by the theory, which considers both aspects related to the process of stress at work.     

Early and late processes in syllogistic reasoning: evidence from eye-movements

An eye-movement monitoring experiment was carried out to examine the effects of the difficulty of the problem (simple versus complex problems) and the type of figure (figure 1 or figure 4) on the time course of processing categorical syllogisms. The results showed that the course of influence for these two factors is different. We found early processing effects for the figure but not for the difficulty of the syllogism and later processing effects for both the figure and the difficulty. These results lend support to the Model Theory (Johnson-Laird, P. N., Byrne, R. M. J. (1991). Deduction. Hillsdale, New Jersey: LEA.) as opposed to other theories of reasoning (Chater, N., Oaksford, M. (1999). The probability heuristics model of syllogistic reasoning. Cognitive Psychology, 38, 191-258; Rips, L. J. (1994). The psychology of proof. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Rips, L. J. (1994). The psychology of proof. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).     

Tension and compression of bulk Al-7.5 wt% Mg alloy

The mechanical behaviour of bulk ultrafine-grained Al-7.5 wt% Mg alloy consolidated from cryomilled powders has been investigated. The experimental data show that the alloy exhibits high strength, low strain hardening, serrated flow and relatively high ductility. In addition, the data indicate that the yield strength in tension is essentially equal to that in compression. The yield and flow strengths of the alloy are discussed in terms of strengthening processes that are related to grain size, the Orowan mechanism and solid-solution hardening. The serrations in the stress-strain curve are discussed in terms of dynamic strain ageing and deformation twinning.     

Reliability and validity of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) across samples of Mexican,Mexican American,and European American children: a preliminary investigation1 Table of means,standard deviations,and correlations of the RCMAS indicators are available from the first author upon request.

Abstract

The relationship between work and home-based stressors in predicting burnout symptoms was examined amongst 120 drug and alcohol service employees. Staff who reported high levels of burnout on the Maslach Burnout Inventory across all three scales of Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization and Personal Accomplishment were compared with a sample of low burnout employees. High burnout was associated with younger age, larger agency size, high levels of total work stressors, work overload, and daily hassles and a lower level of peer cohesion. Regression analyses revealed that male gender, younger age, work overload, role ambiguity and daily hassles were significant predictors of Emotional Exhaustion. Younger age was also a significant predictor of Depersonalization. Marked differences were found in the way in which males and females responded to work and non-work stressors and the interaction between these variables. For women, a significant interaction was found between total work stressors and home-based stressors in the prediction of Emotional Exhaustion and a trend in this direction was evident for Depersonalization. Low levels of home problems appeared to protect women from the adverse impact of work stressors. The burnout levels of women were relatively unaffected by work stressors, unless home stressors were also high. The level of daily hassles had a direct effect upon symptoms of Emotional Exhaustion, but did not interact with work stressors in predicting Emotional Exhaustion for women. Burnout levels of male employees on Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization scales were strongly linked to the level of work stressors and were not predicted by total home stressors nor the interaction between these variables. Symptoms of Emotional Exhaustion in males were predicted by severity of daily hassles, but this variable did not interact with work stressors in predicting Emotional Exhaustion.     

Career adaptability and its relation to self-regulation,career construction,and academic engagement among Spanish university students

This study analyzed the psychometric properties of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS) in a Spanish speaking sample and then its relationships with adaptive readiness (i.e., self-regulation), career construction and adapting responses (i.e., vocational coping behaviors), and adaptation results (academic engagement, burnout, and vocational identity). The measures were completed by 577 Spanish university students. The psychometric properties of the newly translated CAAS Spanish Form included internal consistency values ranging from good to excellent for the total score and for the subscales. The results obtained through the confirmatory factor analysis verified the presence of the four CAAS dimensions: concern, control, curiosity, and confidence, which were the same factors observed in other international studies with other languages. The significant correlations obtained between the CAAS and the adaptive readiness, adapting, and adaptation measures confirmed the validity of the CAAS scores. In addition, this study tested a theoretical model of mediation between variables, adding further support to the distinction between the three dimensions leading to adaptation.     

Expressive prosodic patterns in individuals with Alzheimer's disease

This paper describes a useful technique for quantifying the degree of speech deficits in dementia of GDS 4 Alzheimer's type (DAT). Production of prosodic speech in DAT patients and healthy older controls was analysed using variation in fundamental frequency (F0) measures on a reading task. The prosogram computational model was used to analyze the prosodic contours of the speech samples, using melodic styling of F0 based on perceptual principles and prominence detection of spectral and amplitude fluctuations in the speech signal. Results revealed significant differences in most of these prosodic parameters among the DAT group. Normal pitch variation in speech and variations in syllable timing were reduced in the DAT group, these features cause "flat" speech prosody in these patients. These speech parameters may have diagnostic and prognostic value for Alzheimer's disease and therefore could be a useful aid in clinical trials.     

Evaluating Fund Performance by Compromise Programming with Linear‐Quadratic Composite Metric: An Actual Case on The CaixaBank in Spain

This paper proposes an additive measure on the basis of compromise programming to evaluate fund performance from multiple criteria, of which the most usual are profitability and risk. This proposal is motivated by the fact that compromise programming is a sound decision support model to obtain scores of alternatives by minimizing weighted distances to an ideal point, the weights reflecting the investor's preferences for the criteria. To define the distance objective function, the linear‐quadratic composite metric is used, which combines advantages of linear and non‐linear objective functions. A critical advantage of compromise programming for fund performance evaluation is that the model can be extended to more than two financial criteria while other measures currently used (either ratio‐based or leverage‐based measures) only consider two criteria, say, profitability and risk. In the application, three investor's profiles are defined, which involve different weighting systems and lead to different fund rankings. These rankings are compared with domination relationships, the latter formulating if a fund is dominated or non‐dominated by convex combinations of other funds. Numerical tables are provided with data, computational process and results, which are analysed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.