Stress in remote work: two studies testing the Demand-Control-Person model

The popularity of remote work continues to rise, but uncertainty remains about how it influences employee well-being. We extend the Demand-Control-Person (DCP) model to test both person and job factors as important considerations in remote work, suggesting that emotional stability influences the utility of autonomy as a job resource in protecting employees from strain. Additionally, we test self-determination theory (SDT), positioning need satisfaction for autonomy, relatedness, and competence as mechanisms explaining the relationship between remote work and strain. In two field studies, high–emotional stability employees reporting high levels of autonomy experienced the lowest levels of strain, with negative relationships between extent of remote work and strain. In contrast, low–emotional stability employees who also have high autonomy appear more susceptible to strain, and this may increase when they work remotely more often. Our multilevel structural equation modelling revealed that high–emotional stability employees with high autonomy appear best positioned to meet their needs for autonomy and relatedness, even when remote work is more frequent; these in turn reduced the likelihood of strain. Thus, our results support the DCP and SDT models, revealing theoretical and practical implications for designing and managing remote work arrangements.     

Priming and timing: a test of two perspectives

Supporting a ‘stage’ perspective of assimilation and contrast effects, and in contrast to an ‘extremity’ conceptualization, this study demonstrated that priming moderate person exemplars before the behaviour of an ambiguous target person had been encoded results in assimilation, whereas priming such exemplars after encoding results in a small contrast effect. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Observer Video-Pro: New software for the collection, management, and presentation of time-structured data from videotapes and digital media files

The Observer Video-Pro is a system for collecting, managing, analyzing, and presenting observational data. It integrates The Observer software with time code and multimedia hardware components. It extends the functionality of a conventional real-time event recording program in various ways. Observational data can be collected, reviewed, and edited with synchronized display of the corresponding video images. For optimal visual feedback during coding, one can display the video image in a window on the computer screen. Video playback from either a VCR or a digital media file can be controlled by the computer, allowing software-controlled jog, shuttle, and search functions. Besides a wide range of VCRs, The Observer Video-Pro supports all major digital video file formats. The software allows the user to summarize research findings in numerical, graphical, or multimedia format. One can create a time-event plot for a quick glance at the temporal structure of the observed process, or run specific analysis procedures and generate reports with statistics. An Event Summary function is available for exploratory and qualitative analysis. Video material can be summarized in a Video Play List, which allows on-screen summary presentations or the creation of highlight compilations on tape, CD, or other media. Video images can be captured and saved as disk files, for use as illustrations in documents, slides for presentations, and so forth. In this paper we describe the design and operation of the system, illustrated with a case study from research on Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI).     

Posture-based motion planning: applications to grasping.

This article describes a model of motion planning instantiated for grasping. According to the model, one of the most important aspects of motion planning is establishing a constraint hierarchy--a set of prioritized requirements defining the task to be performed. For grasping, constraints include avoiding collisions with to-be-grasped objects and minimizing movement-related effort. These and other constraints are combined with instance retrieval (recall of stored postures) and instance generation (generation of new postures and movements to them) to simulate flexible prehension. Dynamic deadline setting is used to regulate termination of instance generation, and performance of more than one movement at a time with a single effector is used to permit obstacle avoidance. Old and new data are accounted for with the model.     

Nonregulation of food intake in restrained,emotional, and external eaters

In the present study, regulation of ice cream intake after a preload was examined in 20 high and 20 low scorers (median split) on subscales of the Restraint Scale (RS) (Herman, Polivy, Pliner, Threshold, & Munic, 1978) and the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) (van Strien, 1986). For each subscale it was hypothesized that low scorers would regulate their ice cream intake. High scorers on disinhibitive scales (i.e., the RS and the DEBQ-emotional and -external subscales) were expected to counterregulate after a preload. In contrast, high scorers on the inhibitive DEBQ-restraint scale were expected to regulate their ice cream intake. A robust effect was found: high scorers never regulated ice cream intake after a preload on either the disinhibitive or the inhibitive scales, while low scorers always did. For the RS a significant interaction effect was found [F(1,39)=4.97, p=.03]. None of the other subscales showed interaction effects. The t tests showed that low scorers on all subscales ate significantly less after a preload than without one, while high scorers on all subscales did not differ in intake after a preload or without one. This nonregulation appears to be characteristic of people preoccupied with caloric intake, regardless of the content of the preoccupation.     

Does bingeing restore bulimics' alleged 5-HT-deficiency?

The co-occurrence of bingeing and depressed mood in bulimics may be explained by one pathogenic process: hyposerotonergic functioning. A relatively high carbohydrate intake improves mood and raises 5-HT level. Therefore, several authors suggested that the carbohydrate intake during binges may be a form of self-medication to compensate for bulimics' alleged hyposerotonergic functioning, thereby improving mood. This view, in which bingeing compensates for central 5-HT deficiencies, assumes that bulimics' binges contain relatively more carbohydrates than bulimics' non-binge-eating episodes. In the present study, bulimics' binge-eating and non-binge-eating episodes were compared as to macronutrient and calorie intake. However, no support was found for the hypothesis that binge-eating enhances brain serotonin.     

Conditions for rasch-dichotomizability of the unidimensional polytomous rasch model

Jansen and Roskam (1986) discussed the compatibility of the unidimensional polytomous Rasch model with dichotomization of the response continuum. They derived a rather strict condition in which dichotomization of multicategory data that fit the unidimensional polytomous Rasch model, results in dichotomous data which fit the dichotomous Research model with effectively the same subject parameter. In this paper a more general dichotomization condition is derived for the polytomous Rasch model, which appears less restrictive, but upholds that the intrinsic logic of the unidimensional polytomous Rasch model defies dichotomization in general. The robustness of dichotomous analysis investigated in a simulation study. It shows a close relation with the two-parameters (Birnbaum) model. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.The authors are indebted to H. Müller (personal communication, August 1986), for giving an example which pointed toward the core equation in this paper. The authors also acknowledge the critical comments of Th. Bezambinder and P. Wakker, and of Psychometrika's reviewers to an earlier version of this paper.     

Assessing clinical pragmatism

"Clinical pragmatism" is an important new method of moral problem-solving in clinical practice. This method draws on the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey and recommends an experimental approach to solving moral problems in clinical practice. Although the method may shed some light on how clinicians and their patients ought to interact when moral problems are at hand, it nonetheless is deficient in a number of respects. Clinical pragmatism fails to explain adequately how moral poblems can be solved experimentally, it underestimates the relevance and importance of judgment in clinical ethics, and it presents a questionable account of the role that moral principles should play in moral problem solving.