Direct and Indirect Relationship between Loneliness and Life Orientation in Emergence Adulthood: The Mediator Role of State Anxiety

Despite the large body of literature on sport event volunteers, researchers have a poor understanding of the volunteer experience despite studies claiming direct and indirect relationships involving motivation, satisfaction, commitment, and sense of community towards the volunteer experience. In fact, most studies fail to statistically measure experience as a dependent variable. As such, the importance of these four antecedents as predictors of the volunteer experience remains assumed and uncertain. The purpose of this study was to empirically test if and how sport event volunteers' motivation, satisfaction, commitment, and sense of community predict their experience. Following the 2019 Osprey Valley Open, 161 volunteers (65% response rate) completed an online self-administered questionnaire. A two-step structural equation model analysis tested the hypothesized linear relationships. Results indicated direct (i. e., motivation and satisfaction) and indirect (i. e., commitment and sense of community) relationships between antecedents and the volunteer experience. Commitment had an indirect relationship to the volunteer experience through motivation's direct relationship, while the indirect relationship of sense of community occurred through satisfaction's direct relationship to the volunteer experience. Confirmatory factor analysis also indicated motivation and sense of community had poor factor loadings, while satisfaction and commitment loaded adequately. Moreover, only the egoistic motivation factor was supported in this study motivation's direct relationship to the volunteer experience. These findings empirically support previous claims for motivation and satisfaction's direct relationship to the volunteer experience but dispute previous claims of direct relationships involving sense of community and commitment. Contributions include the need to move beyond investigating individual antecedents of the volunteer experience as it requires a multifaceted analysis due to conceptual interrelationships. Event managers should understand their volunteers' experience as being complex and develop strategies aimed at each of the four antecedents.

IntroductionUsing a network analysis, the present study investigated the extent to which physical activity (PA), objective fitness level, kinesiophobia, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) interact in patients with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases. The objectives were twofold: 1) to clarify the direct and indirect relationships between these variables while controlling for the shared variance between them, and 2) to establish a potential ranking of influence among them.MethodsThis cross-sectional design study involved patients recruited from a rheumatology unit. One hundred and twenty patients completed self-reported measures of PA, the Tampa scale of kinesiophobia and the 36-item Short-Form Health Survey, and ninety-seven of those patients performed the six-minute walking test and the thirty-second sit-to-stand test. Network analyses were conducted using bootnet and qgraph packages.ResultsWeekly time spent on PA, as well as physical fitness measures, were directly linked to kinesiophobia and the HRQoL physical dimension, but indirectly linked to HRQoL mental dimension through the mediation of kinesiophobia. Specifically, weekly PA time had direct relationships to physical functioning, vitality, and role limitations due to physical and emotional problems. Fitness measures had direct relationships with physical functioning, bodily pain, and mental health. The analyses did not clearly highlight one variable as the most influential in the network.DiscussionThe study highlights the complexities of direct and indirect biopsychosocial relationships that are at the core of patients’ daily functioning. Measurement of PA, use of a longitudinal design, and interventions are discussed.

This research is aimed at understanding firms' different types of ‘networking behaviors’, i.e., how and why firms affect their strategic network position by activities/routines/practices aimed not just at their business partners, but beyond such direct relationships. Thus, we adopt a network perspective to examine how firms exploit their webs of direct and indirect business relationships in order to assess and embrace the potential opportunities and constraints in the network. Based on the industrial network approach (INA), this exploratory research specifically focuses on networking behaviors in the UK manufacturing sector. Thirty-one semi-structured interviews with executive managers from fifteen firms were conducted. We identify four types of organizational networking behaviors by the way in which firms utilize their web of relationships to achieve certain goals. By using the concept of networking behaviors based on the INA as well as the strong-and-weak-tie argument in economic sociology, purposeful networking behaviors can be categorized into the following: information acquisition, opportunity enabling, strong-tie resource mobilization and weak-tie resource mobilization. These four ‘types’ of organizational networking behaviors provide a deeper understanding of how firms operating in business-to-business exchanges relate to and exploit their webs of direct and indirect relationships, taking into consideration the embeddedness and interconnectedness of the network context.

Branding of services is a challange due to services characteristics. It is even more challanging in mature markets. In mature markets, customers show low levels of brand loyalty, with minimum perceived differences among competing offers. All of these factors raise the complexity of branding services in mature highly competitive markets. This research provides guidance for branding services in such markets. To fulfill the research main aim, Aaker’s (1991) model of branding is extended to include variables of importance, as detected from literature, and confirmed by practitioners. Direct and indirect relationships are tested in the extended model to provide detailed guide to practitioners.
 
 To fulfill the aim of this research, quantitative tools were employed through surveying mobile service industry customers. Confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis were used to test hypotheses of direct and indirect relationships among Aaker’s (1991) model of branding, and variables derived from services marketing literature. All hypotheses were accepted except one. Direct and indirect relationships are justified. This implies that branding in mature markets should be considering direct relationships, as well as, indirect relationships among variables tested. Results of this research are not only of valuable contributions to academics, but also serve as guidance for service marketers operating in similar contexts.

Teachers' performance is a depiction of them carrying out learning activities. Since performance difficulties are linked to the productivity of institutions and organizations, they are extremely essential. Spiritual intelligence, motivation, and discipline all have a role in performance. This study aims to describe the direct and indirect relationship between: spiritual intelligence with teacher performance, work motivation with teacher performance, work discipline with teacher performance, spiritual intelligence with work discipline, work motivation with work discipline, spiritual intelligence with teacher performance through work discipline, work motivation with teacher performance through work discipline. The participants in this study were 199 teachers. The research sample consisted of 113 persons who were picked using Cronbach's Alpha to determine proportionate random sampling. Data was gathered using measures that assessed for validity and reliability and included spiritual intelligence (37 questions), job motivation (51 items), work discipline (42 items), and instructor performance (48 items). Path analysis was used to examine the research data. Spiritual intelligence has a direct relationship with teacher performance, work motivation has a direct relationship with teacher performance, work discipline has a direct relationship with teacher performance, spiritual intelligence has a direct relationship with work discipline, work motivation has a direct relationship with work discipline, intelligence spirituality has an indirect relationship with teacher performance through work, and spiritual intelligence has a direct relationship with work discipline.

Childhood maltreatment, peer victimization, and borderline personality traits have all been shown to be linked to suicidal risk. However, there remains a need to illuminate the possible direct and indirect pathways among them from a developmental perspective that could serve as intervention targets. This study thus aimed to investigate the direct and indirect relationships among developmental trajectories of childhood maltreatment, peer victimization, borderline personality feature, and suicidal risk in adolescents. A total of 1648 Chinese adolescents (48.12% boys; Mage = 13.69; SD = 0.82) in junior middle schools completed self-report measures on three-time points across 1 year. Latent growth curve modeling was used to evaluate the direct and indirect relationships among the developmental trajectories of the aforementioned study variables. The developmental trajectories of childhood maltreatment, peer victimization, and borderline personality feature were positively and directly related to the developmental trajectory of suicidal risk; and the developmental trajectories of childhood maltreatment, peer victimization were indirectly related to the developmental trajectory of suicidal risk through the mediating effect of the developmental trajectory of borderline personality feature. The findings elucidated the direct and indirect longitudinal relationships among childhood maltreatment, peer victimization, borderline personality feature, and suicidal risk, highlighting that interventions should target childhood maltreatment, peer victimization, and borderline personality feature to decrease suicidal risk in adolescents with a developmental perspective.

Using graph theory to analyze gene network coherence

Research has focused on individuals’ beliefs about change when considering the antecedents of employee change readiness. Our study is unique as we identify beliefs and positive emotions about change as proximal antecedents of change readiness. In Study 1, a cross-sectional study of 252 government workers, measures of change beliefs, positive emotions about change and change readiness were developed and tested. Study 1 examined relationships between these constructs. In Study 2, we collected data at two time points separated by 3 months from 199 employees. Study 2 examined the direct and indirect relationships among change beliefs, positive emotions about change, change readiness and change-supportive behaviors. Structural equation modeling results provided support for the validity of our measures. In both studies, cognitive beliefs about change and positive emotions about change were significantly associated with change readiness. Study 2 provided support for indirect and direct relationships between change beliefs and positive emotions and change behaviors. An implication of this research is that failure to consider positive emotions about change means ignoring a key source of variation in change readiness. Practically, results suggest a need to develop both change beliefs and positive emotions about change to enhance employees’ change readiness and change-supportive behaviors.

With the background in the confusions about the meaning of the term family, step-family as a concept and idea is studied. Traditionally, the nuclear family acts as a model and an ideological code in everyday life as well as in scholarly work. Here is shown, with step-families as examples, that a person’s family has members from various households. The step-family household is not the same as step-fami ly. Dyadic analysis shows how some members are in direct relationships while others are in indirect or in transitory relationships. This means that members of a person’s family are there for the sake of consanguinity and conjugality as well as for other reasons. Such are inclusion of members in ones family because they are important for the person itself, direct relationships, but included not because of the relationship to the person itself but because they are important for someone else in the person’s family, indirect relationships.

Purpose The aim of this paper is to develop and test a model of direct and indirect relationships among individual psychosocial predictors of return-to-work (RTW) outcomes following the onset of low back pain (LBP). Methods We utilize secondary analysis of a larger study of adults seeking treatment for work-related LBP with recent onset. In total, 241 participants who completed a baseline survey, a short follow-up survey, and a longer follow-up survey after 3 months were included in our analyses. The participants were required to have LBP with onset of less than 14 days, be 18 years or older, and be fluent in English or Spanish. The analyses utilized structural equation models to test the direct and indirect relationships among the variables and RTW outcomes at 3 months. Results Our results indicated a good fit for our model (χ2 = 69.59, df = 45, p < .05; RMSEA = .05; CFI = .95; WRMR = .61). Pain, catastrophizing, fear-avoidance beliefs, organizational support, and RTW confidence were all found to have indirect relationships with the outcomes. RTW confidence and RTW expectations were found to have direct relationships with the outcomes. Conclusions The process of returning to work after an episode of LBP is a complex process involving many interrelated factors. Understanding the relationships among critical individual factors in the RTW process may be important for the treatment and rehabilitation of those with LBP. Results suggest that if injured workers are struggling with fear avoidance, pain catastrophizing and confidence issues, they might benefit from the application of cognitive behavioral therapy techniques.

Cohesion significantly impacts on posterior development and maintenance. A well-designed module should be coherent with a single responsibility and less propagative for changes to other modules. In object-oriented development, classes are often modularized based on their relationships to localize change impact. There has been much work on grouping classes using direct class interactions and similarity of lexical information of classes. However, there has been little attention to indirect class relationships which are significant in defining functional semantics in object-oriented systems. In this paper, we present an approach for grouping classes using both direct and indirect class relationships. In the approach, we define a set of metrics for measuring couplings based on indirect class relationships and use them to group classes with the aim of localizing the impact of changes. We evaluate the approach using three applications - JHotDraw, JMeter, and ArgoUML and compare the results with existing work. The evaluation shows that the proposed approach reduces 17.2% and 22.2% of the number of packages that are affected by changes over the existing works.

Maternal age has important consequences for offspring fitness, with influences on size, development and reproductive schedules. Such maternal age effects may be driven by differential provisioning of resources; yet, little is known about the role of environmental supply of nutritional resources in mediating such effects. We tested the influence of limiting nutritional resource, dietary phosphorus (P), on maternal age effects across multiple generations by examining the potential interactive effects of maternal nutrition and age on daughter and granddaughter life‐history traits in the freshwater crustacean Daphnia pulicaria. Maternal age and diet had significant but contrasting effects on offspring life history. We did not observe any evidence that age effects on offspring life history are mediated by maternal diet. However, granddaughter growth and size at maturation were influenced by the interaction between grandmaternal age and diet, suggesting that the appearance of transgenerational effects of age and diet were delayed by one generation. Because offspring life history is often linked directly and/or indirectly to life history variation in previous generations, we utilized structural equation modelling (SEM) to assess such direct or indirect relationships. SEM revealed striking differences in the relationship between growth, development time and fecundity both within and among generations, depending on the age and diet in the F0 generation. Interestingly, direct and persistent relationships between the F0 generation and the F2 generation are most prevalent when grandmothers are old and fed low P diets, and such relationships are largely driven by fecundity in the F0 generation. Additionally, indirect causal relationships between the F0 generation and F2 generation are most pronounced when grandmothers are young and fed low P diets or when grandmothers are old and fed high P diets. Our results indicate that transgenerational effects of maternal age and environment persist across multiple generations, and vary between successive generations. Further, our examination of the interaction network between life‐history traits of each generation suggest that the mechanisms for such persistent transgenerational effects are highly dependent on maternal condition. A plain language summary is available for this article.

Using the revised job demands–resources model, this study aimed to analyze the direct relationship of teacher self‐efficacy with burnout and its indirect relationship through perceived social support as well as the moderating roles of teacher optimism in these relationships. The study used a Bayesian estimator with structural equation modeling to examine the structural relationships among self‐efficacy, optimism, perceived social support, and burnout, using data collected from a sample of 288 teachers in Elâzığ, a city in the eastern region of Turkey. The results demonstrated the negative relationships between teacher self‐efficacy and optimism with burnout, and the indirect negative relationship between teacher self‐efficacy and burnout through perceived social support. In addition, the present study revealed that the direct relationship between teacher self‐efficacy and perceived social support and the indirect relationship between teacher self‐efficacy and burnout through perceived social support can be strengthened depending on the level of optimism. Recommendations for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers are presented.

This study focuses on entrepreneurs associated with construction-based renewable energy projects located in Pakistan. The objectives of this research to identify the critical factors that affect the success of entrepreneurs. We used three dimensions of critical success factors such as government support (GS), access to finance (AF), and personality traits (PTs). This study consists of four important direct and indirect relationships. First, we examine the direct relationship between critical success factors (CSFs) and the success of entrepreneurs. Second, we investigate the direct relationship between CSFs and supportive leadership (SL). Third, we also examine the indirect relationship of supportive leadership between CSFs and the success of entrepreneurs. Fourth, we test the direct relationship between supportive leadership and the success of entrepreneurs. In this study, we collected data from 255 entrepreneurs using convenience sampling techniques associated with construction-based renewable energy projects in Pakistan. A five-point Likert scale is used for data collection through a research questionnaire. The direct and indirect path analyses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results of this study conclude. First, in the direct relationship, all the critical success factors, i.e., personality traits, access to finance, and government support, positively and significantly impact entrepreneurs' success. Second, the results confirmed that all critical success factors positively correlate with supportive leadership. Third, the results also revealed that supportive leadership significantly and positively mediates the relationship between the three CSFs and the success of entrepreneurs. Fourth, the outcomes also demonstrate that supportive leadership positively affects the success of entrepreneurs. The outcomes of this study also suggest some theoretical and practical suggestions for academicians and entrepreneurial personnel.

The study aimed to explore the causal relationships between supervising working alliance, counseling self-esteem and attachment styles through a causal model adopting a path analysis method. The study sample consisted of 289 counseling students at Yarmouk University. Three scales were administered to measure the supervising working alliance, self-esteem and attachment styles. Results showed a direct relationship between avoidant attachment styles and supervising working alliance, and an indirect relationship with counseling self-esteem. There was a direct relationship between secure attachment style, supervising working alliance and counseling self-esteem; and between supervising working alliance and counseling self-esteem. In addition, direct and indirect relationships were evident between avoidant attachment style and special relationship domain of supervising working alliance and counseling self-esteem; whereas it affected client focus domain with a direct relationship. Direct relationships also were evident between secure attachment styles, the relationship domain and self-focus domain.