Experienced Time Pressure Research Articles

Slowing work down by teleworking periodically in rural settings?

Purpose– The rise of knowledge work has entailed controversial characteristics for well-being at work. Increased intensification, discontinuities and interruptions at work have been reported. However, knowledge workers have the opportunity to flexibly adjust their work arrangements to support their concentration, inspiration or recuperation. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the experienced well-being of 46 knowledge workers was subject to changes during and after a retreat type telework period in rural archipelago environment.Design/methodology/approach– The authors conducted a longitudinal survey among the participants at three points in time: one to three weeks before, during, and two to eight weeks after the period. The authors analyzed the experienced changes in psychosocial work environment and well-being at work by the measurement period by means of repeated measures variance analysis. In the next step the authors included the group variable of occupational position to the model.Findings– The analysis showed a decrease in the following measures: experienced time pressure, interruptions, negative feelings at work, exhaustiveness of work as well as stress and an increase in work satisfaction. There were no changes in experienced job influence, clarity of work goals and work engagement. Occupational position had some effect to the changes. Private entrepreneurs and supervisors experienced more remarkable effects of improvement in work-related well-being than subordinates. However, the effects were less sustainable for the supervisors than the other two groups.Originality/value– This paper provides insights into how work and well-being are affected by the immediate work environment and how well-being at work can be supported by retreat type telework arrangements.

Associations between parents' subjective time pressure and mental health problems among children in the Nordic countries: a population based study.

BackgroundThe home, the family and the parents represent a context of everyday life that is important for child health and development, with parent-child relationships highlighted as crucial for children’s mental health. Time pressure is an emerging feature of modern societies and previous studies indicates that parents with children living at home experience time pressure to a greater extent than people with no children living at home. Previous studies of children’s mental health in relation to parents’ time pressure are lacking. Hence, the purpose of this study was to examine the association between parents’ subjective time pressure and mental health problems among children in the Nordic countries as well as potential disparities between boys and girls in different age groups.Methods4592 children, aged 4-16 from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, participating in the 2011 version of the NordChild study, were included. The Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire was used to measure children’s mental health and associations to parents’ time pressure were assessed by multiple logistic regression analysis.ResultsAmong children of parents experiencing time pressure, 18.6% had mental health problems compared to 10.1% among children of parents experiencing time pressure not or sometimes. The odds of mental health problems were higher among both boys (OR 1.80 95% CI 1.32-2.46) and girls (OR 1.95 95% CI 1.42-2.66) if their parents experienced time pressure when adjusted for financial stress. The highest prevalence of mental health problems in the case of parental time pressure was found among girls 13-16 years old (23.6%) and the lowest prevalence was found among boys 13-16 years old (10.7%).ConclusionsIn this study an association between parents’ subjective time pressure and increased mental health problems among children was found. Given that time pressure is a growing feature of modern societies, the results might contribute to an explanation as to mental health problems are common among children in the Nordic countries in spite of otherwise favourable conditions. Additional research on the linkage between parents’ experienced time pressure and children’s and adolescents’ mental health problems is needed to confirm the novel findings of this study.

Time pressure among parents in the Nordic countries: A population-based cross-sectional study

To estimate the prevalence of time pressure experienced by parents in the Nordic countries and examine potential gender disparities as well as associations to parents' family and/or living conditions. 5949 parents of children aged 2-17 years from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, participating in the 2011 version of the NordChild study, reported their experience of time pressure when keeping up with duties of everyday life. A postal questionnaire addressed to the most active caretaker of the child, was used for data gathering and logistic regression analysis applied. The mother was regarded as the primary caregiver in 83.9% of the cases. Of the mothers, 14.2% reported that they experienced time pressure "most often", 54.7 % reported "sometimes" and 31.1 % reported they did "not" experience time pressure at all. Time pressure was experienced by 22.2 % of mothers in Sweden, 18.4% in Finland, 13.7% in Norway and 3.9% in Denmark, and could be associated to lack of support, high educational level, financial stress, young child age and working overtime. The mother is regarded as the child's primary caregiver among the vast majority of families in spite of living in societies with gender-equal family policies. The results indicate that time pressure is embedded in everyday life of mainly highly-educated mothers and those experiencing financial stress and/or lack of social support. No conclusion could be made about time pressure from the "normbreaking" fathers participating in the study, but associations were found to financial stress and lack of support.

Work and Labor in Slow-Progressive Sectors of the Economy

In the late 1960s, William Baumol demonstrated that structurally unbalanced growth, with the associated cost disease phenomenon, can be expected to have some very particular effects on work and labor in slow-progressive sectors of the economy: performing arts, health care, education, and law enforcement. Specifically, there will be downward pressure on the rate of growth of unit wages and upward pressure on the rate of growth of productivity in these sectors. In the long run, the effects of cost disease are potentially damaging for work and labor in some of the key human service occupations in the public sector. In this interdisciplinary paper, we put forward a simple model, which reconstructs and renews the model discovered by Baumol in 1967. Our model makes only a minor modification to Baumol’s original cost disease model, but the implications of this modification are noteworthy. They are also largely unexplored in empirical research. In this paper, we search for empirical traces of the effects of cost disease on work and labor. We use earlier economic and social scientific research literature on inter-industry wage differences and on time pressure, and we analyze differences in work orientations with the help of the ISSP Work Orientations III data set. Our empirical findings are early and rough intimations. However, they do give preliminary support to the propositions of the paper. The observed changes in employment, wages, and experienced time pressure all correspond to what we would expect on the basis of the cost disease hypothesis. The same applies to the observed differences in the structure of incentives across different occupational groups. The paper is not empirically conclusive, but we see it as a basis for interesting further research.

Facilitators and barriers to safe emergency department transitions for community dwelling older people with dementia and their caregivers: A social ecological study

BackgroundInternationally, older adults visit the ED at a rate higher than other age groups. Little attention has been given to ED care for older people with dementia, although concern for such care is growing with the increasing number of individuals worldwide affected by this significant disabling problem. It is critical to understand ED transitional processes and consequences because the complexity of dementia care poses multiple challenges to optimizing safety, effectiveness and quality of care during admission, assessment, and treatment in this setting. MethodUsing an interpretive, descriptive exploratory design with three iterative, interrelated phases, we conducted interviews, created a photographic narrative journal (PNJ), and finally held photo elicitation focus groups to identify factors that facilitate or impede safe transitional care for community dwelling older adults with dementia in two Canadian emergency departments, and to identify practice solutions for nurses. We purposively sampled to recruit ten older adult-family caregiver dyads, ten ED RNs, and four Nurse Practitioners. Data were analyzed using constant comparative analysis. ResultsFour interconnected reinforcing consequences emerged from our analysis: being under-triaged; waiting and worrying about what was wrong; time pressure with lack of attention to basic needs; and, relationships and interactions leading to feeling ignored, forgotten and unimportant. Together these consequences stem from a triage system that does not recognize atypical presentation of disease and illness. This potentiated a cascade of vulnerability in older people with dementia and their caregivers. Nurses experienced time pressure challenges that impeded their ability to be responsive to basic care needs. ConclusionsIn an aging population where dementia is becoming more prevalent, the unit of care in the ED must include both the older person and their family caregiver. Negative reinforcing consequences can be interrupted when nurses communicate and engage more regularly with the older adult-caregiver dyad to build trust. System changes are also needed to support the ability of nurses to carry out best practices.

Musculoskeletal pain and psychosocial factors among Lebanese workers

ObjectivesEpidemiological research has linked musculoskeletal disorders with various physical activities in the workplace, and also with psychosocial influences such as job demand and job dissatisfaction. Studies assessing musculoskeletal pain in...

Using scantron versus an audience response system for survey research: Does methodology matter when measuring computer-mediated communication competence?

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether results of the computer-mediated communication (CMC) competency scale differ depending on the survey instrument used. Data were collected from 173 undergraduate students (53% female; average age 20). Of these, 96 subjects completed the questionnaire using scantron sheets, while 77 subjects used an audience response system called Classroom Performance System (CPS). All subjects completed a second questionnaire using paper-and-pencil to evaluate their experience with either the scantron sheets or the CPS. t-Test results show that using the CPS is more fun for participants ( p<.000); no more or less difficult ( p=.806); and does not make a difference with regard to experienced time pressure ( p=.425). Subjects have higher doubts about the validity of their recorded answers ( p=.007) when using the CPS. Regression analysis shows that in two out of 12 constructs of the CMC competency scale, scoring was influenced by using a technological data collection method. The two constructs were “message factors” ( p=.002) and “medium factors” ( p=.002). Overall, results support the use of the CPS as an alternative to scantron sheets for measuring CMC competence.

Conditions Under Which Stronger Job Performance-Job Satisfaction Relationships May Be Observed: A Closer Look at Two Situational Contingencies.

Organizational pressure for performance and experienced time pressure, two situational contingencies, were hypothesized to moderate the performance-satisfaction relationship. Tests of the proposed moderating effects were conducted by using moderated curvilinear regression and subgroup analyses. Findings from these analyses were consistently and strongly supportive of the hypothesized effects.