Impact Of Personal Characteristics Research Articles

Gender and homophily: Differences in male and female association in Blau space

Homophily, the tendency for similar individuals to associate, is one of the most robust findings in social science. Despite this robustness, we have less information about how personal characteristics relate to differences in the strength of homophily. Nor do we know much about the impact of personal characteristics on judgments of relative dissimilarity. The present study compares the strength of age, religious, and educational homophily for male and female non-kin ties using network data from the 1985 General Social Survey. It also compares the patterning of ties among dissimilar alters for both sexes. The results of this exploratory effort indicate that males and females are almost equally homophilous, although religious homophily exerts a stronger influence on females than males. Males and females do, however, differ in their tendency to associate with certain types of dissimilar alters. Education is essentially uniform for both sexes, religious difference is more important for females than males, and those over sixty or under thirty are less different from the middle categories of age for females than for males. The results suggest that males are able to bridge larger areas of social space in their non-kin interpersonal networks and likely accumulate greater social capital as a consequence.

Examining Herzberg’s Theory: Improving Job Satisfaction among Non-academic Employees at a University

This study reports the results of a survey of 2700 employees in business operations at a large public, research university. The analysis tests Herzberg et al.’s (1959) well-known, duality theory of motivators and hygiene factors and the impact of personal characteristics and job characteristics on perceptions of the work environment and job satisfaction. The results offer inconclusive support of Herzberg’s theory although the work itself is the strongest predictor of job satisfaction after controlling for both personal and job characteristics. The study concludes by discussing both practical implications, for those in leadership positions in a university, and theoretical implications for researchers interested in exploring job satisfaction in a higher education context.

Selecting Foster Carers: Could Personnel Psychology Improve Outcomes?

Foster care services are struggling in a context of decreasing community interest in providing care and increases in the demand for placements, the proportion of children with special needs requiring care and placement breakdowns. As Sinclair's recent (2005) overview emphasises, improving carer selection could reduce pressure on services by selecting those applicants best suited to the demands of the task. Research and practice from personnel psychology has long been used by employers seeking to identify the most suitable employees for a particular job, but this approach appears not to have been applied to selecting foster carers. In recent years, in personnel psychology, there has been increased recognition of the impact of personal characteristics on work performance satisfaction and retention. Barbara Kennedy and Rosamund Thorpe explore the utility of one such test, the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), in predicting foster carer suitability and subsequent retention among Australian carers. Both group and case-study analysis suggests potential worthy of further investigation.

Predicting the Persistence and Performance of Newly Recruited Telephone Interviewers

The impact of personal characteristics and work environment on telephone interviewer job persistence, efficiency, and effectiveness is examined. Data included interviewer demographics, experience, skills, and attitudes, as well as time-clock and production statistics from 383 newly recruited telephone interviewers working on two large-scale national surveys. Findings indicate that interviewer success results from a complex mix of individual and workplace characteristics. Workplace factors such as location of facility, shift worked, and study assignment appear more relevant to predicting persistence in the job, while individual attributes, including telephone skills, previous experience, and having a confident yet realistic attitude toward survey research are more closely related to job performance. These findings have implications for both the recruitment of and the training of successful telephone interviewers.

Hours Constraints and In-Work Poverty

We develop a new approach to modelling the impact of personal characteristics on the extent of poverty, using propensity score matching methods. This is used to evaluate the contribution of hours constraints to poverty, as revealed in UK and US datasets. The results reveal a significant difference, consistent with the existence of greater labour market flexibility in the US.

Integrating health and social care: implications for joint working and community care outcomes for older people

In England, the theme of promoting collaborative working between social and primary health care remains high on the policy agenda. The underlying assumption, largely untested, is that a greater degree of structural integration benefits service users. This paper reports the findings from a feasibility study comparing two models of joint working and examining the relative impact of personal characteristics, service use and co-location on the likelihood of older people remaining in the community. Baseline standardised interviews with 79 older people aged 75 + with complex needs in two social services departments were carried out following referral, covering social circumstances, physical and mental health and services received, with follow-up interviews after six months. Contacts between social workers and primary care were tracked. The findings suggest that co-location does not necessarily lead to substantially closer interprofessional working in terms of greater contact between social workers and GPs or social workers and community nurses. Factors affecting outcome were degree of cognitive impairment, intensity of home care received and whether the older person lived alone. Whatever the model of collaborative working, its effects on remaining in the community must be assessed in the wider context of the characteristics and services received by older people.

Community Integration Following SCI

Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) can result in long-term physical impairments, subsequent disability (inability to perform functional activities) and difficulties participating in social activities. For individuals with this condition, successful rehabilitation involves maximizing community integration areas, including: the ability to participate in community life activities, remain active in family and recreational events, and access local activities and resources, including health care followup and employment opportunities. Community integration emphasizes the ability of individuals to overcome disability barriers and has been shown to have a positive influence on their quality of life. With recent health care trends emphasizing earlier discharges from acute rehabilitation centers, it becomes increasingly important to adequately prepare individuals (and their support networks) for return to home and community. This special issue of NeuroRehabilitation presents nine articles that address this continuum of community integration. Prominent researchers associated with the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) and the National Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems have submitted articles that provide state-of-the art research and review of the current literature related to this topic. Three key “layers” of the community integration continuum will be highlighted in this issue: the relationship of participation to personal characteristics, the effects of the environment and the benefits of activity-based community opportunities. At the first layer, the impact of personal characteristics is considered. Personal characteristics range from race and gender to personality variables and motivation. In this issue, Krause and his colleagues examine how gender and race impact on psychosocial and quality of life outcomes. Their outcomes highlight the importance of personal characteristics in determining reported priorities and areas of need associated with life satisfaction and participation. In a related article, Charlifue and Gerhart examine how aging is associated with community integration for persons with SCI. The findings indicate a general decline in community reintegration over time in terms of physical independence, mobility, occupation and social integration with an associated decline in life satisfaction. The next layer affecting participation is environmental characteristics that can serve as barriers to, or supports for, activities and independence. This layer includes factors such as the physical and social environment, community resources, and public policy. Centers for Independent Living (CILs) are community-based programs that help to provide necessary resources and minimize barriers to enable this process to be more effective. The article by Forchheimer and Tate discusses the need for a variety of independent living skills and the association of those skills with outcomes while highlighting the importance of communication between medical centers and CILs. Personal assistant services, another support that allow persons with SCI to achieve greater independence and community integration, are reviewed by Hagglund and his colleagues. After discussing the benefits and importance of these services, evidence-based recommendations are made with regard

Self-appraised lifestyle satisfaction of persons with intellectual disability: the impact of personal characteristics and community residential facilities *

Self-appraised lifestyle satisfaction of persons with intellectual disability: the impact of personal characteristics and community residential facilities *

Self‐appraised lifestyle satisfaction of persons with intellectual disability: the impact of personal characteristics and community residential facilities

The present study addresses two goals: (a) to examine the impact of personal characteristics, behavioural characteristics, and living arrangement on participants’ self‐appraised lifestyle satisfaction (LS), and (b) to compare the level of LS across different settings and to try to answer the question of whether the living arrangement made a contribution to general LS independent of residents’ personal and behavioural characteristics. A total of 247 adults with intellectual disability, randomly selected from residents of group homes, semi‐independent and independent apartments in the community, participated in the study. Residents were interviewed about their LS. The instrument that was used is the lifestyle satisfaction scale (LSS). Residents’ personal and behavioural characteristics explained more of the variance of total LS than the living arrangement. Among the personal and behavioural variables, only need for mobility assistance and level of challenging behaviour predicted LS. Participants who did not need mobility assistance or had less problem behaviour expressed markedly higher lifestyle satisfaction. Living in a semi‐independent apartment made a significant and independent contribution to the total lifestyle satisfaction over and above the contribution made by personal and behavioural characteristics. However, participants who did not live in a semi‐independent apartment expressed more lifestyle satisfaction than those who did.

The Impact of Personal Characteristics and the Regional Milieu on the Transition from Unemployment to Self-employment: Empirical Evidence for Germany / Zur Bedeutung von individuellen Charakteristika und regionalem Milieu für Existenzgründungen aus der Arbeitslosigkeit: Empirische Ergebnisse für Deutschland

Summary The focus of this paper is on the choice of the unemployed between becoming an entrepreneur or not. It contributes to the literature by empirically investigating the impact of personal characteristics and attitudes, and of the regional “entrepreneurial milieu”, on the individual decision to start a new business out of unemployment. The econometric study is based on data from a recent representative survey of the population in ten German planning regions. We use a version of the logit model that takes care of both the rare events nature of the transition from unemployment to self-employment, and of the regional stratification of the data, and the results of the non linear models are carefully interpreted and illustrated. We show that lack of personal contact with a young entrepreneur reduces the probability of starting one’s own business. A favourable ‘regional entrepreneurial milieu’ (proxied by higher levels of current start-up activity and larger shares of unemployed among the starters in a region) has a positive effect on the individual propensity to step into self-employment. All these impacts are not only statistically significant, but economically important, too. A comparison of unemployed with employed and not employed nascent entrepreneurs reveals remarkable differences regarding the impact of sex, age, and higher education, while the positive impact of personal contacts with a young entrepreneur and of a comparable high share of nascent entrepreneurs in the region holds across all groups.

Propensity to adopt technological innovations: the impact of personal characteristics and organizational context

Abstract This study investigated how personal characteristics and organizational context are associated with strategic decision makers' intentions to adopt technological innovations. Positive significant relationships were found between hospital top managers' intentions to adopt potential innovations and risk propensity, self-efficacy, perceived organizational strategy, perceived information processing capacity, and perceived resource availability. The impact of personal and organizational factors on intentions to adopt, implications of our results, and future research directions are discussed.

Perceptions of alcoholics: the impact of personal characteristics.

Perceptions of alcoholics: the impact of personal characteristics.

Making It in Able-Bodied America: Career Development In Young Adults With Physical Disabilities

A mail survey of 353 young adults who had physical disabilities and were between the ages of 20 and 30 was conducted to identify what bridges and barriers they experienced in their transition from school to work or alternative situation. The respondents were recruited from 11 education, rehabilitation and self-help organizations in New York and California. Data on career development were analyzed by multivariate techniques to assess the impact of personal characteristics, functional capacities, and work-socialization experiences on these outcomes. Consistent with research on the general population, personal characteristics (e.g., educational achievement) were the best disriminators of employment status. Reported use and benefit of formal helping resources was rather limited, suggesting need to re-shape the role, perception and/or impact of these professional services. Access to additional resources and improved opportunities through linkages among the special education, vocational rehabilitation and private-sector employment communities is recommended.