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Pune is a prominent information technology (IT) hub in India, where snacking has become a customary practice among IT professionals. This study aims to determine the pattern and factors associated with snacking among IT professionals from various multinational corporations (MNCs) in Pune, Maharashtra, India.

This cross-sectional study considered 404 IT professionals aged 21 to 50 years. A convenient sampling method was adopted to administer a validated questionnaire. Information on snacking patterns and factors associated with snacking were recorded. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data with p = 0.05. The participation was voluntary, and confidentiality was ensured.

The mean age of the participants was 31 ± 7.9 years. Almost half (51.5%) of the participants engaged in daily snacking. The sociodemographic factors such as younger age (0.000), marital status (p = 0.001), salary package (p = 0.006), living situation (p = 0.05), designation (p = 0.042) and work experience (p = 0.001) significantly related with the unhealthy snacking pattern scores. Daily snacking was significantly associated with hunger (p = 0.001), stress (p = 0.001), weight (p = 0.000), peer influence (p = 0.041) and taste (p = 0.001). Hunger, stress, taste, peer influence, boredom and weight were significantly (p = 0.05) associated with unhealthy snacking patterns.

The mean age of the participants was 31 ± 7.9 years. Almost half (51.5%) of the participants engaged in daily snacking. The sociodemographic factors such as younger age (0.000), marital status (p = 0.001), salary package (p = 0.006), living situation (p = 0.05), designation (p = 0.042) and work experience (p = 0.001) significantly related with the unhealthy snacking pattern scores. Daily snacking was significantly associated with hunger (p = 0.001), stress (p = 0.001), weight (p = 0.000), peer influence (p = 0.041) and taste (p = 0.001). Overall, hunger, stress, taste, peer influence, boredom and weight were significantly (p = 0.05) associated with unhealthy snacking patterns such as snacking in between, prioritizing taste over nutrition, exclusion of fruits and vegetables in snacks, lack of control over snacking and snacking habit.

This study uniquely identifies the snacking pattern of IT professionals from Pune, India, which primarily includes unhealthy snacking. Various socio-demographic and other factors such as hunger, taste, stress, boredom, convenience, weight and peer influence, were associated with unhealthy snacking. Understanding the snacking pattern and its determinants can help create nutrition interventions to promote healthy snacking and decrease the risk of noncommunicable diseases in IT professionals.

Following the theory of emotional events, this paper aims to use the bright triad and the dark tetrad as representations to investigate the role of positive and negative personality patterns in achieving positive and negative innovation. The study also examines the mediating role of emotional intelligence and abusive supervision and the interactive role of emotional exhaustion in understanding the relationship between positive and negative personality patterns and positive and negative innovation.

To test the hypotheses of the study model, a set of questionnaires was distributed to a sample of 500 medical officers working in different departments of public hospitals in southern Iraq. The data were analysed using the structured equation model.

The results of the current study confirm previous studies on emotional intelligence because the bright triad negatively associates with negative innovation and positively associates with positive innovation. Meanwhile, the dark tetrad positively associates with negative innovation through abusive supervision, and that emotional exhaustion reinforces the negative side and weakens the positive side of the relationships.

This study contributes to the literature by emphasising that the values represented by the bright triad have a strong readiness to show positive innovation and immunity to negative influence caused by abusive supervision. Meanwhile, the negative emotions of the dark tetrad pattern result in negative patterns because they correlate with negative innovation and the avoidance of positive behaviour, which is escalated by abusive supervision.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to unprecedented mental health repercussions in the lives of every individual including university students. Therefore, study on students’ psychological state and its associated factors during the pandemic are of importance. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.

An online survey was done on a total of 207 university students of Pakistan to collect information on socio-demographic characteristics, concerns or fears amidst COVID-19 and mental distress. Validated tools; Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9)-Depression were used to assess stress, anxiety and depression, respectively.

Around 14% of the university students were experiencing severe stress and anxiety, while 8.2% had severe depression. The authors found that stress among university students was related to psychiatric illness or symptoms (OR = 5.1: 1.1, 22.9) and unpredictability due to the pandemic (OR = 3.7: 1.2, 11.2). The significant determinants of anxiety were psychiatric illness/symptoms (OR = 6.6: 3.4, 12.9), implementation of public health measures (OR = 3.7: 1.1, 11.6), employed mothers (OR = 2.4: 1.1, 5.0) and lack of support from university administration (OR = 2.2: 1.0, 5.0). While the factors associated with depression included psychiatric illness or symptoms (OR = 8.4: 3.3, 21.5), unpredictability due to pandemic (OR = 6.8: 2.2, 20.7), impaired social support system (OR = 3.7: 1.3, 10.4) and studying without a scholarship (OR = 2.1: 1.0, 4.4).

These findings call for an urgent need to develop appropriate interventions and educational programs that could address the psychological needs of students.

The study directs the role of university and faculty in dealing the mental health needs of the student in COVID-19 pandemic time.

Educational programs are important that could address the psychological needs of students in COVID-19 pandemic.

University students reported mental distress during COVID-19 pandemic which shows that younger people are at risk of COVID-19 repercussions. Moreover, several stressors (i.e. impaired social support system and lack of support from universities) were revealed that could be mitigated by implementing appropriate strategies.

Integrating person-job fit theory with the stressor-emotion model of counterproductive work behavior (CWB), the current study aims to examine which behavioral pattern (fight: CWB vs flight: withdrawal) employees are more likely to adopt when they experience perceived overqualification (POQ). We further investigate anger as the underlying emotional mechanism for these relations because anger can be expressed and thus reflected in CWB, or constrained and thus reflected in withdrawal behavior. Furthermore, different stressor-attenuating strategies including relaxation during work breaks and mastery experiences at work are examined as mitigating factors of these relations.

Time-lagged data were collected from 176 full-time employees in China using a field survey research design.

We found that employees who experience POQ are more likely to engage in withdrawal than in CWB. Anger mediated the relations of POQ with both CWB and withdrawal. Relaxation moderated the relation between POQ and anger, as well as the indirect relations of POQ with CWB and withdrawal through anger.

This study enhances understanding of employees’ affective and behavioral reactions to POQ. However, the survey design was not longitudinal and causality cannot be established.

POQ is associated with undesirable employee behaviors and should therefore be avoided by organizations. If POQ is unavoidable, organizations can use job design and offer training to foster relaxation in between tasks among employees.

In the framework of person-job fit theory, our study provides insight about employees’ “fight” or “flight” responses to POQ, and further illustrates the mechanism and the attenuating factors in this processes.

Gamification design is considered an effective way of changing users' health behavior and improving their health management performance. Even though numerous studies have investigated the positive effect of gamification competition on users, little research has considered gamification's ineffectiveness and negative effects. In particular, how gamification competition affects users' technological exhaustion remains unclear.

According to flow theory and related research on gamification, this study discusses the nonlinear relationship between gamification competition and users' technological exhaustion. Furthermore, the authors analyze the moderating effect of user type (socializers and achievers) and users' health condition on this nonlinear relationship. Based on flow theory, the authors propose a series of research hypotheses. To test all research hypotheses, the authors collected information from 407 users via a questionnaire as the data for this study.

The empirical results found a U-shaped relationship between gamification competition and technological exhaustion. Technological exhaustion gradually decreases as competition increases until reaching the lowest point; after that, technological exhaustion gradually increases as competition increases. Further, being a socializer and health condition play a moderating role in the U-shaped relationship between competition and technological exhaustion.

This study's findings not only enrich the related research in flow theory and gamification, but also contribute to the effective design of gamification in health management platforms.

The study aims to qualitatively analyze how faculty can mobilize the intellectual capital of higher education institutions (HEIs), comprising human, structural and relational capital to enable the education and learning of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Drawing upon the extant literature, the researcher conducted a qualitative study through written, in-depth interviews with a sample of 40 academic staff/faculty members having prior experience in teaching individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The data was collected through a set of questions formulated as key questions, to be asked to all participants for their responses.

Results of the analysis demonstrated that intellectual capital’s contribution to higher education of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities can be best understood in terms of its three components/dimensions. Accordingly, three main themes, with each comprising two sub-themes were uncovered. The first theme, leveraging human capital comprised: faculty acumen and faculty training as sub-themes; the second theme, resourcing structural capital comprised: tangible and intangible structural capital as sub-themes; and the third theme, nurturing relational capital comprised: in-class engagement and the second is ex-class connection as sub-themes.

The paper collects data from 40 faculty having prior experience in teaching individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to explore and reveal a completely new perspective of looking at intellectual capital as a means of providing accessible and inclusive higher education to differently-abled students, making them a part of the mainstream.

Prior research has extensively examined how bringing technology from work into the non-work life domain creates conflict, yet the reverse pathway has rarely been studied. The purpose of this study is to bridge this gap and examine how the non-work use of smartphones in the workplace affects work–life conflict.

Drawing from three literature streams: technostress, work–life conflict and role boundary theory, the authors theorise on how limiting employees' ability to integrate the personal life domain into work, by means of technology use policy, contributes to stress and work–life conflict. To test this model, the authors employ a natural experiment in a company that changed its policy from fully restricting to open smartphone access for non-work purposes in the workplace. The insights gained from the experiment were explored further through qualitative interviews.

Work–life conflict declines when a ban on using smartphones for non-work purposes in the workplace is revoked. This study's results show that the relationship between smartphone use in the workplace and work–life conflict is mediated by sensed stress. Additionally, a post-hoc analysis reveals that work performance was unchanged when the smartphone ban was revoked.

First, this study advances the authors' understanding of how smartphone use policies in the workplace spill over to affect non-work life. Second, this work contributes to the technostress literature by revealing how, in specific situations, engagement with ICT can reduce distress and strain.

Cyberloafing is an organization-directed counterproductive work behavior (CWB). One stream of literature deems cyberloafing to be bad for organizations and their employees, while another suggests cyberloafing is a coping response to stressful work events. Our work contributes to the latter stream of literature. The key objective of our study is to examine whether cyberloafing could be a means to cope with a stressful work event-abusive supervision, and if yes, what mediating and boundary conditions are involved. For this investigation, the authors leveraged the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory which posits that individuals engage in CWB to cope with the negative affect generated by the stressors and that this relationship is moderated at the first stage by personality traits.

Using a multi-wave survey design, the authors collected data from 357 employees working in an Indian IT firm. Results revealed support for three out of the four hypotheses.

Based on the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory, the authors found that work-related negative affect fully mediated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing, and work locus of control (WLOC) moderated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and work-related negative affect. The authors did not find any evidence of a direct relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing. Also, the positive indirect relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing through work-related negative affect was moderated at the first stage by the WLOC such that the indirect effect was stronger (weaker) at high (low) levels of WLOC.

This work demonstrates that cyberloafing could be a way for employees to cope with their abusive supervisors.

Given the limited literature on depression as a contributing factor to compulsive social media use, the present research examines the role of perceived depressive mood (PDM) in developing compulsive social media use behavior. The authors also identify and hypothesize channels such as contingent self-esteem (CSE), social interaction anxiety (SIA) and fear of negative evaluation (FNE), which may explain how PDM affects compulsive social media use.

The research model was empirically tested with a survey of 367 Chinese university students using structural equation modeling by drawing on the escape and self-presentation lenses.

The findings indicate that PDM contributes to compulsive social media use behavior both directly and indirectly through CSE. Furthermore, the impact of CSE on compulsive social media use is mediated by the FNE, whereas SIA fails to mediate this effect.

The results can advance the authors’ knowledge of the role and process by which depressive mood impacts compulsive social media use. These findings may add insights into psychological treatment and help in, for example, developing counseling programs or coping strategies for depressed people to protect them from using social media excessively.

This research identifies the pathway mechanism between PDM and compulsive use of social media. It also increases the understanding of how CSE and social interaction deficiencies contribute to compulsive social media usage (CSMU).

The purpose of this study is to propose a research model based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to examine whether media richness (MR), human-system interaction (HSI) and human-human interaction (HHI) as technological feature antecedents to medical professionals’ learning engagement (LE) can affect their learning persistence (LP) in massive open online courses (MOOCs).

Sample data for this study were collected from medical professionals at six university-/medical university-affiliated hospitals in Taiwan. A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed, and 309 (51.5%) usable questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling in this study.

This study certified that medical professionals’ perceived MR, HSI and HHI in MOOCs positively affected their emotional LE, cognitive LE and social LE elicited by MOOCs, which together explained their LP in MOOCs. The results support all proposed hypotheses and the research model accounts for 84.1% of the variance in medical professionals’ LP in MOOCs.

This study uses the S-O-R model as a theoretical base to construct medical professionals’ LP in MOOCs as a series of the psychological process, which is affected by MR and interaction (i.e. HSI and HHI). Noteworthily, three psychological constructs, emotional LE, cognitive LE and social LE, are adopted to represent medical professionals’ organisms of MOOCs adoption. To date, hedonic/utilitarian concepts are more commonly adopted as organisms in prior studies using the S-O-R model and psychological constructs have received lesser attention. Hence, this study enriches the S-O-R model into an invaluable context, and this study’s contribution on the application of capturing psychological constructs for completely explaining three types of technological features as external stimuli to medical professionals’ LP in MOOCs is well-documented.