Search results

The purpose of this systematic review is to evaluate the extant literature on depression and anxiety disorders in police using a multinational data set to determine whether the prevalence of these trauma-related disorders (TRMDs) is elevated in comparison to the general population.

Systematic review was employed in combination with best-evidence narrative synthesis to evaluate these hypotheses.

Despite wide variability in prevalence outcomes across the literature, strong evidence supports the hypothesis that the prevalence of depression is elevated in police, whereas moderate evidence supports the same hypothesis regarding anxiety. Preliminary evaluation of commonly examined predictive factors for each disorder demonstrated weak and inconsistent associations between these TRMDs and sociodemographic factors. No studies evaluated the relationship between incident-related factors (e.g. severity or frequency of exposure) and TRMDs, thus, at present, the literature on police is almost entirely unable to address the question of whether the prevalence of these disorders in police is influenced by exposure to work-related trauma.

The findings highlight a critical need for future work to address incident-related factors in predicting symptoms of depression and anxiety in police samples to determine whether these disorders bear a unique relationship to work-related traumatic exposure. Such work will significantly benefit the design and implementation of successful prevention and intervention strategies in the workplace.

The present review provides a comprehensive synthesis of a highly variable literature, highlighting critical gaps in our current knowledge of TRMDs in police and suggesting numerous avenues for future study.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how digital technologies were introduced in a collaborative literacy intervention to address a population long underserved by traditional schools: the Aboriginals of Canada.

Situated within a critical ethnographic project, this paper examines how digital technologies were introduced. The questions focused on: how can critical multiliteracies be used to engage students, in both academic and digital literacies development? In what ways does participation in multimodal media production provide evidence of teachers and students' critical literacy development?

Digital literacies as a part of multiliteracies were developed in teaching contexts where learning is challenged by many factors.

The paper reports on the achievement and the struggles that remain. Implications for further research and teacher education are also drawn from the experience of implementing a broader definition of literacy in academic settings with Aboriginal students of Canada.

The inclusion of a digital curriculum provides possibilities for greater academic success for marginalized students in both mainstream and alternative schools.

This study investigated the associations between income, income-associated social identify, health and mass incidents in Chongqing, a Chinese city. A representative sample of mass-incident participants from Chongqing, aged 18 years and over, participated using a questionnaire. In addition, the public servants working in letters and visit offices were invited to participate in the study. A sample of 2,000 officers working in letter and visit offices, with 1,938 returns, represented a high response rate 96.9%. Of the 480 mass-incident participants, 465 (88%) surveys were usable. Logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the relationship between income and poor-to-fair health status; all individual-level variables (i.e. age, sex, marital status, education, and type of job) were included in the model.

Income displayed significant linkages to self-rated health. Most participants are farmers and most of them are from low socioeconomic areas and status; in urban area and southeast of Chongqing region, military and unemployed consisted of the majority of mass-incident participants. The sense of identity of these people is having impaired employment opportunities, having unsuitable housing arrangements and living in a deprived community with a low socioeconomic level in comparison with other areas and provinces in China.

Income is a significant predictor of poor health outcome. This is linked to the sense of identity. This deprivation can challenge the cultural identity of individuals who, they feel, they are inferior in socioeconomic terms to others who own resources, powers and wealth. Income as an indicator of social inequality revealed its significant predictive role in the occurrence of mass incidents through its impact on sense of deprivation. Further follow-up study is needed to determine the causal relationship between income and social identity.

This study aims to evaluate the prevalence of smoking amongst university students in Brisbane, Australia and associated risk factors.

A cross‐sectional design was used for the study. A sample of 2,414 university students aged 18‐30 was examined to estimate the prevalence of tobacco use. Smoking was measured by means of an online survey that inquired about current tobacco use, socio‐demographic characteristics, self‐rated physical and mental health status and attitudes toward smoking.

The prevalence of tobacco use was 24.9 per cent among male students, 16.6 per cent among female students and 18.8 per cent overall. Low to medium level stress is a strong predictor of smoking in male students. Age and income are significantly related to smoking in female students. For both male and female students, disengagement coping strategies to deal with stressors, feeling not bothered by exposure to smoking, and knowledge of the effect of smoking on health were found to be independently related to smoking.

Factors associated with an increased probability of tobacco smoking were: stress in male students, disengagement coping strategies and holding approval attitudes toward smoking, acceptance of exposure to smoking, and poor knowledge of the effect of smoking on health in both male and female students. It is recommended that active coping strategies, such as exercise and social participation, are the most effective ways of enabling students to cope with smoking cessation and other stressors.

Future initiatives may need to focus on increasing the environmental supports to assist students to actively cope with life stressors, In addition, the implementation of health education programmes, which are designed to modify behaviour via a change in attitudes and beliefs in university, should be examined.

The association between cigarette smoking and morbidity and quality of life among university students is not well documented in Australia. The contribution of this paper is to increase understanding of the association between smoking and life stressors, coping strategies, attitudes and knowledge about the effects of smoking on health in Australia university students.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether university students' smoking behaviour is associated with higher levels of stress and depression directly, or indirectly, via the mediation of coping, personal beliefs and social support.

The study design involves a cross‐sectional survey. Structural equation modelling was employed to explore the relationships between smoking behaviour, stress and depression via the mediating effects of coping resources, personal beliefs and social support.

The higher the stress and depression levels, the more likely the respondents' were to adopt disengagement coping strategies and to engage in smoking behaviour. Stress was not found to have a significant direct effect on smoking behaviour when depression, active coping abilities and social support were included as mediators in the model. Thus, if stress is high yet coping skills are also high and personal beliefs are anti‐smoking, the likelihood of smoking was low.

Disengagement coping strategies significantly increased the likelihood of smoking when stress heightened depression level. However, stress did not independently increase the chance of smoking when active coping and social support were moderating the effects of depression on smoking behaviour. Personal beliefs also acted as an independent contributor to increase the likelihood of smoking when pro‐smoking beliefs were held by individuals. Overall, this study suggests that personal coping strategies and personal beliefs, with social support, are important protective mechanisms through which stress and depression influence smoking behaviour.

Health promotion programmes to encourage smoking cessation should therefore include measures to encourage young adults to adopt active coping strategies (e.g. exercise, recreational activities) to make interventions effective in reducing smoking rate.

This study identifies important mechanisms that underpin smoking behaviour among university students. The results provide evidence that supports the resilience perspective that personal coping resources, personal beliefs and protective factors, such as social support, are important factors either to lead people to adopt smoking behaviour, or to decrease the likelihood of smoking.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions using situational crime prevention approaches to reduce the smoking rate in outdoor areas of a university campus.

A prospective intervention design was designed for the study. Surveys and observations were used to measure the impacts of both the campaign generally and specific strategies on levels of smoking in public places and use of designated smoking areas. Pre‐ and post‐implementation measures were taken. The intervention strategies entailed encouraging voluntary compliance with a “Smoke‐less Campaign”, which asked staff, students and visitors to smoke only in nominated areas. The campaign was supported by “situational” strategies to facilitate compliance, such as making smoking areas available, setting rules and posting instructions, and using campaign ambassadors.

At the end of the three‐month trial the campaign was considered to have had a positive impact. After the campaign at the intervention campus there was a significant increase of 14.4 percent in the proportion of people who reported that they were not affected by second‐hand smoke – from 52.7 percent to 67.1 percent. In addition, 6 percent of survey respondents who smoked reported quitting, while 17 percent of smokers indicated the campaign had helped them to quit or cut down. Observational data showed that 98 percent of smokers complied with directions to smoke in nominated smoking areas.

This study is original in explicitly applying the techniques of situational crime prevention to the problem of smoking in public places. The results provide evidence for the effectiveness of the situational techniques, including “facilitating compliance”, through the availability of smoking areas, “setting rules” and “posting instructions”, and “extending guardianship”, through the use of campaign ambassadors.

Living on the Boundaries: Urban Marginality in National and International Contexts examines the complex, often controversial issues impacting those who live on the margins of society in our densely populated cities. The topic warrants research compiled by an international array of scholars and intellectuals from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to sociology, economics, political science, psychology, education, public health, law, criminology, history, urban studies, geography and demography, and urban planning, among others. This volume, from the first chapter to the last, richly details and informs us about the human condition, from multidisciplinary perspectives, about urban life in global contexts. Why is the study of urban life and urban marginality so consequential? The answer is simple. Because of the unprecedented pace of urbanization, a majority of humans now live in highly dense areas, in our cities. It is our cities which project the visual imagery of the stark class divisions in society. By 2050, it is projected that two thirds of the world's population will live in cities. Any volume which attempts to present dynamic issues in global contexts moves us toward resolving many of the conflicting and confounding issues which plague humankind, in the present, and will be with us in the future, if workable solutions are not found. As one reads the ensuing pages, you cannot help but come away better informed, noting the symmetry of complex societal issues of urban marginality across national boundaries.

Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.