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The Benchmark Resilience tool (BRT-53) is an organisational-level resilience quantification methodology that assesses behavioural traits and perceptions linked to the organisation's ability to plan for, respond to and recover from emergencies and crises. The purpose of this paper is to show the development and validation of a short version of the BRT-53.

Items were drawn from the BRT-53 to create two short-form versions of the tool using two different methods for comparative purposes. The first method involves the selection of items based on the 13 theoretical constructs used in the development of the original tool. This shortened index is called the BRT-13A. The second method derived 13 items from the theoretical constructs using statistical correlations of the items within each construct. This shortened index is called the BRT-13B. The scores from each short-form index were computed into overall resilience scores that were then compared with the overall resilience scores generated from the BRT-53.

The results of these comparisons found that both the BRT-13A and BRT-13B produced valid and reliably similar results to the BRT-53. The BRT-13B proved to be slightly more valid and reliable than the BRT-13A and is recommended over the BRT-53.

The BRT-13B short-form version allows for the quantification of organisational resilience while significantly decreasing the likelihood of survey fatigue and low response rates with very little sacrifice to survey validity or reliability.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the level of job satisfaction among employees in the telecommunications company in Uzbekistan and assess the effects of demographic and work-related variables on job satisfaction.

A survey questionnaire method was used to obtain the data from 403 employees working in the telecommunications company in Uzbekistan. The data were collected using the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire short-form.

The results of the study indicated a significant effect of age and tenure on the job satisfaction. Age was found to be positively associated with the job satisfaction and intention to stay. The older employees are more likely to be satisfied and stay with the current company for the next 5 years. The tenure was also found to be positively correlated with the overall job satisfaction and intrinsic job satisfaction. It also has been revealed that male employees are less likely than female employees to stay in the company for the next 5 years ceteris paribus. According to the survey results, there was no significant impact of education level, gender, marital status or job field on the job satisfaction of the employees.

The results of the study demonstrate interesting job satisfaction findings of employees working in the telecommunications company in Uzbekistan, which can draw attention of the senior management and human resource departments to increase the level of job satisfaction levels among employees and start implementing the job satisfaction measures within the companies in Uzbekistan in order to create effective human resource management systems and retain qualified employees.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the levels of job satisfaction among academicians in the universities of Turkey and to examine the effects of demographics on levels of satisfaction among them.

A questionnaire‐based study was conducted in 648 academicians working in the Universities of Turkey. Data were collected using the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) short form.

The job satisfaction levels of the academicians were found to be moderately high. Social status was ranked as the highest and compensation was ranked as the lowest of the examined items. The results of the study indicated that professors reported a higher level of job satisfaction as compared to instructor and research assistants. Nonetheless, among the demographic variables age, length of service in present university and in higher education as a whole were significantly related to job satisfaction. Marital status and gender were not significantly related to job satisfaction.

This study shows the job satisfaction levels of academicians and the interrelationships between demographic characteristics and satisfaction in the Universities of Turkey, hence the results from this study can help the academicians and the university administrators to increase the satisfaction level.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the presence of bladder and bowel symptoms in women recently imprisoned in Western Australian prisons, specifically; stress, urge and mixed urinary incontinence, faecal incontinence, nocturia, nocturnal enuresis and constipation and the impact on the quality of life (QOL).

Over a 12-month period 29 women, recently released from Western Australia’s female prisons, were surveyed using a questionnaire previously validated for the prison population. The Short Form King’s Health Questionnaire and a modified version of the Manchester Health Questionnaire were used to assess the effects of these symptoms on QOL.

Of those surveyed only one respondent reported having no bladder or bowel symptoms following release from prison. Trends assessed by Chi-square analysis suggest women imprisoned for any period of time are more likely to develop both bladder and bowel symptoms which persist after release back into the community. A history of substance or alcohol abuse is often concurrent with the presence of symptoms. QOL scores are also lower for those reporting either bladder or bowel symptoms affecting total scores and the domains of both activities of daily living and mental health.

Women imprisoned for any length of time developed bladder and bowel symptoms which had a negative impact on their QOL. Larger studies need to be conducted to investigate these trends and whether small changes in conservative measures can influence outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to present the Italian validation of the standards for communities for children and adolescents (SCIA) Questionnaire, an evaluation tool of communities quality standards, based on the “Service Standards for Therapeutic Communities for Children and Young People – 2nd edition” of the Community of Communities (2009), that enables an empirical, multidimensional and complex evaluation of the therapeutic community (TC) “system”. It is a self-report that sets out and measures variables that allow to get an overview of organisational models and the possible development areas to improve the effectiveness of the protection of child and adolescents in community treatment. The validation and a preliminary analysis to develop a short version of the SCIA are presented.

The questionnaire (composed, in the extended form, by 143 items) was administered to 101 community workers, 20 males (19.8 per cent) and 81 females (81.2 per cent) aged between 24 and 61 years (M=36.20, SD=8.4). The analysis of reliability (Cronbach’s α) and a series of exploratory factor analysis allowed to eliminate redundant or less significant items.

The short form of the self-report consists of 67 items, divided into seven subscales, which explore different areas of intervention in TCs. Despite the limitations due to the small sample size, the utility of this tool remains confirmed by its clinical use and the development of good operating practices.

The SCIA Questionnaire responds to the need to adopt empirical variables in the process of evaluation of the communities. The SCIA is also a useful tool for clinical evaluation, as it allows a detailed observation of residential community treatment with children and adolescents that allows to analyse and monitor the structural and organisational aspects and the quality of practices that guide the interventions.

Kidney transplantation (KT) is the treatment of choice for end-stage chronic kidney disease (CKD) and is well known to improve the clinical outcome of patients. However, the impact of KT on comorbid psychological symptoms, particularly depression and anxiety, is less clear, and recipients of living-donor (LD) organs may have a different psychological outcome from recipients of dead-donor (DD) organs.

In total, 152 patients were included and analyzed using a cross-sectional design. Of these patients, 25 were pre-KT, 13 were post-KT with a LD transplant and 114 were post-KT with a DD transplant. The patients were tested for a variety of psychometric outcomes using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the 12-Item Short Form Health Survey (assessing physical and mental health-related quality of life), the Resilience Scale, the Coping Self-Questionnaire and the Social Support Questionnaire.

The mean age of the patients was 51.25 years and 40 per cent of the patients were female. As expected, the post-KT patients had significantly better scores on the physical component of the Short Form Health Survey than the pre-KT patients, and there were no significant differences between the two post-KT groups. There were no significant differences among the groups in any of the other psychometric outcome parameters tested, including anxiety, depression and the mental component of health-related quality of life.

KT and the origin of the donor organ do not appear to have a significant impact on the psychological well-being of transplant patients with CKD. Although the diagnosis and early treatment of psychological symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, remain important for these patients, decisions regarding KT, including the mode of transplantation, should not be fundamentally influenced by concerns about psychological impairments at the population level.

CKD is a serious condition involving profound impairment of the physical and psychological well-being of patients. KT is considered the treatment of choice for most of these patients. KT has notable advantages over dialysis with regard to the long-term physical functioning of the renal and cardiovascular system and increases the life expectancy of patients. However, the data on the improvement of psychological impairments after KT are less conclusive.

Since 9/11, 2001, protection from terrorism has become a poignant issue in the political spectrum, and some have argued that fears of terrorism have been manipulated for political purposes. Contributing to a growing body of research, this study sought to test whether terrorism fears, and/or the impact of terror alerts, predicted overall trust in government in a sample of university undergraduates who completed the Perceptions of Terrorism Questionnaire Short‐Form (PTQ‐SF). Two psychological theories offer plausible explanations for this relationship: attachment theory and evolutionary psychology theory. Results indicate that both general terrorism fears and the impact of terror alerts specifically, are statistically significant predictors of trust in government, using separate hierarchical regression models after controlling for other factors. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed, as are directions for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent there were gender differences in leadership styles shown by leaders in mental health organizations (MHOs) in North Carolina, as expressed through transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership attributes.

The author used a quantitative, causal-comparative analysis to test the hypothesis.

A series of t-tests were conducted to determine if significant differences existed between genders and leadership attributes of MHO leaders. The results revealed no significant gender differences in leadership styles of MHO leaders.

One implication was the convenience nature of this sample affected the internal validity of this study, since these findings may not accurately reflect the leadership styles in the target population. The second implication is the sample size’s effect on the external validity, as the results cannot be extrapolated from a nonrandom sample to the target population. The consequence of using a smaller then necessary convenience sample is decreased analytical power or ability to identify small-size effects of gender that in a larger sample might have been statistically significant.

Due to the scarcity of studies regarding gender differences in leadership styles in MHOs, this study examined this area to fill the gap in the research field.

The purpose of this research is to report on an evaluation of a programme of supported education in a Further Education context for students with long‐term mental health problems, based on Antonovsky's Salutogenic model of health. The students are referred by the Community Mental Health Team.

Three consecutive cohorts of students (n=148, 93 male, 55 female; average age 39.5 years) undertaking the programme, completed Antonovsky's Short‐form Sense of Coherence scale (the SOC13) on entry to the programme, and when exiting from it. Qualitative feedback from the second cohort of students was examined to establish the processes at work in the programme. This identified a number of themes relating to the processes at work in the programme and its outcomes (Peer Support, Learning Support, Learning Effects, Symptom Reduction and Positive Affect) and provided a basis for designing short questionnaires, which were completed by the second cohort. Data from these questionnaires and the SOC13 were used to build a causal model of the processes at work in the programme.

The overall change between the entry and exit SOC13 scores was not significant. However, students with SOC13 scores below 52 (total n=81, 52 male, 29 female; average age 42.8 years) made statistically significant positive gains. In this initially low scoring group, 70 per cent improved their exit SOC13 score, 2 per cent remained constant, and 28 per cent reported lower exit SOC13 scores. The causal model from the whole of the second cohort of students suggests that peer support is the initial factor contributing to the success of the programme by positively influencing learning effects of the programme and the uptake of learning support. In turn, learning effects reduced symptoms and this had the effect of raising positive affect. Raised positive affect reduced the need for learning support and was positively linked to entry and exit SOC13 scores.

This research has implications for budget holders, health promotion staff and allied professionals in the collaborative use of resources to help people recovering from or managing mental health difficulties move forward in their lives.

This study highlights the need for community collaborative social initiatives to be properly funded and validated. Approaches to evaluation could usefully be formulated on the basis of Antonovsky's model. Professionals need to consider investing in creating peer support and positive affect when working with people with mental health needs.

This study aims at the employees’ view on organizational learning (OL). OL is originally assessed in the Strategic Learning Assessment Map (SLAM) at the level of the firm by addressing managers, who rated OL in the SLAM on five dimensions of individual, group, organizational, feed-forward and feedback learning. However, as employees are getting their jobs done discretely and are increasingly making their own decisions, their perspective on OL genuinely matters. Hence, the authors assessed OL at the level of the individual by addressing employees on all levels, who rated OL in a short form of the SLAM (SF-SLAM).

In this paper, the authors focused on the construct validity of this SF-SLAM by investigating its reliability, factorial validity and nomological network. First, they asked whether the SF-SLAM reliably measures OL on five dimensions of individual, group, organizational, feed-forward and feedback learning. Next, they asked whether the SF-SLAM was associated with its nomological network of engaging in innovation-related learning activities, behaving innovatively on the job and showing higher educational levels, intelligence and individual job performances. They used a diverse German employee sample of skilled and unskilled workers and managers (N = 434) and analyzed the data with structural equation modeling.

The SF-SLAM was reliable, but revealed both constrained factorial validity and validity on the basis of its nomological network. First, five dimensions found support in the employee sample, but their correlations were high or very high, except for individual learning. Second, the SF-SLAM showed only few differential relations with variables from its nomological network.

Taken together, the SF-SLAM is short, reliable and only valid for examining individual learning.