Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Higher Education: Characterizing the Psychosocial Context of the Positive and Negative Affective States Using Classification and Regression Trees

Influence of Personal and Work Environments on Work-Life Balance Among Emergency Medical Technicians

Introduction Work-life balance (WLB) is a critical concern for emergency medical technicians (EMTs) because it significantly affects the provision of comprehensive emergency medical services (EMS). This study investigated personal and work-related factors influencing work-to-family negative spillover (WFNS), a key element of WLB, among EMTs. Methods A web-based survey was conducted from July 26 to September 13, 2021, among EMTs in Hokkaido, Japan. The study included 21 facilities that were randomly selected from 42 fire stations. The Japanese version of the Survey Work-Home Interaction-NijmeGen (SWING-J) was used to measure WFNS. Personal background factors, such as age, sex, years of work experience, and education, were surveyed. We also evaluated work environment factors, such as weekly working hours, monthly night shifts, monthly overtime hours, and yearly paid vacation days. Unpaired Student's t-tests, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and multilevel generalized linear model (MGLM) analyses were used to explore the relationships between WFNS and personal and work-related factors. Results A total of 912 respondents were included in our analysis. They were predominantly male (98.2%), with an average EMT work experience of 12.7 years and a mean WFNS score of 1.16 (standard deviation (SD) = 1.67). MGLM analysis, adjusting for covariates, identified years of work experience (β = -0.129, p = 0.001), monthly overtime hours (β = 0.184, p < 0.001), and yearly paid vacation days (β = -0.170, p < 0.001) as independent factors associated with WFNS. Conclusion This study suggested that adjusting WFNS among EMTs could be achieved by reducing overtime hours and fostering an organized approach to paid leave within the work environment.

Risk profiles for smoke behavior in COVID-19: a classification and regression tree analysis approach

BACKGROUND

COVID-19 pandemic emerged worldwide at the end of 2019, causing a severe global public health threat, and smoking is closely related to COVID-19. Previous studies have reported changes in smoking behavior and influencing factors during the COVID-19 period, but none of them explored the main influencing factor and high-risk populations for smoking behavior during this period.

METHODS

We conducted a nationwide survey and obtained 21,916 valid data. Logistic regression was used to examine the relationships between each potential influencing factor (sociodemographic characteristics, perceived social support, depression, anxiety, and self-efficacy) and smoking outcomes. Then, variables related to smoking behavior were included based on the results of the multiple logistic regression, and the classification and regression tree (CART) method was used to determine the high-risk population for increased smoking behavior during COVID-19 and the most profound influencing factors on smoking increase. Finally, we used accuracy to evaluated the performance of the tree.

RESULTS

The strongest predictor of smoking behavior during the COVID-19 period is acceptance degree of passive smoking. The subgroup with a high acceptation degree of passive smoking, have no smokers smoked around, and a length of smoking of ≥ 30 years is identified as the highest smoking risk (34%). The accuracy of classification and regression tree is 87%.

CONCLUSION

The main influencing factor is acceptance degree of passive smoking. More knowledge about the harm of secondhand smoke should be promoted. For high-risk population who smoke, the "mask protection" effect during the COVID-19 pandemic should be fully utilized to encourage smoking cessation.

Correlates of stress are interactive and not unidimensional: Evidence from U.S. college students early in the COVID-19 pandemic

Studies have investigated various aspects of how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted college students' well-being. However, the complex relationships between stress and its correlates have received limited attention. Thus, the main objective of this study is to evaluate multiplicative associations between stress and demographic, lifestyle, and other negative emotion factors during the pandemic. We used data from a survey with 2,534 students enrolled in seven U.S. universities and analyzed such data with generalized additive Tobit models and pairwise interaction terms. The results highlighted associations and interactions between myriad factors such as students' social class, income, parental education, body mass index (BMI), amount of exercise, and knowing infected people in the student's communities. For instance, we found that the associations between feeling irritable and sad due to the pandemic were interactive, resulting in higher associated stress for students with higher levels of parents' education. Furthermore, associations between taking precautionary actions (i.e., avoiding travel and large gatherings) and stress varied with the intensity of negative feelings (i.e., sadness and irritability). Considering these interaction terms, the results highlighted a great inequality in pandemic-related stress within low income, lower social class, and higher BMI students. This study is among the earliest that employed a stratified approach with numerous interaction terms to better understand the multiplicative associations between different factors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sustainable career and employability of student leaders in China

Research has shown that most employers prefer employing graduates with student leadership experience in colleges and most of the student leaders have sustainable development in their careers in China. Compared with students without leadership experience, student leaders are easier to get promotion and development opportunities in the workplace. To discuss this question, researchers chose employers, student leaders, and teachers as research participants in an effort to answer the question of why employers prefer graduates with experience being student leaders. This study focuses on what key competencies student leaders possess and how their competencies can match the capability requirement of employers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 9 outstanding student leaders, 4 class teachers, 2 student affairs administrators, and 8 human resource managers from two vocational colleges in Beijing. We find that student leaders have strong social competence, emotional competence, action competence, responsibility, and resilience which employers value and these competencies are essential to career development in the workplace. These competencies are considered to be helpful to support student leaders to adapt to the real work environment quickly and achieve career success.

Motivation of Teleworkers and Non-teleworkers in Times of COVID-19 in Spain: An Exploratory Study Using Non-parametric Analysis and Classification and Regression Trees

With the outbreak of COVID-19 in spring 2020, small, medium, and large companies were forced to cope with the unexpected circumstances. Faced by this health emergency, it was necessary to ensure that staff remained motivated and that they could continue to carry out their duties despite the obstacles. The main goal of this exploratory research was to characterize employees who teleworked and who did not, and their motivation during the lockdown. A total of 11,779 workers from different-sized companies in various sectors answered an ad hoc questionnaire. By using non-parametric comparisons and Classification and Regression Trees (CRTs), the results show differences in both the assessment of strategies put into practice by the companies and the level of motivation of teleworkers and non-teleworkers, with the latter being more highly motivated. Nonetheless, teleworkers assessed their companies’ strategies and the role of their managers and colleagues more positively. This research helps to understand how different sectors have dealt with the crisis, according to the degree of teleworking implemented in each sector, and to what extent the motivation of the employees has been affected. The analysis of the large amount of data obtained confirms the importance of the role of managers in sustaining the motivation of their subordinates in times of crisis. In this sense, it is necessary to develop managers’ competencies in order to develop and maintain relations of trust and support with their coworkers. On the other hand, it is necessary to foster employees’ sense of meaningfulness and responsibility at work in order to keep them motivated.

Remote Working for Sustainability of Organization during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Mediator-Moderator Role of Social Support

Remote working became a widespread business practice during the COVID-19 pandemic as an organizational response to protect employees’ health and maintain business continuity. The aim of this paper is to reveal the role of social support in the relationship among NWHI, NHWI and loneliness, and work engagement and job performance. The study respondents were employees with a remote working status in Serbian companies, and a total of 226 valid surveys were collected. The PLS-SEM approach was deployed to test the hypothesized relationship between named variables. A standard bootstrapping procedure was used to reveal direct and indirect effects among latent variables. Results indicate a strong and positive direct association between social support and work engagement and job performance, while mediation and moderation of the role of social support were mostly confirmed but with some results opposite to what was expected. Social support was not able to buffer a negative home–work interaction and loneliness within remote working. The study offers insight into the role of social support and recommendations for managing the antecedents and consequences of remote working, with the aim to determine a sustainable model for extensive application, not only during the COVID-19 pandemic, but in regular times.