Narrow Results

Low back pain (LBP) is one of the most frequent occupational health problems and accounts for a large number of losses in working days and disability for workers in modern industrialized countries. The aim of this paper was to investigate the prevalence of lower back problem and to associate risk factors among high school teachers. A cross-sectional study was conducted among high school teachers using self-administered questionnaires, which were distributed to randomly selected school teachers of 7 boys’ and 10 girls’ high schools across the city of Kerman and collected between October and November 2010. A total of 296 teachers returned completed questionnaires, yielding a response rate of 78.9%. The 12-month prevalence of LBP was 68.8%, which reporting with moderate disability. The results of multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that females [odds ratio (OR): 1.85, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.51–2.00] were positively correlated to LBP. Awkward arm posture (OR: 1.81, 95% CI: 1.24–2.62) and awkward body posture (OR: 1.23, 95% CI: 0.87–1.49) were significantly associated with LBP. Psychosocial job demands and job dissatisfaction were also significantly associated with LBP. Smoking cigarette was three times more likely to develop lower back pain when compared with non-smokers. The prevalence of LBP was high among high school teachers. A wide variety of LBP risk factors were identified in the current study. The present study indicates that the high prevalence of lower back pain may lose difficulty to teachers in getting to work and “performing” the work required of them, resulting in work absenteeism, which may decrease work productivity.

“Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM,” was a widely used cliché in the 1970s in the corporate IT (information technology) world. Since then, the traditional process of purchasing software has dramatically changed, challenged by the advent of open source software (OSS). Since its inception in the 1980s, OSS has matured, grown, and become one of the important driving forces of the enterprise ecosystem. However, it has also brought important IT security risks that are impacting the OSS IT adoption decision-making process. The recent Heartbleed bug demonstrated the grandeur of the issue. While much of the noise relates to the amplification of perceived risks by the popular mass media coverage, the effect is that many enterprises, mainly for risk reasons, have still chosen not to adopt OSS. We investigated “how do information security related characteristics of OSS affect the risk perception and adoption decision of OSS” by conducting an online survey of 188 IT decision-makers. The proposed Open Source Risk Adoption Model offers novel insights on the importance of the perceived risk antecedents. Our research brings new theoretical contributions, such as understanding the perceived IT security risk (PISR) relationship with adoption intention (AI) in the OSS context, for researchers and important insights for IT information professionals. We have found that IT security risk has a significant role in OSS adoption intention. Our results offer possible future research directions and extend existing theoretical understanding of OSS adoption.

Relatively little has been published on the range of risk factors contributing to musculoskeletal injuries in ambulance officers. This study aims to identify perceived risk factors for back, neck and shoulder musculoskeletal injuries and claims in relation to working conditions, and the physical and psychological demands of the job. This was a cross-sectional study using an internet-based survey in an Australian ambulance service. The survey included demographic questions and questions on psychosocial factors related to the job and the way in which work is organized, musculoskeletal injuries sustained and claims submitted in the previous 12 months; and two open ended questions on perceived risk factors for injury and injury risk mitigation strategies. Ambulance officers who felt they were able to take sufficient breaks were less likely to sustain a back, neck or shoulder musculoskeletal injury, and those who perceived their work required high levels of physical effort were more likely to submit a claim for these injuries. Two important perceived causal factors contributing to musculoskeletal injuries were the uncontrolled environment and non-adherence to manual handling techniques. However, suggested risk mitigation strategies of improving fitness and manual handling training, were not supported by the quantitative analysis.

Adolescent depression has been shown to be increasing in Hong Kong. There is a need to address this problem. The studies of the risk and protective factors have focused on how individual, peer, and family predictors are related to depressive symptoms. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on depressive symptoms in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong. Specifically, this study presents a brief review of protective and risk correlates of depressive symptoms in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong, with an ecological perspective. Individual risk correlates, such as low self-esteem and high levels of rumination; peer correlates, such as social withdrawal and limited social networks; family correlates, such as parent-child triangulation and high parental expectations, are significantly associated with adolescent depression. Moreover, individual protective correlates, such as hope and positive affect; social-related correlates, such as extensive social network and peer support; and family correlates, such as high parental warmth and family cohesion, were considered factors to reduce the risk of depression.

Several limitations of previous studies are noted. First, the sample size is small and targets are limited to children and youth. They were also limited by the locations and times at which questionnaire distribution was conducted. Second, most studies are not theory-driven and have failed to examine adolescent depression with sophisticated statistical analyses; for example, some cross-sectional studies were unlikely to establish causality between the identified factors and symptoms of depression. Therefore, future study could attempt to fill in the knowledge gap by integrating the ecological model and wellness theory as a theoretical framework to explain adolescent depression, and could consider a relatively larger and different sample with longitudinal studies. More sophisticated analyses are needed to examine the indirect and interactive effects of different variables (e.g. family, peer, and individual factors) as mediators and moderators to help understand the underlying mechanism related to adolescents' depression.

Occupational risk factors of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) are popular current research targets, with main emphasis put on wrist posture and dynamics. In this study, we do not intend to pinpoint individual occupations, but aim to identify high risk wrist postures and actions which may occur across various occupations. It is hoped that prevention can thus be instituted in a general population by directing at the particular causative wrist actions rather than exclusively targeting isolated occupations. We performed a case-control study with 166 cases and 111 controls recruited from different hospitals in Hong Kong in 2004. All cases and controls completed the survey on their general health condition, smoking status, wrist posture and motion as well as psychosocial status at the time of diagnosis of CTS. Frequent flexion OR = 4.436 (95% CI: 1.833–10.734), frequent extension OR = 2.691 (95% CI: 1.106–6.547) of the wrist were found to be associated with CTS. Frequent sustained forceful motion of the wrist OR = 2.588 (95% CI: 1.144–5.851) was also found to be associated with CTS. Neutral wrist position and repetitive wrist motion were not associated with CTS. Adjustment was made for age, sex, BMI, smoking and psychosocial stress. Our study confirms that frequent flexion, extension and sustained force of the wrist increase the risk of developing CTS.

This study aims to determine whether pre-employment medical, physical or psychological assessments can predict future back, neck and shoulder musculoskeletal injuries and claims in an Australian ambulance service.

This was a retrospective observational study based on linked datasets. Poisson regression analysis was undertaken to determine which pre-employment personality traits, using the Fifteen Factor Questionnaire and 36 medical and functional capacity evaluation variables, predicted the number of injuries and claims in ambulance officers.

Ambulance officers who at pre-employment assessment demonstrated more conceptual, intuitive and anxious personality traits, and those ambulance officers who had hypermobile joints, self-limited weights lifted, played less sport or exercised less, were more likely to sustain future back, neck or shoulder musculoskeletal injuries or submit workers compensation claims.

Individual pre-employment risk factors were found to predict musculoskeletal injuries and claims in a cohort of ambulance officers. Anxious as opposed to stable personality types and conceptual rather than practical personality types appear to be at greater risk of an injury or submitting a claim, as were recruits with hypermobile joints. Identification of individual risk factors at recruitment may assist in the selection of suitable applicants into the ambulance service as well as providing a focus for career counseling where relevant.

Demographic transition has already become a major issue in the recent decades. Lower fertility rate and higher expected life length result in population aging. Most developed countries face social problems due to demographic transitions, especially in the economic and financial field. To take a closer look at this phenomenon, this paper screened 99 stocks provided by Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) to explore the impact of population aging on the stock market in Taiwan. Population aging indirectly takes up a larger portion of elder investors in the stock market, compared to the past. This paper employed risk and return variables to analyze the investors’ behaviors in Taiwan stock market. We divided our samples into whole industry, financial industry, technology industry, and traditional industry groups to find the impact of investors aging among different industries. The results showed that there is no significant evidence to prove that the elder investors pursue lower risk stocks in Taiwan stock market, which is inconsistent with the results of the past research. On the other hand, the findings from the whole industry, technology industry, and traditional industry groups are different from the past research results, showing that Taiwan’s elderly investors prefer stocks with higher return in those industries.

This paper proposes a risk scoring model to assess the performance of 27 US companies listed online by applying Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and comparing with the traditional financial measure Return on Equity (ROE). The DEA evaluation process involves two processes: (1) computation of operating efficiency and effectiveness to measure a company's operating performance, and (2) measurement of the return level per unit of risk to provide guidance for their investors. The risk scoring model is useful for both investors and company managers. For investors, it yields a new stock selecting strategy. For managers, it provides a risk-adjusted performance evaluation process. Empirical results show that for the Internet industry, the effectiveness of a company is more important than operating efficiency. Investors investing in efficient online companies yield higher returns.

The socio-economic risk factors predisposing diabetics to foot problems were studied prospectively using two cohorts — one cohort consisting of 122 patients with diabetic foot problems (including cellulitis, abscess, osteomyelitis, septic arthritis, gangrene, ulcers and Charcot joint disease) and another cohort of 112 diabetics without foot problems seen in National University Hospital, from January to April 2007. A detailed protocol was designed. Factors studied included patient profile, education level, average monthly household income, compliance to diabetic medication, attendance at clinics for diabetic treatment, smoking, alcohol consumption, frequency of exercise and HbA1C level. Risk factors were determined by univariate and stepwise logistic regression analysis. Our results showed that with multivariate analysis, significant risk factors predisposing to diabetic foot problems were Malays (p < 0.001), education level of up to secondary school only (p = 0.021), low average monthly household income of less than S$2000 (US$1333) (p = 0.030), lack of weekly exercise (at least once a week, p = 0.04) and high HbA1C level (>7.0%, p = 0.015).