Job satisfaction of physicians in Russia.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to determine the relationship between job characteristics and job satisfaction amongst physicians in Russia. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Overall satisfaction and relative satisfaction on the bases of facility and gender were measured. Approaches included the perception vs expectation paradigm, and statistical techniques using chi-square, independent samples t-tests, and logistic regression. FINDINGS: The study finds that, overall, male doctors report higher levels of satisfaction than female doctors, while those who work in polyclinics are more satisfied than those employed by hospitals. Female physicians are more satisfied in their relations with patients and colleagues than their male counterparts. The majority of physicians are dissatisfied with administration and time constraints. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: This paper provides practical advice to hospital and polyclinic managers in Russia as attempts at reforming and restructuring the healthcare system gather momentum. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: There is scant empirical data on the job satisfaction of physicians in Russia. This paper found that job characteristic variables such as clinical autonomy, resources, time, and administration moderate physician satisfaction relationships in Russia, just as they do in the West.

A campus-based motivational enhancement group intervention reduces problematic drinking in freshmen male college students.

The current study employs an adaptation to Motivational Interviewing (AMI) group intervention with freshmen male undergraduates. The program follows suggestions of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for effective interventions with problematic college student drinking, and combines several empirically validated strategies to prevent drinking problems throughout college. All participants reduced drinking and alcohol-related problems; heavier drinkers and those experiencing the most alcohol-related problems reduced drinking most. Additionally, freshmen who completed the intervention were less likely than their non-intervention freshmen male peers to commit alcohol-related violations of campus policies. In addition to the reductions in problematic drinking, the group AMI has advantages over individual formats because larger numbers of students can benefit with comparable expenditures of time and effort.

Performance of alcohol and safer sex change rulers compared with readiness to change questionnaires.

As part of a larger intervention study, the authors hypothesized that change rulers created for alcohol and safer sex would be equivalent to longer questionnaires. Ninety-six male college students completed rulers and questionnaires for assessing behavior change readiness. Participants' scores on the rulers significantly correlated with their scores on the questionnaires (r=.77 for alcohol; r=.77 for safer sex). In both domains, the rulers outperformed the questionnaires in predicting behavioral intentions, suggesting that the rulers had at least comparable concurrent criterion validity. This finding is the first of its kind in the safe sex literature and suggests that quick assessments of readiness to change are possible. Because the rulers are a continuous measure, the results are consistent with the idea that the change process is continuous rather than a series of discrete stages.

The role of dysfunctional attitudes in models of negative symptoms and functioning in schizophrenia.

Neurocognitive impairment is associated with negative symptoms and poor real world functioning in schizophrenia. Dysfunctional attitudes (e.g., "If I fail partly, it is as bad as being a complete failure") have been found to mediate these relationships between neurocognition and negative symptoms and functioning. In this study, these relationships were examined in 179 participants with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder using structural equation modeling. Defeatist attitudes were found to mediate the relationship between neurocognition and negative symptoms but not the relationships between neurocognition and performance-based or self-reported functioning. A full model with the best fit showed mediation between neurocognition and self-reported functioning through two different pathways: One from neurocognition to functional skill capacity to real-world functioning, and a second from neurocognition to defeatist attitudes to negative symptoms to real-world functioning. These results may implicate skill deficits and defeatist attitudes as a separate treatment targets for negative symptoms and functioning in schizophrenia.