Non-agricultural work injuries among youth: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: To systematically review the quantitative literature on factors associated with youth non-agricultural work injury. METHODS: Seven electronic databases were searched for studies published between 1980 and 2005. In addition, reference lists from each potentially eligible study were checked and experts in the field contacted for additional studies. Studies had to meet relevance and quality appraisal criteria. RESULTS: Nine cross-sectional studies using multivariate analyses met the inclusion and quality appraisal criteria. This best evidence synthesis found that work injury varied significantly with job and workplace factors such as hazard exposure and perceived work overload. Visible minority status was also associated with likelihood of a work injury. The lack of youth work injury studies assessing the following factors was also identified: physical and cognitive development, safety training, supervision, social environment of the workplace, and intervention studies. CONCLUSIONS: This review has potential implications for prevention of work injuries. First, interventions need to target modifiable risk factors. This systematic review pointed to two job/workplace factors that are potentially modifiable: hazard exposure and work pace pressure. Second, the multiple determinants of work injury highlight the need to develop interventions and policies that focus on multiple factors rather than one-dimensional approaches that target a specific factor.

Precarious employment experiences and their health consequences: towards a theoretical framework.

Fundamental shifts in the structure of labour markets, work systems, and employment relations of industrialized countries have outpaced changes in legislative, social and political mechanisms. As a result, a growing number of workers are exposed to precarious employment experiences, which we define as experiences that give rise to instability, lack of protection, insecurity, and social and economic vulnerability. These experiences represent a potentially significant occupational health risk. Our central objective is to develop a detailed framework that outlines the key aspects of work experiences that makes them precarious, and to consider links between these aspects and downstream health effects.

How feelings of stereotype threat influence older adults' memory performance.

The purpose of the present research was to explore the role of stereotype threat as a mediator of older people's memory performance under different instructional sets. In three studies, younger and older participants completed a memory test that was either framed as a memorization or as an impression formation task. Across these studies, memory performance was greater for younger than for older adults and was higher in the impression formation than memorization condition, but was not different for older adults in the two instruction conditions. These results also showed that age differences in memory performance were mediated by participants' feelings of stereotype threat, such that age was positively related to stereotype threat and stereotype threat was negatively related to memory performance. These data demonstrate that concerns about being negatively stereotyped influence age differences in memory performance, and that the effects of these feelings on performance are not easily reduced by reframing the task instructions.