Work Intensification and Its Effects on Mental Health: The Role of Workplace Curiosity.

Work intensification is a psychosocial risk that has been increasing in recent decades and may have been accentuated after the COVID-19 pandemic. Its effects on health are negative, but they can be moderated by contextual and personal factors. The aim of this study was twofold: to analyze the effect of work intensification on workers' stress, anxiety, and depression and to explore the role of workplace curiosity in these relationships. The study design was cross-sectional, and a total of 766 Spanish workers (58.9% female) with different occupations completed the survey. The results showed that work intensification was associated with the symptomatology of stress, anxiety, and depression, with a medium effect size. Women workers showed higher work intensification, but its association with mental health was equally strong for both genders. Workers with higher levels of the workplace curiosity dimension "stress tolerance" showed less impaired mental health in the presence of work intensification. However, workers with higher levels of the workplace curiosity dimension "deprivation sensitivity" showed more symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression when faced with high work intensification. The results were discussed in terms of their contributions to the field of study of work intensification, the future research they could inspire, and the prevention and intervention measures they could motivate.

Spanish Adaptation of the Intensified Job Demands Scale (IDS).

BACKGROUND: The Intensification of Job Demands Scale (IDS) is a multidimensional instrument designed to capture the phenomenon of work intensification that characterizes modern Western societies. However, in Spain the instrument has not been validated to assess this phenomenon. The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the IDS adaptation with a heterogeneous sample of Spanish workers. METHOD: The sample consisted of 722 Spanish workers (57.8% female, 42.2% male) who completed a survey between January and April 2022. RESULTS: A five-factor correlated model, as in the original IDS, had an optimal fit with 15 items, and displayed invariance across gender, level of education, and organizational tenure. Reliability coefficients were all satisfactory, and scale adaptation showed evidence of convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity. CONCLUSIONS: The Spanish adaptation of the IDS is a valid, reliable measure for analyzing the phenomenon of work intensification and intensified job demands in Spain.

Spanish Adaptation of the Intensified Job Demands Scale (IDS) / Adaptación Española de la Escala de Demandas Laborales Intensificadas (IDS)

Background: The Intensification of Job Demands Scale (IDS) is a multidimensional instrument designed to capture the phenomenon of work intensification that characterizes modern Western societies. However, in Spain the instrument has not been validated to assess this phenomenon. The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the IDS adaptation with a heterogeneous sample of Spanish workers. Method: The sample consisted of 722 Spanish workers (57.8% female, 42.2% male) who completed a survey between January and April 2022. Results: A five-factor correlated model, as in the original IDS, had an optimal fit with 15 items, and displayed invariance across gender, level of education, and organizational tenure. Reliability coefficients were all satisfactory, and scale adaptation showed evidence of convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity. Conclusions: The Spanish adaptation of the IDS is a valid, reliable measure for analyzing the phenomenon of work intensification and intensified job demands in Spain.(AU)

Antecedentes: La Escala de Intensificación de las Demandas Laborales (IDS) es un instrumento multidimensional diseñado para captar el fenómeno de la intensificación laboral que caracteriza a las sociedades occidentales modernas. Sin embargo, en España, el instrumento no ha sido validado para evaluar este fenómeno. Por ello, el objetivo de este estudio fue examinar las propiedades psicométricas de la IDS para su adaptación a una muestra heterogénea de trabajadores españoles. Método: La muestra estuvo formada por 722 trabajadores españoles (57,8% mujeres) que completaron una batería de cuestionarios entre enero-abril de 2022. Resultados: Un modelo correlacionado de cinco factores, como en la IDS original, tuvo un ajuste óptimo con 15 ítems, y mostró invarianza en género, nivel de estudios y antigüedad dentro de la organización. Los coeficientes de fiabilidad fueron satisfactorios, y la adaptación de la escala mostró evidencias de validez convergente, discriminante e incremental. Conclusiones: La adaptación española de la IDS es una medida válida y fiable para analizar el fenómeno de la intensificación laboral en España.(AU)

Development and validation of a scale to measure team communication behaviors.

Introduction: With the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work was increased all over the globe. As a consequence, workers had to adapt their communication behaviors to smoothly coordinate work in their flexible teams (i.e., when team members divide work between the office and their homes). Drawing on relational coordination theory, we constructed and validated a scale to capture the most relevant team communication behaviors. Methods: We employed interviews and focus groups to construct the scale, refined the scale based on three samples with employees working flexibly and finally validated the scale with 130 teams from diverse organizations. Results: Our scale comprises three dimensions: focused communication, knowledge sharing and spontaneous communication. All three dimensions showed convergent validity with team planning and discriminant validity with time-spatial flexibility. Also, predictive validity with collective efficacy and team viability was achieved for focused communication and knowledge sharing. Spontaneous communication only predicted collective efficacy, but not team viability. Discussion: We conclude that the TCS is a reliable and valid measure for assessing team communication and contribute by focusing on behaviors.

Activity-based flexible offices: effects on work-related outcomes in a longitudinal study.

A recent popular trend in office re-design is the activity-based flexible office (A-FO). Initially, assumptions about the effects of A-FOs were drawn from research into open-plan offices where lack of privacy, concentration opportunities, and an increase in distractions are identified as main downsides. These aspects have not been explored sufficiently in the context of A-FOs. Using a longitudinal within-subjects design with three measurement times, we focussed on analysing the change in distraction after moving to an A-FO, how distraction-affected important work-related outcomes, and what factors moderated these relationships. Results showed that moving to the A-FO had negative effects on distraction, work engagement, job satisfaction, and fatigue. The negative effects of distraction were more pronounced in situations of increased time pressure and unpredictability. The obtained results highlight the harmful effects of the interaction of work stressors for employees' motivation and well-being. Practitioner summary: The results of our research provide important insight into how moving to an activity-based flexible office impacts the employees. Besides having quiet zones for concentrated work to avoid distractions managers and leaders should also focus on taking care of work stressors to avoid fatigue and loss of motivation.

Pan European Phenological database (PEP725): a single point of access for European data.

The Pan European Phenology (PEP) project is a European infrastructure to promote and facilitate phenological research, education, and environmental monitoring. The main objective is to maintain and develop a Pan European Phenological database (PEP725) with an open, unrestricted data access for science and education. PEP725 is the successor of the database developed through the COST action 725 "Establishing a European phenological data platform for climatological applications" working as a single access point for European-wide plant phenological data. So far, 32 European meteorological services and project partners from across Europe have joined and supplied data collected by volunteers from 1868 to the present for the PEP725 database. Most of the partners actively provide data on a regular basis. The database presently holds almost 12 million records, about 46 growing stages and 265 plant species (including cultivars), and can be accessed via http://www.pep725.eu/ . Users of the PEP725 database have studied a diversity of topics ranging from climate change impact, plant physiological question, phenological modeling, and remote sensing of vegetation to ecosystem productivity.

Phenological patterns of flowering across biogeographical regions of Europe.

Long-term changes of plant phenological phases determined by complex interactions of environmental factors are in the focus of recent climate impact research. There is a lack of studies on the comparison of biogeographical regions in Europe in terms of plant responses to climate. We examined the flowering phenology of plant species to identify the spatio-temporal patterns in their responses to environmental variables over the period 1970-2010. Data were collected from 12 countries along a 3000-km-long, North-South transect from northern to eastern Central Europe.Biogeographical regions of Europe were covered from Finland to Macedonia. Robust statistical methods were used to determine the most influential factors driving the changes of the beginning of flowering dates. Significant species-specific advancements in plant flowering onsets within the Continental (3 to 8.3 days), Alpine (2 to 3.8 days) and by highest magnitude in the Boreal biogeographical regions (2.2 to 9.6 days per decades) were found, while less pronounced responses were detected in the Pannonian and Mediterranean regions. While most of the other studies only use mean temperature in the models, we show that also the distribution of minimum and maximum temperatures are reasonable to consider as explanatory variable. Not just local (e.g. temperature) but large scale (e.g. North Atlantic Oscillation) climate factors, as well as altitude and latitude play significant role in the timing of flowering across biogeographical regions of Europe. Our analysis gave evidences that species show a delay in the timing of flowering with an increase in latitude (between the geographical coordinates of 40.9 and 67.9), and an advance with changing climate. The woody species (black locust and small-leaved lime) showed stronger advancements in their timing of flowering than the herbaceous species (dandelion, lily of the valley). In later decades (1991-2010), more pronounced phenological change was detected than during the earlier years (1970-1990), which indicates the increased influence of human induced higher spring temperatures in the late twentieth century.

Understanding The Mediating Role of Quality of Work Life on the Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors.

Organizational citizenship behaviors are not directly rewarded by organizations. However, they seem to contribute to excellent performance at work. The aim of this study is to test quality of working life's (QoWL) mediating role in the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). 203 French adults working regularly in teams completed validated self-report measures corresponding to each construct. The collected data showed that in the studied sample, a high quality of working life was associated with Sportsmanship behaviors. However, mediation was not observed for the other OCB subscales: Altruism, Helping, or Civic virtues. These behaviors tend to occur in individuals with high emotional intelligence scores, unrelated to their quality of working life. Theoretical background, practical implications, and limitations of the study are discussed.

Are emotionally intelligent students more resilient to stress? The moderating effect of emotional attention, clarity and repair / ¿Los estudiantes con una mayor inteligencia emocional son más resistentes al estrés? El efecto modulador de la atención, la claridad y la reparación emocional

The current study aims to examine the moderating effect of different dimensions of Trait Meta Mood Scale (TMMS) in the relationship between perceived stress and life satisfaction and mental health. We believe that the three TMMS dimensions (emotional attention, clarity and repair) will have different moderating effects. 835 university students from Spain, Portugal and Brazil participated in the investigation completing the short version of the trait metamood scale (TMMS24), Perceived Stress Scale, Satisfaction with life scale and General Health Questionnaire. The hierarchical regression analyses indicated different interactive effects of different TMMS-24 dimensions and stress in predicting life satisfaction and mental health. The only TMMS-24 dimension found to interact significantly with stress in predicting life satisfaction was emotional repair. When students perceive increased stress, the ones with lower emotional repair reported less satisfaction with life

El objetivo del presente estudio es examinar el efecto modulador de las diferentes dimensiones de la «Escala rasgo de metaconocimiento de los estados emocionales» (Trait Meta Mood Scale, TMMS) en la relación entre el estrés percibido y la satisfacción con la vida y la salud mental. Se espera que las tres dimensiones de la TMMS (atención, claridad y reparación emocional) tengan diferentes efectos moduladores. Participaron 835 estudiantes universitarios de España, Portugal y Brasil completando la versión abreviada de la TMMS (la TMMS- 24), la «Escala de estrés percibido», la «Escala de satisfacción con la vida» y el "Cuestionario de salud general". El análisis de regresión jerárquica muestra diferentes efectos interactivos de las dimensiones de la TMMS-24 y el estrés en la predicción de la satisfacción con la vida y la salud mental. La única dimensión de la TMMS-24 que ha interactuado de manera significativa con el estrés en la predicción de la satisfacción con la vida fue la reparación emocional. En situaciones de alto estrés, los estudiantes que tienen la reparación emocional más baja se sienten menos satisfechos con la vida

The Effects of Emotional Competences Training among Unemployed Adults: A Longitudinal Study.

BACKGROUND: The present study aimed at analyzing whether training in emotional competences (EC) would increase the level of perceived EC among unemployed adults, whether the unemployment duration would moderate the effects of the training and whether the changes in EC would predict changes in the levels of perceived stress, somatic complaints, mental health, and mood states. METHODS: Seventy-five participants were randomly allocated to an EC training program, or a control group. Following a controlled experimental design, the participants completed all the measures prior to the intervention (T1), one month later (T2) and six months after the first data collection (T3). RESULTS: The results showed that change in EC after the training depended on the duration of unemployment. The difference between the experimental and control groups in EC after the training was significant when the participants had been unemployed for less time. In addition, the results indicated that changes in EC were found to be significant predictors of changes in perceived stress, mental health, somatic complaints, and vigor and confusion (mood dimensions) six months after the intervention. CONCLUSION: The data suggest that unemployment duration plays a crucial role in determining the range and intensity of intervention effects.