Assessing manifestations of bossing in the context of personality traits of business managers.

Introduction: Abusive supervision or bossing represents a specific form of mobbing as a long-term, systematic negative action by superiors toward subordinates. Methods: From the point of view of the operationalization of this construct, the original BOSSm18 methodology is presented in the paper in the context of the B5 methodology, which enables specification of personality traits in terms of the original Big Five concept. Results: Based on the research dataset of 636 business managers, the paper presents the results of the basic psychometric parameters of the methodology and the content specification of the extracted factors. The research findings support a multidimensional understanding of the bossing construct. Discussion: The limiting factors of the interpretation and generalization of the results relate to the consideration of cultural contexts and situational conditions of perception of bossing manifestations.

Psychological Factors of Tourist Expenditure: Neglected or Negligible?

Despite recent progress in identifying the factors of tourist expenditure, knowledge of the psychological characteristics of tourists is necessary to fully understand their impact. Therefore, this study attempts to extend the economic, sociodemographic and trip-related factors by including psychological factors in the econometric models. A total of 1,036 Slovak tourists who paid for summer holidays abroad in the summer of 2021 were interviewed. Three of the six psychological factors analysed (two stable personality characteristics - conscientiousness and agreeableness as well as four tendencies expressing willingness to spend or save - spendthrift, tightwad, thrift and spending propensity) correlated significantly with the amount of expenditure. In addition to income, type of travel, children and duration of the stay, the results of the partial least squares test revealed the net effects of tightwad, spending propensity and thrift. The magnitude of the effects of psychological factors points to the need for further research.

Relationships between Renewable Energy and the Prevalence of Morbidity in the Countries of the European Union: A Panel Regression Approach.

The main objective of the presented study was to examine the associations between the use of renewable energy sources in selected sectors (transport, electricity, heating, and cooling) and the prevalence of selected groups of diseases in the European Union, with an emphasis on the application of statistical methods considering the structure of data. The analyses included data on 27 countries of the European Union from 2010 to 2019 published in the Eurostat database and the Global Burden of Disease Study. Panel regression models (pooling model, fixed (within) effects model, random effects model) were primarily used in analytical procedures, in which a panel variable was represented by countries. In most cases, positive and significant associations between the use of renewable energy sources and the prevalence of diseases were confirmed. The results of panel regression models could be generally interpreted as meaning that renewable energy sources are associated with the prevalence of diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and kidney diseases, digestive diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, neoplasms, sense organ diseases, and skin and subcutaneous diseases at a significance level (α) of 0.05 and lower. These findings could be explained by the awareness of the health problem and the response in the form of preference for renewable energy sources. Regarding statistical methods used for country data or for data with a specific structure, it is recommended to use the methods that take this structure into account. The absence of these methods could lead to misleading conclusions.

Gender Inequalities in Health and Their Effect on the Economic Prosperity Represented by the GDP of Selected Developed Countries-Empirical Study.

The objective is to evaluate the relations between gender health inequalities and economic prosperity in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The groups included health indicators in the specification of men, women and gender inequalities: life expectancy, causes of mortality and avoidable mortality. The variable determining the economic prosperity was represented by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The analytical processing included descriptive analysis, analysis of differences and analysis of relationships. The regression analysis was presented as the main output of the research. Most of the significant gender differences in health showed a more positive outcome for women. It is possible to identify a certain relation between gender health inequalities and economic prosperity. If there is some reduction in gender inequalities in health, the economic prosperity will increase. The reduction seems to be more effective on the part of men than women. The output of the cluster analysis showed the relations of indicators evaluating the inequalities and the prosperity. The countries such as Luxembourg, Norway or Switzerland showed very positive outputs, on the other hand, the countries with a potential for the improvement are Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia. Overall, the policies should focus on reducing the inequalities in avoidable mortality as well as reducing the frequent diseases in younger people.

Healthcare efficiency assessment using DEA analysis in the Slovak Republic.

A regional disparity is becoming increasingly important growth constraint. Policy makers need quantitative knowledge to design effective and targeted policies. In this paper, the regional efficiency of healthcare facilities in Slovakia is measured (2008-2015) using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The DEA is the dominant approach to assessing the efficiency of the healthcare system but also other economic areas. In this study, the window approach is introduced as an extension to the basic DEA models to evaluate healthcare technical efficiency in individual regions and quantify the basic regional disparities and discrepancies. The window DEA method was chosen since it leads to increased discrimination on results especially when applied to small samples and it enables year-by-year comparisons of the results. Two stable inputs (number of beds, number of medical staff), three variable inputs (number of all medical equipment, number of magnetic resonance (MR) devices, number of computed tomography (CT) devices) and two stable outputs (use of beds, average nursing time) were chosen as production variable in an output-oriented 4-year window DEA model for the assessment of technical efficiency in 8 regions. The database was made available from the National Health Information Center and the Slovak Statistical Office, as well as from the online databases Slovstat and DataCube. The aim of the paper is to quantify the impact of the non-standard Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) variables as the use of medical technologies (MR, CT) on the results of the assessment of the efficiency of the healthcare facilities and their adequacy in the evaluation of the monitored processes. The results of the analysis have shown that there is an indirect dependence between the values of the variables over time and the results of the estimated efficiency in all regions. The regions that had low values of the variables over time achieved a high degree of efficiency and vice versa. Interesting knowledge was that the gradual addition of variables number of MR, number of CT and number of medical devices together, to the input side did not have a significant impact on the overall estimated efficiency of healthcare facilities.

Risk of Dying from Cancer by Socio-demographic Indicators in the Slovak Republic.

AIM: Cancer mortality distribution was investigated by detailed neoplasms groups, age, sex, marital status of deceased, and regions in the Slovak Republic, and examined how these determinants influence the odds of dying due to cancer. METHODS: A retrospective analysis of cancer mortality statistics registered in the Slovak Republic during the years 1996-2014. For this time period, data was available only on the underlying subgroups of cancer deaths, place of death, age, year, sex, and marital status. Binary logistic regression was applied for odds of dying calculation influenced by these socio-demographic factors. RESULTS: The most common are deaths from malignant neoplasms of digestive organs in males as well as females. The biggest difference among both genders is recognized in malignant neoplasms of lip, oral cavity and pharynx, where deaths among males are on average 7.9 times higher in comparison to females. As for place of death the Bratislava region reports the highest level of cancer mortality stated at 25.22% of all deaths, on the contrary the Banská Bystrica region reports only 21.40% of all deaths. Age has a negative influence on odds of dying due to neoplasms compared to all other causes of death by 1.7%. In all regions compared to the reference Bratislava region, the odds of dying from neoplasms are lower. Being female diminishes the odds of dying due to neoplasms by 25.7% compared to males. Yearly the relative ratio of dying from neoplasms increases with respect to all other causes of death. When single people are set as the reference category, the relation of the probability of death from cancer to the probability of death due to other causes of death is higher for married, divorced and widowed persons. CONCLUSIONS: The results should be taken into account when comparing risk of dying due to cancer among people with the mentioned sociodemographic characteristics. Health policy makers should consider place of death and cancer types while planning hospital care units.