Josephson Et Al. (1997) Sought to Examine

Josephson et al. (1997) sought to examine the symptoms that female nurses felt over a three-year period on their necks, back, and shoulders and to investigate whether an association existed between job strain and the muscoskeletal symptoms.

The female staff (565 at outset) answered a questionnaire at baseline and then once a year over the duration of three years. A Swedish version of Karasek and Theorells model was used for assessing job strain.

Results found that almost half of the health care workers showed significant correlation between muscoskeletal symptoms and job stress. The authors concluded that job strain is a risk factor for muscoskeletal symptoms and that the risk is higher when it is combined with intense physical exertion.

The independent variable in this study was the job strain. The dependent variable was the muscoskeltal symptoms.

Cronbach alpha coefficient was used for estimating the internal consistency among the questions. The whole was a cross-sectional analysis therefore a Mantel-Haenszel weighted statistics was used to combine the various subgroups into a single overall estimate.

The 2 variables were measured at 1, 2, and 3 years excluding baseline (hence 4 levels).

Study 2

Depression is a common occurrence in nursing homes but nursing home-based studied on the risks indicators of depression is uncommon. Jongenelis et al.(2004) therefore, determined to conduct such a study.

33 nursing patients living in 14 different nursing homes in the Netherlands were surveyed with depressive symptoms measured by the Geriatric Depression scale (GDS). The authors discovered that prevalence of major depression amongst the nursing patients assessed was 8.1% whilst minor depression rated on a scale of 14,1%. A further 24% of the patients demonstrated sub-clinical depression.

Major depression was found to correlate with the following variables; pain, functional limitations, visual impairment, stroke, loneliness, lack of social support, negative life events, and perceived inadequacy of care. The same risk-indicators were found in connection with sub-clinical depression (the lowest level). The only element missing was lack off social support.

The authors concluded that optimal physical treatment and focus on psychosocial factors should be a key goal in developing care programs for the elderly.

The DV here was depression. The IV was the 8 factors that caused major depression (7 factors in the case of sub-clinical depression).

Statistics were a bivariabel analysis that compared demographics in patients with and without sub-clinical depression and in patients with and without clinical depression. A multivariate (since many variables were featured here) logistic regression was used to assess whether association existed between IVs and DV. It was one level.

Study 3

The aim of this study (Deary et al., 2003) was to investigate the determinants of stress, burnout and attrition in nursing students and to see whether any relation existed amongst these variables. Authors hypothesized that the IV -- stress -- may have resulted in the DVs burnout and attrition.

A longitudinal design involving a cohort of nursing students was employed where instruments measured personality, intelligence, psychological morbidity, stress, coping, and burnout ( 6 variables were measured). Data was gathered on 4 different occasions; hence this study had 4 levels.

The authors discovered that stress may not be directly linked to burnout and attrition, but that personality may be a more potent factor. Nonetheless, conclusions were incomplete.

The statistics used were Pearson's correlation (t see whether any association existed between stress and burnout, t-testing (to assess differnce between the samples within the same group), Mann-Whitney test (I.e. To test whether the two independent samples of observations were drawn from the same or from similar distributions) and Receiver operating Characteristics (ROC) (a part of signal detention theory to test sensitivity).