Reducing fire deaths - a new approach to smoke alarms. Disturbingly, those most at risk of dying in residential fires are also least likely to awaken to the current smoke alarm signal, now mandatory in Australian residences. This project will develop a new alarm (using Gibsonian, naturalistic sounds and/or a voice signal) and compare its waking efficacy with the current smoke alarm. Testing will involve three vulnerable groups; sleep deprived young adults, children and alcohol intoxicated. The r ....Reducing fire deaths - a new approach to smoke alarms. Disturbingly, those most at risk of dying in residential fires are also least likely to awaken to the current smoke alarm signal, now mandatory in Australian residences. This project will develop a new alarm (using Gibsonian, naturalistic sounds and/or a voice signal) and compare its waking efficacy with the current smoke alarm. Testing will involve three vulnerable groups; sleep deprived young adults, children and alcohol intoxicated. The research is innovative with important implications for community public safety, the national and international smoke alarm industry, performance based models of building safety and our theoretical understanding of cognitive processing during sleep.Read moreRead less
Waking up to a fire - optimising the smoke alarm signal. On any one night a significant proportion of the population is at risk of sleeping through the current smoke alarm in a fire emergency. Significant risk factors for not awakening include being a child, sleep deprivation, being a heavy sleeper, use of sleeping tablets, alcohol intoxication, and being aged over 60. Yet research suggests that a different alarm signal will awaken these groups more effectively at a lower volume. This innovati ....Waking up to a fire - optimising the smoke alarm signal. On any one night a significant proportion of the population is at risk of sleeping through the current smoke alarm in a fire emergency. Significant risk factors for not awakening include being a child, sleep deprivation, being a heavy sleeper, use of sleeping tablets, alcohol intoxication, and being aged over 60. Yet research suggests that a different alarm signal will awaken these groups more effectively at a lower volume. This innovative project will determine the best signal, with important implications for community public safety, fire safety engineers, the smoke alarm industry and our theoretical understanding of cognitive processing during sleep.Read moreRead less
Motivating Employee Proactivity by Redesigning the Work Context. Self-starting and innovative employees are increasingly important in today's decentralised organisations. The central question investigated in this project via a longitudinal research design is how organisations can facilitate this type of proactive behavior amongst employees. The project also investigates the nature of employee proactivity (e.g. how it differs from other behaviors), and its consequences for employee performance, i ....Motivating Employee Proactivity by Redesigning the Work Context. Self-starting and innovative employees are increasingly important in today's decentralised organisations. The central question investigated in this project via a longitudinal research design is how organisations can facilitate this type of proactive behavior amongst employees. The project also investigates the nature of employee proactivity (e.g. how it differs from other behaviors), and its consequences for employee performance, innovation, and mental health. The project is significant because it focuses on how to promote behaviors that have often been neglected in research.Read moreRead less
Balancing the needs of customers and employees following service failure: A dyadic psychosocial approach. Service industries dominate Australia's economy. When service fails, conflicts frequently ensue, leaving customers and employees feeling angry and stressed. Consequent social and economic costs are enormous. This project addresses the research priority of promoting and maintaining good health by identifying ways in which customers and employees can resolve service problems such that particip ....Balancing the needs of customers and employees following service failure: A dyadic psychosocial approach. Service industries dominate Australia's economy. When service fails, conflicts frequently ensue, leaving customers and employees feeling angry and stressed. Consequent social and economic costs are enormous. This project addresses the research priority of promoting and maintaining good health by identifying ways in which customers and employees can resolve service problems such that participants' psychosocial needs are met and outcomes for both parties are optimised. Findings will strengthen Australia's social and economic fabric by providing strategies to increase customer satisfaction and reduce worker stress. Service firms will benefit from a more loyal customer-base, and reduced employee absenteeism, turnover and compensation claims. Read moreRead less
School principals’ diminishing wellbeing. School principals’ diminishing wellbeing. This project aims to investigate the effect of State Education Departments’ policy interventions designed to improve school principals’ flagging wellbeing. Increasing competition, accountability and public scrutiny make principals stressed; since their influence on students is second only to teachers’, this threatens Australia’s socioeconomic outcomes. The project will map policy interventions to changes in princ ....School principals’ diminishing wellbeing. School principals’ diminishing wellbeing. This project aims to investigate the effect of State Education Departments’ policy interventions designed to improve school principals’ flagging wellbeing. Increasing competition, accountability and public scrutiny make principals stressed; since their influence on students is second only to teachers’, this threatens Australia’s socioeconomic outcomes. The project will map policy interventions to changes in principals’ motivation and wellbeing, and share information about the most productive and cost effective interventions with key stakeholders across Australia. This research could reverse the declining wellbeing of Australia’s school leaders.Read moreRead less
Emotions and Employee Turnover: New Methods for Complex Dynamic Systems. This project aims to vastly improve the data-analytic capabilities of social and health researchers, while increasing knowledge about emotion dynamics and their link to employee turnover. By drawing on and advancing methods from ecology and applied physics, this project plans to investigate the role that individual emotions play in employee turnover with new quantitative methods for characterising and testing causality in c ....Emotions and Employee Turnover: New Methods for Complex Dynamic Systems. This project aims to vastly improve the data-analytic capabilities of social and health researchers, while increasing knowledge about emotion dynamics and their link to employee turnover. By drawing on and advancing methods from ecology and applied physics, this project plans to investigate the role that individual emotions play in employee turnover with new quantitative methods for characterising and testing causality in complex dynamic systems. The expected outcomes include an improved capacity for researchers, managers, and policy makers to understand complex organisational, economic, and health systems. This will provide immediate societal benefits by informing the development and deployment of targeted interventions in such systems.Read moreRead less
Development of an intervention to enhance rural and regional service delivery to human service clients. A proactive program managing organisational stress and isolation in rural community service organisations is urgently needed to reduce unplanned absences and costly staff turnover among professionals working in a difficult environment. The intervention program focuses on extremely high risk regional workers - professional staff having daily contact with potentially difficult clients (e.g., per ....Development of an intervention to enhance rural and regional service delivery to human service clients. A proactive program managing organisational stress and isolation in rural community service organisations is urgently needed to reduce unplanned absences and costly staff turnover among professionals working in a difficult environment. The intervention program focuses on extremely high risk regional workers - professional staff having daily contact with potentially difficult clients (e.g., persons suffering from neglect, abuse, drugs). Strategies at both organisational and individual levels will be aimed at preventing rather than merely reducing stress. An educational package will be developed, subjected to two cycles of process and outcome evaluation, and prepared for use in this and other regional/rural organisations.Read moreRead less
An international evaluation of work-family balance: Validation of the work-family balance measure and theoretical model. Work-family imbalance costs Australia $8 billion per annum, via staff absenteeism, turnover, and health costs. By employing two Australian and three international experts, this project will investigate the long-term process of work-family balance, identify effective employment policies, and produce a new balance measure for use by industry and government. This will lead to imp ....An international evaluation of work-family balance: Validation of the work-family balance measure and theoretical model. Work-family imbalance costs Australia $8 billion per annum, via staff absenteeism, turnover, and health costs. By employing two Australian and three international experts, this project will investigate the long-term process of work-family balance, identify effective employment policies, and produce a new balance measure for use by industry and government. This will lead to improved health, personal satisfaction and employment choices for working Australians, and hence higher productivity for industry. The research addresses the second national research priority: promoting and maintaining good health. The consequential contributions to knowledge will directly benefit Australia's regard within the global academic community.Read moreRead less
An empirical evaluation of an innovative occupational stress intervention to improve the health and retention of high-risk employees. Occupational stress costs Australian organisations $105.5m, accounts for 6.5% of workplace injuries and 18.4 weeks absenteeism, per annum. This project introduces an occupational stress intervention in a State Government Department to improve the health and retention of employees who have experienced stress or who are a high risk for submitting a stress claim. The ....An empirical evaluation of an innovative occupational stress intervention to improve the health and retention of high-risk employees. Occupational stress costs Australian organisations $105.5m, accounts for 6.5% of workplace injuries and 18.4 weeks absenteeism, per annum. This project introduces an occupational stress intervention in a State Government Department to improve the health and retention of employees who have experienced stress or who are a high risk for submitting a stress claim. The intervention will reduce occupational stress costs by 40% and will be generalisable to other public and private organisations. The project will demonstrate how Australian employers can meet their legal and ethical obligations to protect employee's psychological health, with a view to ultimately reducing the occurrence and financial consequences of occupational stress claims.Read moreRead less
Improving Neurobehavioural Development In Preterm Infants: A Randomised Controlled Trial Of A Neonatal Intervention
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$680,920.00
Summary
Up to 50% of preterm infants will have one or more developmental difficulties. While medical complications are implicated in these problems, recent evidence points to the added effect of the infant's early environment. Hospitalised premature infants experience stress from necessary but painful hospital procedures, overstimulation and maternal deprivation. Evidence, largely from animal studies, suggests stressful early experience negatively affects brain development. We also know that premature i ....Up to 50% of preterm infants will have one or more developmental difficulties. While medical complications are implicated in these problems, recent evidence points to the added effect of the infant's early environment. Hospitalised premature infants experience stress from necessary but painful hospital procedures, overstimulation and maternal deprivation. Evidence, largely from animal studies, suggests stressful early experience negatively affects brain development. We also know that premature infants find it difficult to handle stress as they are highly disorganised neurobehaviourally. The primary aim of this study is to assess the effectiveness of a parent-based intervention in enhancing neurobehavioural development at two years of age in very premature infants. It is predicted that this stress-reduction intervention will also enhance medical stability,normal brain development, parent-child interaction and parental mental health. The intervention to be trialled involves intensive training of parents of very premature infants, and in the 12 weeks following birth the parents will be the change agents. A randomised controlled trial comparing intervention and control groups will be undertaken to assess the effectiveness of this intervention. Assessments of early brain and 2 year intellectual, emotional and behavioural development will provide important outcome measures. A major strength of this study is the inclusion of advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology as it enables differences in brain development between the intervention and control group to be assessed, the association between brain and neurobehavioural development to be explored, and the impact of stress on early brain development to be investigated. This intervention is relatively simple and inexpensive, and would be a valuable contribution to neonatal care if found to be effective in enhancing brain and neurobehavioural development.Read moreRead less