Sickness Absence of Nurses Working in Residential Elder Care: The Essential Role of Psychosocial Job Resources and Home Demands.

OBJECTIVES: To elucidate the role and pathways of psychosocial home demands, psychosocial home resources, and psychosocial job resources in relation to sickness absence among nurses working in residential elder care. METHODS: Longitudinal (SEM) analyses with bootstrapping with a 1 year follow-up among 365 nurses were performed. Survey data and registered sickness absence data were used. RESULTS: A complete mediation model showed the best fit. More psychosocial job resources (ß = -1.50) like "work schedule fit with private life" predicted less and more psychosocial home demands (ß = 0.62) predicted more psychosomatic health complaints. The job resources and home demands predicted sickness absence duration and episodes 1-year later mediated through nurses' health. CONCLUSIONS: More attention is needed for nurses' work schedule fit with private life and their home demands to potentially reduce health-related sickness absence among nurses working in residential elder care.

Criticism of drinking as informal social control: a study in 18 countries.

The focus of this paper is on informal control of drinking, indicated by criticism of people in the social network on someone's alcohol consumption. It studies country and gender differences in the extent drinkers suffering from typical symptoms of heavy or prolonged alcohol use report informal control from others (reactive informal control), and country and gender differences in the extent comments on someone's drinking are (also) directed at those who do not suffer from these symptoms (pro-active informal control). The data come from eighteen general population surveys, selected from an integrated dataset on drinking and drinking-related factors including more than 35 countries. The criteria for inclusion were that data for both men and women were available and that at least 3 items about symptoms of severe physiological consequences and about criticism of drinking had valid responses. The results show that men suffering from typical symptoms of heavy or prolonged alcohol use are more likely to be criticized than equivalent women (reactive control). Irrespective of gender, reactive informal control is more prevalent in poorer countries and in countries with a high proportion of abstainers. Concerning pro-active control, among women a larger part of criticism appeared to be directed at those who (as yet) do not suffer from symptoms typical for heavy or prolonged alcohol use. There is a lot of variation between countries in pro-active informal control. This variation is only weakly related to prosperity of a country but not to its proportion of abstainers.

Culture as an explanation for substance-related problems: a cross-national study among French and Dutch adolescents.

Our main goal was to establish whether French and Dutch adolescents differ in rates of substance-related adverse events (e.g. fights, robbery), problems with peers or socializing agents even when controlling for pattern of substance use. For problems with peers and socializing agents due to alcohol we hypothesized that, because of stronger informal control of drinking in France, French adolescents are more likely to report problems with peers and socializing agents. For adverse events due to alcohol no difference was expected after controlling for consumption patterns. For drug-related problems, the hypothesis was that, due to the more restrictive drug policy in France, French adolescents are more likely to report problems with peers, socializing agents and adverse events. Comparable surveys based on samples of adolescent schoolchildren in France (n=9646) and the Netherlands (n=4291) were used. Data were analysed using multilevel logistic regression in which school, age and gender, indicators of substance use and country were used as predictors of substance-related problems. The outcomes show that French adolescents are more likely to report problems with peers and socializing agents due to alcohol even when consumption pattern is controlled for. For adverse events due to alcohol no difference was found between French and Dutch adolescents. For drug-related problems the expected differences were found; i.e. French adolescents are more likely to report problems with peers, socializing agents and adverse events even when controlling for pattern of drug use. It is concluded that there are culturally embedded differences in the rates of some types of problems due to alcohol or drug use. With respect to alcohol use, these differences are most likely due to culturally embedded differences in the informal social control of alcohol use. The differences in rates of drug-related problems are interpreted in the context of national differences in drug policy.