Plos One
-
Clinical Trial
The impact of being bullied at school on psychological distress and work engagement in a community sample of adult workers in Japan.
The aim of this study was to investigate the long-term impact of being bullied at school on current psychological distress and work engagement in adulthood among Japanese workers. We hypothesized that workers who had been bullied at school could have higher psychological distress and lower work engagement compared to those who had not been bullied. ⋯ Being bullied at school was positively associated with both psychological distress and work engagement in a sample of workers. Being bullied at school may be a predisposing factor for psychological distress, as previously reported. The higher levels of work engagement among people who experienced being bullied at school may be because some of them might have overcome the experience to gain more psychological resilience.
-
Bias accusations have eroded trust in journalism to impartially check facts. Traditionally journalists have avoided responding to such accusations, resulting in an imbalanced flow of arguments about the news media. This study tests what would happen if journalists spoke up more in defense of their profession, while simultaneously also testing effects of doing more fact checking. ⋯ Fact checking was beneficial in terms of three democratically desirable outcomes-media trust, epistemic political efficacy, and future news use intent-only when defense of journalism stories were also present. No partisan differences were found in effects: Republicans, Democrats, and Independents were all affected alike. These results have important implications for journalistic practice as well as for theories and methods of news effects.
-
Mobile application based delivery of psycho-social interventions may help reduce the treatment gap for severe mental illnesses (SMIs) and decrease the burden on caregivers. Apps developed in high income settings show effectiveness, but they suffer from lack of applicability in low resource scenarios due to the difference in technology penetration, affordability, and acceptance. ⋯ The study systematically looks into the scope, design considerations and limitations of implementing a mobile technology based intervention for low resource settings. With only one-third of the patients and caregivers having access to smartphones and internet, parallel outreach strategies like IVRS should be actively considered while designing interventions. The difficulty of understanding and searching in a non-native language needs to be addressed. Hand holding of caregivers and frequent encouragement from treating doctors might significantly help in technology adoption and in surmounting the apprehensions related to using technology. To make the solution acceptable and useful to the already over-burdened caregivers, developers need to work closely with patients' family members and follow a ground-up collaborative approach to app development. The scope of delivering mental health services through technology is immense in resource constrained settings like India, provided we, researchers, appreciate and accept the fact that in the varied landscape of a divergent economic, educational, and cultural milieu, a single solution will never suffice for all, and intervention modality matching with end user capacity will be of paramount importance in determining the success of the endeavor.
-
One strategy to prevent urinary tract infections is the use of natural products such as cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) and propolis. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of these products alone and combined on the motility and biofilm formation of a collection of representative uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC). ⋯ Cranberry alone was seen to have a variable effect on motility and biofilm formation unrelated to bacterial characteristics, but a reduced motility and biofilm formation was observed for all the isolates in the presence of cranberry + propolis. These results suggest that cranberry alone doesn't work on all the E. coli strains and propolis potentiates the effect of cranberry on UPEC, representing a new strategy to prevent recurrent urinary tract infections.
-
We explore the effects of the quantity of information on the tendency to contribute to crowdfunding campaigns. Using the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, we analyze the campaign descriptions and the performance of over 70,000 projects. ⋯ To do so, we test for the non-linearity (quadratic) effect of our independent variable (word count) using regression analysis. Consistent with the hypothesis that excess information will negatively affect funds raised and number of contributors, we observe a consistent U-shaped relationship between campaign text length and overall success which suggest that an optimal number of words exists within crowdfunding texts and that going over this point will reduce a project's chance of fundraising success.