Firefighters are exposed to high physical and psychological occupational factors while providing an essential service to our communities. Female firefighters represent a minority group in this male dominated occupation. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively determine the impact of a male dominated, physically demanding occupation on women's work health and job satisfaction through the experiences of female firefighters.A phenomenological approach was used to collect data through semi-structured, recorded interviews with female firefighters. The recorded interviews were transcribed into text and inductive thematic analysis was used to qualitatively analyze the transcripts.Review and analysis of the participant responses identified seven themes: physical demands/difficulties, gender related physiological differences, compensatory strategies, equipment mal-adaptation, earning respect, negative attitudes of male counterparts: impact on social inclusion and health behaviors, recognition of injury risk.Female firefighters are exposed to increased risk of injury due to the psychological and physical occupational stressors in firefighting. Implications of this research are provided and include recommendations for future research to target the physical and psychosocial aspects of firefighting.
In the past decade, several nonverbal of intelligence have been developed as an alternative to administering only part of an intelligence test in order to minimize the use of language. Some of these include the Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised (Leiter-R; Roid & Miller, 1997), the Raven Progressive Matrices (RPM; Raven, Raven, & Court, 1998), the General Ability Measure for Adults (GAMA; Naglieri & Bardos, 1997), the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence-Third Edition (TONI-III; Brown, Sherbenou & Johnsen, 1997), and the Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (CTONI; Hammill, Pearson, & Widerholt, 1997). While all of these lessen the use of language and responses requiring verbalizations, all of them have been criticized for their limitations (Lassiter, Bell, Hutchinson, & Matthews, 2001; Lassiter, Harrison, Matthews, & Bell, 2001; Sattler, 2001; Williams & McCallum, 1995). Cited limitations of these tests have included a lack of a theoretical basis, limited predictive utility, and inadequate normative data and psychometric properties. When data regarding the criterion-related validity of these tests is available, the correlation coefficients between these tests and various achievement usually fall between .20 and .30 (Williams & McCallum, 1995). This range is much lower than that of most intelligence tests considered to have adequate validity (i.e., between .40 and .70; Sattler, 2001). Bracken and McCallum (1998) designed the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT) to answer the need for a nonverbal measure of intelligence that is model-driven, multidimensional, and psychometrically sound. The UNIT is a measure of cognitive abilities designed to assess intellectual functioning of children between the ages of 5 and 17 years who may experience a disadvantage if assessed using a traditional language-loaded measure of intelligence (Wilhoit & McCallum, 2002). The UNIT is a unique assessment measure because all of the instructions and administration of the test are given using gestures and pantomime. The authors of this test suggest that the foremost goal in developing the measure was to ensure a fair assessment of intelligence for those children and adolescents whose cognitive and intellectual abilities cannot be adequately or fairly assessed with language-loaded or with existing unidirectional nonverbal measures (McCallum, Bracken, & Wasserman, 2001, p. 69). Bracken and McCallum (1998) present evidence of moderate concurrent validity of the UNIT with academic achievement in three different research studies reported in the manual. The first study was conducted using three samples, including children who were intellectually gifted (n = 43), children with learning disabilities (n = 59), and children with mental retardation (n = 55). The participants were administered the UNIT and the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement - Revised (WJ-R; Woodcock & Johnson, 1989b). For the gifted children, the Standard battery UNIT FSIQ was negatively correlated with Broad Reading (r = -.25) and Broad Written Language (r = -.15) but positively correlated with Broad Mathematics (r = .62). For the learning disabled sample, the Standard battery UNIT FSIQ had low correlations with Broad Reading (r = .03) and Broad Written Language (r = .12) but was moderately correlated with Broad Mathematics (r = .46). Interestingly, for the children with mental retardation, the UNIT FSIQ was moderately correlated with all 3 broad academic areas from the WJ-R (range .52 to .55). In a second study, Bracken and McCallum (1998) compared the UNIT and the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT; Wechsler, 1992). Thirty-one students between the ages of 5 and 14 years were administered the UNIT Abbreviated, Standard, and Extended batteries as well as the WIAT Extended batteries. UNIT FSIQ scores from the three batteries were moderately correlated with the WIAT Total Achievement scores (r = . …
Developed over six decades ago, the Shipley Institute of Living Scale (Shipley, 1967; Zachary, 1991) is a brief measure of intelligence consisting of two subtests. On the Abstraction subtest, participants must complete numerical problems, word patterns, and analogies for 20 different problems, and on the Verbal subtest, participants must choose synonyms for 40 English words that become increasingly more difficult. The test usually takes less than 20 minutes to administer and yields raw scores that can be converted to standard IQ scores (Zachary, 1991). While the Shipley enjoys status as a well-established brief measure of intelligence, the test was not developed from a theoretically based model of intelligence. The Abstraction and Verbal subtests of the Shipley, however, appear to measure constructs similar to the fluid and crystallized abilities first purported by Horn and Cattell (Cattell, 1941, 1963; Horn & Cattell, 1966) and later by Carroll and other researchers (Carroll, 1993; Horn & Noll, 1997). Indeed, the Shipley manual (Zachary, 1991) describes the Abstraction scale as tapping attention and problem solving processes that are more fluid in nature, while the Shipley Verbal scale is easily conceptualized as a test of crystallized ability due to its verbal content. Although the psychometric properties of the Shipley have been supported by research, the fact remains that the Shipley does not operate from an established theoretical base. The Cattell-Horn-Carroll (Carroll, 1993; Horn & Noll, 1997) theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence maintains its status as one of the current major empirical theories of intelligence. This paradigm conceptualizes intelligence as composed of many subcomponents, with two major components being fluid (Gf) and crystallized (Gc) abilities. The Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory's concept of fluid intelligence, or Gf, represents pure, nonverbal mental efficiency that is less influenced by cultural or educational experience. Individuals may demonstrate fluid intelligence through completion of figure classifications, figural analyses, number and letter series, matrices and paired associates (Sattler, 1992). The items on the Shipley Abstraction scale purport to measure these same constructs. To complete the word and number puzzles, the examinee merely needs to know how to read, count, and relate simple words and numbers; abilities that reflect minimal cultural and educational bias. Conversely, the theory postulates that crystallized intelligence, or Gc, encompasses acquired skills and knowledge that depend on educational exposure. This dimension of intelligence may also be culturally sensitive. Crystallized abilities may be measured by performance on such tasks as: vocabulary, abstract word analogies, and mechanics of language (McGrew, 1997). The vocabulary words in the Shipley's Verbal section require a participant to have learned the words on the test prior to taking it; a task rooted in educational and cultural experience. The current study attempts to compare the Shipley Abstraction and Verbal subscales to the KAIT Gf and Gc components to determine if the Shipley does in fact measure similar constructs as the KAIT. Validity of the KAIT Kaufman and Kaufman (1993) purport to measure crystallized and fluid abilities with the KAIT. This theoretically based test contains four subtests designed to measure fluid abilities: Rebus Learning, Logical Steps, Mystery Codes and Memory for Block Designs. Four subtests also measure Crystallized ability: Definitions, Auditory Comprehension, Double Meanings, and Famous Faces. The KAIT Fluid subtests contain numerous symbols, abstract designs, and problem solving items that tap into pure reasoning abilities that operate autonomously from educational placement or achievement. The KAIT Crystallized subtests include vocabulary words, short story comprehension and pictures of historic and popular icons that measure a participant's accumulation of knowledge over time. …
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