BACKGROUND: The American College Health Association found that over 30% of students reported difficulty in functioning due to feeling depressed, overwhelming anxiety (50%) and anger (36%). Suicide is the second leading cause of death among US adolescents and over half of mental illnesses emerge prior to adulthood. A similar study found that nearly half of student veterans met criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and 46% had suicidal ideation. Left untreated, mental illness can lead to increased absenteeism, lower academic performance, disrupted classroom behaviors and compromises school safety. Educators and students are well positioned to identify and refer students in psychological distress yet traditional gatekeeper programs increase knowledge with little impact on referral behaviors. The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of newly developed game-based role-play training simulations designed to teach users how to identify, talk to and if necessary, refer students in psychological distress. METHODS: A total of 12,410 middle and high school educators, college faculty, staff and students completed one of five 45-minute training simulations where users practiced role-plays with emotionally responsive virtual humans that react like real students. Pre-, post and three month follow-up data was collected via the Gatekeeper Behavior Scale that measured preparedness, likelihood or behavioral intent and self efficacy. Gatekeeper behaviors included self-reported number of students identified, approached and referred from pre- to follow-up. All data was meta-analyzed. RESULTS: Composite effect size for pre- and post-training measures of preparedness, likelihood and self-efficacy to engage in gatekeeper behaviors was large at 0.72. Effect sizes comparing pre- to follow-up for preparedness was 0.70, likelihood 0.35 and self-efficacy 0.42. Changes in gatekeeper behaviors including increases in the number of distressed students identified, approached and referred to support services was 0.21. CONCLUSIONS: Data supports the use of game-based role-play simulations that utilize virtual humans to train users to engage in gatekeeper behaviors to augment student mental health initiatives. This training modality, coupled with the benefits of online delivery, holds tremendous potential to reach large numbers of geographically dispersed populations. Additionally, this learning approach has potential to support a wide range of public health initiatives.
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of commitment in the relationship between protégés’ anxious attachment styles and feedback behaviors of both mentors and protégés. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 100 academic protégé-mentor dyads, and reports from both members of the mentoring relationships were used to test hypotheses. Findings – The results suggested that protégé perceptions of mentor commitment and self-reported protégé commitment mediated the relationships between protégé anxious attachment style and protégé feedback seeking and feedback acceptance. Additionally, mentor perceptions of protégé commitment played an important role, mediating the relationships between protégé anxious attachment and quality and quantity of mentor feedback. Research limitations/implications – Taken together, the results reveal the important role of perceptions of partner commitment in high-quality mentoring behaviors. Originality/value – This study was among the first to examine feedback and commitment in academic mentoring relationships, particularly taking into account commitment of each member of the dyad as well as their perceptions of the other person’s commitment.
Workplace flexibility has been a topic of considerable interest to researchers, practitioners, and public policy advocates as a tool to help individuals manage work and family roles. In this study, meta‐analysis is used to clarify what is known about the relationship between flexible work arrangements and work–family conflict by deconstructing the flexibility construct. We found that the direction of work–family conflict (work interference with family vs. family interference with work) and the specific form of flexibility (flextime vs. flexplace; use vs. availability) make a difference in the effects found. Overall, the significant effects were small in magnitude.
The relationship between affect and job performance has been the topic of previous meta-analytic investigations. However, these studies have been limited by their focus on only one form of affect, trait dimensional affect, or failure to differentiate between various forms of affect, such as state affect and emotions. The present study extends past research by meta-analytically examining the association between state dimensional affect and discrete emotions and three dimensions of job performance, task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior. In addition, we examined subgroup differences according to the temporal consistency of performance and affect measurement, and we reviewed studies that assessed the affect–performance link using within-person analyses in the context of experience sampling designs.
Experience sampling research can offer unique insight into state conditions of employee health. Over the past several years, there has been a surge of popularity for such designs in work and organisational psychology, especially with regard to employee health measurement. Experience sampling health measurement can be executed using a variety of different methods including various objective health metrics such as cardiovascular activity measurement, cortisol response tracking, and actigraphy. Furthermore, recent innovations with personal fitness tracking devices open up many possibilities for researchers to continuously monitor activity and health patterns over many days. Technological advances in self‐reporting methods, especially in combination with innovations in objective health measurement, can offer modern researchers richer sets of data. We summarise and describe these methods, offering insight into their advantages and disadvantages for contemporary health researchers interested in experience sampling designs.
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