Study exploring University staff health
Fri, 14 Feb 2014 10:29:00 GMT
Study exploring University staff health seeks academic staff as participants
A research project designed to support the health needs of University staff through development of a new questionnaire is looking for academic colleagues as participants.
Development and validation of an occupational measure of Work Instability for University academics.
The University of Huddersfield is working in collaboration with The University of Leeds on a study to develop and validate a new screening questionnaire capturing relevant health, psychosocial issues and workplace factors, to measure Work Instability (WI) in university academics: The Academic Work Instability Scale (A-WIS).
Work Instability Scales identify how well people are managing at work allowing organisations to be more proactive in supporting staff when needed. The A-WIS will also have the potential to be used as an outcome measure to evaluate the effectiveness of health and wellbeing initiatives. The study is being completed by staff in the department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Leeds.
There are a number of stages involved in developing and validating this new questionnaire. The Project Team are currently recruiting for qualitative interviews, which will be used for item generation, and cognitive debriefing interviews to test the face validity of a draft version of the scale.
The entry criteria are the same for all stages of the study:
- Employed in an academic role in one of the 3 participating universities (Leeds, Huddersfield and Chester), part-time and temporary staff are to be included.
- Currently working or off sick for less than a month.
- Currently experiencing some health/wellbeing issues (either physical and/or stress or emotional difficulties) or have experienced some issues in the last month.
What will my participation involve?
We are now looking for volunteers for the next stages which are a postal survey and vocational assessments.
For stage 1 each participant will be asked to participate in one face-to-face qualitative interview, this will be arranged at your convenience at a time and venue of your choice (usually the university where you work). Interviews usually take about an hour.
For stage 2 each participant will be asked to take part in a cognitive de-briefing interview; again this will be arranged at a time and venue to suit you. Interviews for this stage usually take about 30 - 45 minutes.
If you meet the above entry criteria and are interested in becoming involved please contact the Principal Investigator Gill Gilworth who will be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Tel: 07734 009663 or e-mail: gill@realisingability.co.uk
Further information:
An information sheet with full details of the project is available at http://www.hud.ac.uk/hr/intranet/
The project is being managed by a research group at the University of Leeds comprising the Principal Investigator, Gill Gilworth (Visiting Fellow Rehabilitation Medicine and Occupational Physiotherapist), Prof. Alan Tennant (Rehabilitation Medicine), Gary Tideswell (Director Wellbeing, Safety and Health), Ann McHaffie (Head of the University Occupational Health Service) and John Papworth-Smith (University Occupational Health Medical Officer).
Current occupational-related measures of WI that have been developed at the University of Leeds in the past (Nurse Work Instability Scale, and scales for Office and Manual Work) are thought to be unique as the first validated occupation-specific questionnaires which capture both psychosocial issues and health difficulties on the single construct of Work Instability. They are short, user-friendly, self-administered questionnaires which are scored in three bands from low to high WI reflecting the risk of going off sick from work.
As it is known that high WI is closely correlated to risk of sickness absence using WI scales can give an early indication of individuals who are having difficulties at work when arguably proactive support/intervention to reduce WI could be effective in preventing or reducing sickness absence and be beneficial for staff health and wellbeing.
Experience from the development of these measures has shown that although there are common components to WI, there are also distinct differences in different occupational groups. It is anticipated that the nature of university academic work means that there will be characteristics of this staff group that are unique, and can only be captured by developing a WI scale specific to academic staff. This scale should be more accurate in identifying academics experiencing WI and more sensitive to detecting changes when used as an outcome measure to evaluate the effectiveness of initiatives designed to reduce WI in this group compared to the more generic occupational Work Instability Scales.
