M. Anthony Machin

University of Southern Queensland · School of Psychology and Wellbeing

To cope with demands of working while studying, students must structure the boundaries between these roles (e.g., integrate or segment them) to suit their preferences and circumstances. However, students differ on how well they do this, and we do not yet understand the factors that contribute to managing work and study well. We sought to determine...

Presenting a contemporary outlook on how organizations must adjust to the ‘Era of Me’, this timely book analyses contemporary learning paradigms, sustainability, performance management, and theories of work-related attitudes to promote organizational culture and productivity in workplaces in this volatile modern era.

We examined how mature-aged, non-traditional students (studying part-time, working full-time) managed their multiple roles by testing a serial, indirect effects model, in which student role congruence (i.e., extent to which students structure role boundaries to meet their own and others’ preferences) was related to study engagement, and where work-...

Significance Communicating in ways that motivate engagement in social distancing remains a critical global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study tested motivational qualities of messages about social distancing (those that promoted choice and agency vs. those that were forceful and shaming) in 25,718 people in 89 countries...

The violation of aviation rules, particularly meteorological flight rules, can have fatal outcomes. Violation can sometimes be explained by intentional risk-taking, alternatively it can be the manifestation of a strategy to enhance performance and influence outcomes, such as saving time or fulfilling customer expectations. The aim of this study was...

Relatively little is known about how working students manage their dual roles of work and study. To extend this research, we examined the direct and indirect relationships between boundary flexibility-ability (the appraised capacity to modify a boundary of one role to accommodate better the demands of another role) and boundary flexibility-willingn...

Despite psychology being one of the most popular undergraduate programs, students often report not knowing how training in psychology relates to careers. With chapters written by experts across Australia, this book explores just some of the many ways that students can apply their training in psychological science across a variety of careers and sec...

Little is known about the role that work organisations play in the career development of working students. We tested a serial effects model (N = 235; mean age 23 years; 70% female) with antecedents to organisational career growth (self-management, supervisor support, work demands, job-fit, job-relevance), and immediate (work-study conflict/facilita...

Banks v. Goodfellow [1870. LR 5 QB 549 (Eng.)] is almost 150 years old, yet still stands as authority for the principle that unsoundness of the mind will not rebut testamentary capacity where it does not affect the will itself. Readers of this journal would know that psychology has advanced greatly during this sesquicentenary, and yet the law relat...

Mood profiling has been a popular assessment strategy since the 1970s, although little evidence exists of distinct mood profiles beyond the realm of sport and exercise. In the present study, we investigated clusters of mood profiles derived from the six subscales of the Brunel Mood Scale using the In The Mood website. Mood responses in three sample...

The need to better understand the impact of changes in work conditions is paramount. While greater flexibility has considerable benefits, there may also be unintended consequences such as greater work intensification leading to poorer health and well-being. This research focuses on the unique variance in measures of well-being that is accounted for...

The aim of this study is to explore the literature, investigate methods and analyse models and data to identify areas in which healthcare organisations can refocus their strategies so as to retain nurses in the workforce, and hopefully avert a global healthcare crisis. The study has multiple goals. The first is to gain a sound understanding of nurs...

With a focus on the self-initiated efforts of employees, this study examined a model of core proactive motivation processes for participation in non-mandatory professional development (PD) within a proactive motivation framework using the Self-Determination Theory perspective. A multi-group SEM analysis conducted across 439 academic and general emp...

Research into mood and performance relationships has had a strong focus on psychometric testing, commonly referred to as mood profiling. Although mood profiling has been used extensively in applied psychology since the 1970s, there are no published investigations of whether distinct mood profile clusters can be identified among the general populati...

Negative life events are associated with poor wellbeing and mental health outcomes. Following a diathesis-stress model, we tested whether psychological functioning and quality of interpersonal relationships moderated the effect of life events on subjective wellbeing. This study comprised data from a young and middle-aged adult sample (n = 364) draw...

Although teaching is frequently cited as a stressful profession, limited recent Norwegian data is available. This study addressed the extent to which organizational climate and individual and organizational well-being outcomes vary between schools in rural, urban, and city locations. Participants were predominantly female (68%), aged 45+ years (63....

This study focused on the impact of reemployment on access to both the latent and manifest benefits of employment, and mental health. Existing theories predicted that reemployment would positively affect these variables. One hundred and fifteen unemployed participants in South East Queensland, Australia, completed two paper-and-pencil surveys admin...

Subjective well-being (SWB) is defined in terms of positive and negative affect whilst psychological well-being (PWB) reflects self-referent attitudes of mastery and self-acceptance. Whilst both SWB and PWB are associated with personality, concurrent analysis is limited. This study (n=679) reports on a teacher sample in which personality, SWB and P...

This paper presents a summary of some of the implications gleaned from a research project which investigated the psychological influences on the experience of unemployment. Drawing from deprivation theory and the stress and coping literature, the research project explored coping resources, cognitive appraisals, coping behaviours, mental health and...

This study aimed to identify factors that predict employees' commitment to and support for organisational change. The three components of Herscovitch and Meyer's (2002) commitment to organisational change model were hypothesised to mediate the relationship between organisational climate and behavioural support for organisational change. Data were c...

Queensland Health implemented the “Better Workplaces” staff opinion survey (the survey) in May 2006. The initiative stands as the largest single staff survey ever conducted in Queensland, and one of the largest in Australia. This case study outlines the process of this project, the outcomes to date and some of the pitfalls and successes along the w...

An important dimension of training effectiveness relates to how well skills learned during training are transferred to the workplace. The current study examines the effects of several individual characteristics (Self-efficacy, Motivation to Transfer, Training Reactions, Goals for Transfer, and Commitment to Transfer Goal) and Situational Constraint...

Ryff’s (1989b) Psychological Well-Being (PWB) scales measure six related constructs of human functioning. The present paper examined the validity of Ryff’s 6-factor PWB model, using data from a life events study (N=401) and an organisational climate study (N=679). Previous validation studies, using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), have identifie...

The study examined the mediating influence of individual psychological reactions to work on the relationship between organisational climate and job withdrawal behaviours (viz, intention to leave and absenteeism). 1097 hospital employees were surveyed using the Queensland Public Agency Staff Survey (QPASS) to obtain measures of organisational climat...

Research has shown that inexperienced drivers underestimate the risks associated with a range of driving situations. In addition, personality factors are an important influence on both risk perceptions and driving behaviour. The study investigated the strength of relationship between personality factors, risk perceptions, and driving behaviour amon...

A survey was conducted on a sample of 159 Australian bus drivers to determine the extent to which workload and self-reported driver coping styles predicted their subjective health status. The model that was proposed incorporated the hours spent driving as a measure of workload, both adaptive and maladaptive driver coping styles, and self-report mea...

Research has suggested that commitment to organisational change is a mediator between employees' perceptions of organisational climate and change-related outcomes such as behavioural support for change. This study sought to further clarify the role of one component of commitment to organisational change (affective commitment) in mediating the relat...

Employee well-being is generally captured by assessments of mental health, work satisfaction and level of affect, reflecting a Hedonistic approach to understanding Subjective Well-Being (SWB). In contrast, from their own gerontological research, Ryff (1989) and Ryff & Keyes (1995) proposed a Eudaimonic model of Psychological Well-Being (PWB) consis...

In the web of human relationships, trust is one of the interconnecting links that sustains ongoing interactions between individuals. In a public sector organisation where the organisational structure is multi-layered, it is a sine qua non that immediate supervisors promote trust with employees. In this study, attributes of leaders with the closest...

This study assessed the impact of informal social support on job satisfaction, morale, and distress. A 41-item measure of informal team processes as well as a 50-item measure of organisational climate was administered to 38 participants from two organisations. These data were used to test whether informal social support could add to the prediction...

Research focusing on young novice drivers' risk perceptions has shown that inexperienced drivers underestimate the risks associated with a range of driving situations. Personality factors are an important influence on both risk perceptions and driving behaviour. The study investigated the strength of relationship between specific personality factor...

A survey of 371 unemployed people in South East Queensland explored whether deprivation of the latent benefits of employment was able to predict psychological distress after controlling for other key correlates. A standard multiple regression found that the latent benefits (timestructure, social contact, collective purpose, enforced activity, and s...

This study was conducted with 1097 employees (866 females, 217 males, 14 did not indicate gender) in a regional Health Service District who completed the Queensland Public Agency Staff Survey in 2002. Nurses’ results on measures of organizational climate and psychological outcomes were compared with those of other employees in the Health Service Di...

This study aims to clarify the role of Australian public sector employees' commitment to organisational change. Three components of commitment to organisational change (affective, normative, and continuance commitment to organisational change) were hypothesised to mediate the relationship between organisational climate and behavioural support for o...

Situational judgement tests (SJTs) present scenarios drawn from a work context and ask respondents to select the most appropriate response from among a range of options. They therefore attempt to assess aspects of social cognition that are not often measured in traditional selection batteries. The present study asked participants to complete a high...

Theorists have argued the importance of the latent and manifest benefits of employment and their relationship with psychological well-being. Although many studies have examined these variables, there has been little consistency in the range of measures used. Two previous specific measures have been found to be inadequate or unreliable. To date, no...

This study examined the underlying structure of transfer climate and those aspects of transfer climate that were related to pre-training self-efficacy, pre-training motivation, and post-training transfer implementation intentions. Positive and negative affectivity (PA and NA) were also measured in order to better understand the relationship of thes...

Workplace hazards have been a major cause of concern in the taxi industry and management has been actively involved in trying to reduce the hazards faced by taxi drivers. However, it appears that there has not been sufficient emphasis placed on the physical health and emotional well-being of drivers. This research project integrates the various fac...

Few studies have focused on the individual and organisational factors that predict motivation to learn when training is mandatory. This study addressed the overall predictability of motivation to learn from a range of individual and organisational variables as well as whether organisational commitment mediated the relationships between the other pr...

A number of factors influence the outcomes of computer skills training and the likelihood of successful transfer. The first empirical test of a conceptual model of training transfer sought to explain how trainees' perceptions of various in-training transfer-enhancing activities such as overlearning, fidelity, stimulus variability, principles-meanin...

This study examined the connection between background variables (length of unemployment and number of previous training courses), dispositional variables (positive affect and negative affect), perceptions of training climate, and psychological outcomes for unemployed trainees. The trainees in the experimental condition improved their levels of gene...

This paper tests the factor structure and construct validity of the Access to Categories of Experience scale (ACE; Evans, 1986), which has been widely used to measure the five latent benefits of employment proposed by Jahoda (1981). The ACE and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ; Goldberg, 1972) were administered to 425 unemployed individuals. T...

A sample of job seekers (N=161) were assessed on measures of well-being and the latent benefits of employment. The unemployed reported less access to the latent benefits than the underemployed. In a finer grained analysis, there was a monotonic increase from least to most access to the latent benefits from those with no paid work in the past three...

A sample of job seekers (N = 161) were assessed on measures of well-being and the latent benefits of employment. The unemployed reported less access to the latent benefits than the underemployed. In a finer grained analysis, there was a monotonic increase from least to most access to the latent benefits from those with no paid work in the past thre...

This study tests the contributions of the latent functions of employment (latent deprivation model; Jahoda, 1981: Jahoda, M. (1981). Work, employment and unemployment: Values theories and approaches in social research. American Psychologist, 36, 184–191), the manifest functions of employment (agency restriction model; Fryer, 1986: Fryer, D. M. (198...

This paper reports on immediate and long-term well-being outcomes for a group of long-term unemployed youth who attended specially devised training courses based on the cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) model. The courses were aimed specifically at improving the mental health of participants, and providing them with coping skills to deal better wit...

This paper reports on immediate and long-term well-being outcomes for a group of long-term unemployed youth who attended specially devised training courses based on the cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) model. The courses were aimed specifically at improving the mental health of participants, and providing them with coping skills to deal better wit...

Four studies employed path analysis to examine how measures of occupational stressors, coping resources, and negative affectivity (NA) and positive affectivity (PA) interact to predict occupational strain. The Occupational Stress Inventory (Osipow & Spokane, 1987) was used to measure stress, strain, and coping. The Positive and Negative Affectivity...

This paper reports on immediate and delayed mental health outcomes for a group of long-term unemployed individuals (mean age 33 yrs) who attended occupational skills/personal development training courses. Results for participants were compared with a waiting-list control group. Outcomes investigated were well-being (depression, psychological distre...

This paper reports on short-term mental health outcomes for long-term unemployed youth who attended 16 week occupational training programs in Australia. Outcomes for 30 participants were compared with 52 waiting-list control subjects. Results were also analysed controlling for the independent variable of neuroticism to determine the influence of pe...

This paper reports on short-term mental health outcomes for long-term unemployed youth who attended 16 week occupational training programs in Australia. Outcomes for 30 participants were compared with 52 waiting-list control subjects. Results were also analysed controlling for the independent variable of neuroticism to determine the influence of pe...

This study examined whether coach drivers' perceptions of organisational safety climate mediated the relationship between their supervisor's leadership style and a number of outcome measures including self-reported safety behaviour, number of accidents and near misses, occupationally-induced fatigue, job-related affective well-being, and symptoms o...

Published in 2002 in K. Kraiger (Ed.), Creating, implementing, and managing effective training and development, (pp. 263-301). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

A nonprescriptive fatigue management training program was developed that aimed at identifying specific factors contributing to coach driver fatigue and assisting coach drivers to develop more effective coping strategies to manage difficult or stressful work situations. The training program incorporated a strategy of presenting realistic, job relate...

ABSTRACT Asurvey,was conducted ,on a ,sample of 159 Australian bus drivers to determine ,the extent to which workload ,and self-reported driver coping styles predicted their subjective health status. The model ,that was proposed ,incorporated the hours that drivers’ worked ,as a ,measure ,of workload, both adaptive and maladaptive driver coping sty...

Research indicates that bus driving is a stressful occupation associated with increased health risks (e.g., Duffy & McGoldrick, 1990; Winkleby , Ragland, Fisher, & Syme, 1988). It is an occupation characterised by both high and conflicting demands (Meijman & Kompier, 1998). For example, the demand for professional and courteous customer service oft...

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