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Health Behaviors in the Service Sector: Substance Use Among Restaurant Employees
Abstract
Restaurant workers in the United States exhibit high levels of alcohol and drug use. However, there is a scant amount of qualitative research uncovering how and why restaurant employees use and abuse legal and illegal substances. Examining restaurant workers’ self-reported risky health behaviors is important for improving employee and occupational quality of life. The purpose of this article is to investigate the health behaviors of restaurant workers and pathways to such outcomes. Specifically, this article explores the question of what social conditions and processes within restaurants relate to employee adverse health behaviors. Drawing on qualitative data collected between 2009 and 2014, this article focuses on a case study of restaurant employees, detailing their substance use and the ways in which they discuss and talk about taking health risks. An analysis of 52 in-depth, semistructured interviews with restaurant workers broadens the theoretical explanation for deviant health behaviors in the service sector. Results indicate that workplace characteristics—such as occupational socialization, norms and values, job stress and coping mechanisms, social networks and friendships, and personnel policies—permit and encourage substance use and risky health behaviors. Research implications include underscoring service industry adverse health behaviors and recommendations for positive social change in terms of personal, social, and job-related well-being.
Objective: Food service employment is associated with substance use, risk of substance use disorders and various negative consequences. Previous research has not examined the substance use patterns of students employed in food service positions. Method: During Fall of 2018, 276 undergraduates completed an anonymous online survey regarding current employment status and substance use. Results: Compared to students employed in other positions, students in food service positions reported higher levels of drinking to cope with negative affect, negative urgency, workplace substance use, marijuana use, marijuana-related problems, and motives. Food service employment was also a significant predictor of marijuana use and related consequences. Conclusions: Students in food service positions, relative to other employment positions, report elevated substance use behavior, risk factors, and negative consequences. Food service employment also contributed variance to models accounting for marijuana use and related consequences. Prevention and intervention strategies should be investigated to mitigate risk for this population.
Introduction
The current study explored the prevalence of hazardous alcohol and drug consumption within bartenders and the impact of working more than 40 h a week on levels of alcohol and drug use.
Methods
Three hundred and ninety bartenders (247 females), recruited via social media, took part in a cross-sectional online survey. The study recorded units of alcohol and hours worked per week among participants. The team measured hazardous drinking using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and drug use by the Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST).
Results
According to AUDIT scores, 39% of participants were classed as having harmful alcohol consumption and 43.6% reported moderate/severe alcohol use that might indicate alcohol dependence. According to DAST scores, 21.8% of participants were classed as intermediate risk, 6.5% as substantial risk, and 0.5% as severe risk for drug use problems.
Male bartenders reported drinking significantly more units of alcohol per week and scored significantly higher on the AUDIT compared to females. Bartenders aged 26–30 and 31–40 reported drinking significantly more alcohol per week than bartenders aged 18–25. Additionally, bartenders aged 26–30 scored significantly higher on the AUDIT than ages 41–55.
A high workload (more than 40 h per week) had a significant effect on units of alcohol drunk per week.
Conclusion
This research indicates that hazardous alcohol and drug use is highly prevalent among this sample of bartenders. Working more than 40 h a week increases the amount of alcohol consumed, with males reporting higher use of alcohol and more problematic use than females. Additionally, those aged between 26 and 30 and 31 and 40 reported higher and more problematic use of alcohol compared to those in other age groups. These findings are important for public health because they describe a population that may be at risk of developing alcohol and substance use problems, and highlight the importance of adopting the brief, preventative interventions that we have suggested. Further research must help us to better understand the risk factors and causality involved in hazardous alcohol and drug use among bartenders.
The pandemic induced by COVID-19 urges people to create systems of strategies and restrictions in preventing the virus. These restrictions cause mass testing, contact tracing, wearing face masks, international travel bans, establishments closure, and lockdowns. Thus, make people live under new normal and adjustments. Workers and Students are some of those vulnerable people of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the researcher explores the lived experiences of working students, specifically: (1) to describe the experiences, (2) challenges, and (3) coping mechanisms of working students amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the study employed Interpretative Phenomenology Analysis (IPA) with fifteen (15) participants. Based on the study, the findings are the following: (1) Most working student experiences struggles to work and school, especially lack of sleep because of conflicting schedule, moreover, a toxic work environment brought by co-workers and customers. (2) Working students face financial challenges and schedule conflicts in school and work. Most of them are struggling by having an unstable internet connection that affects the performance of working students and the fear of getting infected by the COVID-19 at the workplace. (3) Despite experiencing and facing various challenges, working students tend to find alternative ways to overcome difficulties. They are adaptable and persistent in the face of adversity. Most of them seek social support and adapt the safety protocols at the workplace to prevent the spread of the virus.
Measuring the effectiveness of well-being programs in the workplace is important for optimizing the return on investment and selection of programs that meet organizational objectives. A pilot study was performed to assess employee well-being using the Happiness Mini-Survey and a one-sample pre–post study design intended to quickly allow employees to subjectively rate their well-being before and after participating in various classes as part of a well-being program. The findings demonstrated statistical significance in employee subjective ratings; they reported feeling better emotionally, physically, and mentally after participating in the classes. The employees’ self-rating for stress level also had statistically significant improvement after class participation. These findings are relevant for organizations that intend to offer and evaluate classes with an objective of increasing employee well-being. Recommendations for future studies include the use of more controlled conditions, and a control or comparison group to more robustly test for improvement over time, and the use of qualitative interviews to discover employees’ narratives of how workplace well-being programs can improve work productivity and quality of life.
Drawing on ethnographic data collected over a five-year period, this study addresses the complex topic of what constitutes meaningful lives. This research examines restaurant employees’ accounts of meaningfulness in and outside their workplaces. The meaning they ascribe to their jobs and activities external to work reveals five categories of meaningfulness: Helping, Mentoring, Expanding, Belonging, and Supplementation. Regardless of popular opinion, which marks restaurant work as meaningless, the data show how and why restaurant employees construct meaningfulness from the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of their jobs. Additionally, this investigation sheds light on how social constructions of meaning have the potential to contribute to and diminish one’s sense of meaningfulness. This study provides a more comprehensive and inclusionary perspective of the related concepts of meaning, meaningfulness, and meaningful work. Specifically, meaningfulness exists in quotidian and extraordinary experiences, and the workers engage in, understand, and appreciate both.
Bartenders are expected to control guests’ excessive alcohol consumption, but hazardous drinking is also common among staff in the bar industry. This paper explores bartenders’ accounts of work-related drinking and discusses how structural and cultural working conditions may impact drinking practices among staff. The data comprises 21 in-depth interviews with bartenders from different venues in Oslo, Norway: eight females and 13 males, aged 22–36 years (mean age 27). The analyses demonstrated three clusters of accounts of work-related drinking. First, the bartenders emphasised availability of alcohol in their work environment and that they perceived themselves as sophisticated drinkers. Second, drinking alcohol was described as a coping strategy to deal with stressful work and as a way of ‘coming down’ after high-energy work. Third, bartenders talked about their work as part of a lifestyle in which alcohol played an important role and they described intense friendships with colleagues. Occupational identity and identification with co-workers involved norms that encouraged a high level of alcohol consumption. Bartenders’ work and leisure time are closely intertwined and alcohol plays an important role in both areas. Server training programmes should be developed that take into account this workplace drinking culture.
Some employees tend to drink more alcohol than other employees, with costs to personal and organizational well-being. Based on a self-control framework, we propose that emotional labor with customers—effortfully amplifying, faking and suppressing emotional expressions (i.e., surface acting)—predicts alcohol consumption, and that this relationship varies depending on job expectations for self-control (i.e., autonomy) and personal self-control traits (i.e., impulsivity). We test these predictions with data drawn from a national probability sample of U.S. workers, focusing on employees with daily contact with outsiders (N = 1,592). The alcohol outcomes included heavy drinking and drinking after work. Overall, surface acting was robustly related to heavy drinking, even after controlling for demographics, job demands and negative affectivity, consistent with an explanation of impaired self-control. Surface acting predicted drinking after-work only for employees with low self-control jobs or traits; this effect was exacerbated for those with service encounters (i.e., customers, the public) and buffered for those with service relationships (i.e., patients, students, clients). We discuss what these results mean for emotional labor and propose directions for helping the large segment of U.S. employees in public facing occupations.
This qualitative study explored the perceived stressors and coping mechanisms of front of house restaurant staff, with an additional focus on potential health consequences resulting from these variables. Data from a snowball sample of male (n=5) and female (n=9) wait staff from various Peterborough, Ontario restaurants was collected through in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews. An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis of the data revealed that while wait staff identified emotional, physical, and organizational stressors, most normalized these stressors with internalized feelings of helplessness. The analysis also showed that wait staff spoke about health mainly in emotional terms, and minimized the physical demands of their work. Furthermore, owing to intrusive and inconsistent schedules wait staff appeared to have difficulty maintaining and engaging in meaningful relationships. As a result, wait staff's emotional health needs were not met and culminated in further stress. This research shows that future studies should be encouraged to further the understanding of the perceived stressors and coping mechanisms of front of house restaurant staff, and the influence of those variables on this population's health outcomes.
AIMS: This paper presents analyses of norms and behavior concerning drinking before, during, and after work hours among U.S. bar-restaurant chain employees, with a focus on hangovers at work and their correlates. METHODS: A mixed method approach combined qualitative analysis of 64 face-to-face interviews held with randomly chosen service, managerial and kitchen staff and quantitative analyses (including multivariable linear regression and bivariate analyses) of data drawn from 1,286 completed telephone surveys (response rate 68%) with 18-29 year old employees. RESULTS: Relatively few survey respondents reported past-year drinking in the hour prior to work (5%) or during work hours (2.7%), but extensive drinking in non- work hours (85.5%), and 36.5% of respondents reported coming to work with a hangover at least once. Correlates of hangover at work were past year intoxication and holding positive norms for hangovers. These findings were elaborated by interview data describing heavy drinking after work at nearby bars, restaurants and employee homes. CONCLUSIONS: The findings illustrated that employee drinking during work hours was not normative. However, study results portrayed widely-shared norms for heavy drinking outside of work, with hangovers and related harms appearing as the primary work time repercussions of after-work alcohol consumption.
Nationwide surveys identify food service workers as heavy alcohol users.
This article analyzes dimensions and correlates of problem drinking among young adult food service workers.
A telephone survey of national restaurant chain employees yielded 1,294 completed surveys.
Hazardous alcohol consumption patterns were seen in 80% of men and 64% of women. Multivariate analysis showed that different dimensions of problem drinking measured by the AUDIT were associated with workers' demographic characteristics, smoking behaviour, and job category.
These findings offer evidence of extremely high rates of alcohol misuse among young adult restaurant workers.
This study extends prior stress-coping-substance use research among adolescents by examining the employment context. Specifically, this study examines the relation of job dissatisfaction to substance use and the potential moderating influence of active and avoidant coping styles. Data were obtained from 446 employed high school students. Ordered-probit regression analyses reveal that job dissatisfaction is positively related to cigarette and alcohol use, but not to illicit drug use. Coping styles do not moderate the relation between job dissatisfaction and substance use. Nonetheless, coping styles have significant main-effect relations to substance use. Active coping is negatively related and avoidant coping is positively related to both cigarette and alcohol use. Neither coping style is related to illicit drug use.
Objectives-This report presents final 2017 data on U.S. deaths, death rates, life expectancy, infant mortality, and trends, by selected characteristics such as age, sex, Hispanic origin and race, state of residence, and cause of death. Methods-Information reported on death certificates is presented in descriptive tabulations. The original records are filed in state registration offices. Statistical information is compiled in a national database through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program of the National Center for Health Statistics. Causes of death are processed in accordance with the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision. Results-In 2017, a total of 2,813,503 deaths were reported in the United States. The age-adjusted death rate was 731.9 deaths per 100,000 U.S. standard population, an increase of 0.4% from the 2016 rate. Life expectancy at birth was 78.6 years, a decrease of 0.1 year from the 2016 rate. Life expectancy decreased from 2016 to 2017 for non-Hispanic white males (0.1 year) and non-Hispanic black males (0.1), and increased for non- Hispanic black females (0.1). Age-specific death rates increased in 2017 from 2016 for age groups 25-34, 35-44, and 85 and over, and decreased for age groups under 1 and 45-54. The 15 leading causes of death in 2017 remained the same as in 2016 although, two causes exchanged ranks. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, the 12th leading cause of death in 2016, became the 11th leading cause of death in 2017, while Septicemia, the 11th leading cause of death in 2016, became the 12th leading cause of death in 2017. The infant mortality rate, 5.79 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2017, did not change significantly from the rate of 5.87 in 2016. Conclusions-The age-adjusted death rate for the total, male, and female populations increased from 2016 to 2017 and life expectancy at birth decreased in 2017 for the total and male populations.
Purpose
– The purpose of this study is to investigate foodservice industry employees’ experiences and perceptions related to substance abuse prevention measures in the workplace.
Design/methodology/approach
– A qualitative approach was used for this foundational study, and data collection occurred by conducting in-depth interviews with 30 foodservice employees.
Findings
– Participants reported that, in their perceptions, substance abuse prevention measures were virtually non-existent at their places of employment. The few participants that were aware of such policies indicated that they had never seen the policy actually enforced.
Practical implications
– The results of this exploratory study suggest that foodservice employees may not be receiving adequate messages about workplace substance abuse prevention policies nor are they developing an adequate awareness of such policies. Further, where such policies are in place, they may not being adequately enforced, implying negligent business practices. Failure to display a presence and communication of workplace substance abuse policies and prevention efforts for this potentially high-risk population is both organizationally and socially irresponsible. Suggestions for the implementation of such harm reduction strategies are also provided, as is a call for further research conducted in a quantifiable method to offer more generalizable results.
Originality/value
– No previous study has investigated employee awareness of substance abuse policies and prevention measures or harm reduction strategies in the foodservice workplace. This study provides a step toward understanding foodservice employee substance abuse and prevention that was previously lacking in the literature.
Research on precarious work and its consequences overwhelmingly focuses on the economic dimension of precarity, epitomized by low wages. But the rise in precarious work also involves a major shift in its temporal dimension, such that many workers now experience routine instability in their work schedules. This temporal instability represents a fundamental and under-appreciated manifestation of the risk shift from firms to workers. A lack of suitable existing data, however, has precluded investigation of how precarious scheduling practices affect workers’ health and well-being. We use an innovative approach to collect survey data from a large and strategically selected segment of the U.S. workforce: hourly workers in the service sector. These data reveal that exposure to routine instability in work schedules is associated with psychological distress, poor sleep quality, and unhappiness. Low wages are also associated with these outcomes, but unstable and unpredictable schedules are much more strongly associated. Precarious schedules affect worker well-being in part through the mediating influence of household economic insecurity, yet a much larger proportion of the association is driven by work-life conflict. The temporal dimension of work is central to the experience of precarity and an important social determinant of well-being.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine restaurant employees’ engagement in identity work to manage occupational stigma consciousness.
Design/methodology/approach
Research methods included ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews.
Findings
Widespread societal stigma attached to food service work disturbed participants’ sense of coherence. Therefore, they undertook harmonizing their present and envisioned selves with “forever talk,” a form of identity work whereby people discursively construct desired, favorable and positive identities and self-concepts by discussing what they view themselves engaged and not engaged in forever. Participants employed three forever talk strategies: conceptualizing work durations, framing legitimate careers and managing feelings about employment. Consequently, their talk simultaneously resisted and reproduced restaurant work stigmatization. Findings elucidated occupational stigma consciousness, ambivalence about jobs considered “bad,” “dirty” and “not real,” discursive tools for negotiating laudable identities, and costs of equivocal work appraisals.
Originality/value
This study provides a valuable conceptual and theoretical contribution by developing a more comprehensive understanding of occupational stigma consciousness. Moreover, an identity work framework helps explain how and why people shape identities congruent with and supportive of self-concepts. Forever talk operates as a temporal “protect and preserve” reconciliation tool whereby people are able to construct positive self-concepts while holding marginalized, stereotyped and stigmatized jobs. This paper offers a unique empirical case of the ways in which people talk about possible future selves when their employment runs counter to professions normatively evaluated as esteemed and lifelong. Notably, research findings are germane for analyzing any identities (work and non-work related) that pose incoherence between extant and desired selves.
From 2015 to 2016, positive tests for illicit drugs in the United States increased from 4.0% to 4.2%. This increase reflects a worsening illicit drug-use problem in foodservice and other industries. A survey of foodservice and non-foodservice employees revealed significant differences on demographics and illicit drug-use behavior. Chi-square tests indicated these differences between foodservice and non-foodservice employees on age, ethnicity, education, and illicit drug-use. Independent t-tests indicated a significant difference in illicit drug-use concerns between drug users and non-drug users. Research findings revealed foodservice employees tend to focus primarily on short-term consequences (productivity and lethargy) of illicit drug-use, which may help explain the rampant use of these substances. Foodservice industry professionals need to take a more active role in combating illicit drug use among employees by drug-testing, having clear policies and procedures, increasing accountability and comradery among the workforce, and communicating the long-term negative outcomes of illicit drug use.
The relationship between work stressors and alcohol consumption has been extensively researched, and two premises have emerged: (1) work stressors precede employee alcohol use and (2) alcohol use precedes work stressors. Despite the continuous call for a paper to address hospitality employees’ alcohol use, no study in hospitality has compared these two premises. Using role stress, a specific type of work stressor commonly found among frontline employees, this study was designed to confirm which of the two premises best encompasses the role stress-alcohol use relationship among front-of-house restaurant servers in the United States. Using structural equation modeling, it was found that role ambiguity had a significant positive impact on alcohol use and a negative impact on job satisfaction. Alcohol use significantly increased job satisfaction, and had a positive indirect effect on the relationship between role ambiguity and job satisfaction. Job satisfaction had a significant negative impact on turnover intentions.
This paper aims to explore chefs’ experiences of the use of alcohol and other drugs (AOD) in Michelin-starred restaurants in Britain and Ireland. In total, 54 Head Chefs were interviewed in this study, which found AOD use to be part of their occupational culture. The work context plays a key role in this phenomenon in that harsh working conditions (such as heat, stress and long hours) provide fertile ground for AOD use as a means of self-medication and as a coping strategy. This study observes a normalisation of drinking to unwind. Even if this practice is detrimental to health, it is the coping mechanism used by chefs to deal with the stresses associated with the high end kitchen environment. Based on the findings of this research, it is argued that despite the industry’s efforts to eliminate this phenomenon, AOD use is part of everyday life in high-end commercial kitchens.
Restaurant industry employees have historically exhibited a high tendency toward substance use. To address this phenomenon, this study aimed to assess if a restaurant front-of-house server’s work stress contributes to alcohol and illicit substance use. Specifically, it was hypothesized that a server’s role stress (conflict and ambiguity) would stimulate substance use. Also, this study tested the impact of substance use on job and life satisfaction, and the moderating effect of self-control on the relationship between role stress and substance use. The results demonstrated that role ambiguity had a positive influence on substance use. Servers’ drug use had a positive influence on job satisfaction, but no significant influence was found for alcohol use. As hypothesized, job satisfaction significantly increased life satisfaction. Lastly, self-control moderated the relationship between role stress and substance use. Detailed results and implications of the findings are provided in the main body of this paper.
Because hangovers have been shown to affect cognitive functions and physical performance such as pilot maneuvers, they represent a threat to productivity and safety in the workplace. This article discusses why hangovers are rarely addressed by policies concerning alcohol and intoxication in the workplace. Following a review of relevant research on hangovers with implications for work impairment, the article considers ways in which otherwise well-defined alcohol policies may fail to guide supervisors’ responses to employee hangovers. Measurement problems and biological, psychological, and culturally shaped differences in the experience of hangovers thwart the formulation of simple worktime-hangover policies. The article concludes that further research on the nature and effects of hangovers would strengthen the formulation of policy and educational efforts to prevent them from causing injuries, productivity loss, or conflicts in the workplace.
Kitchens takes us into the robust, overheated, backstage world of the contemporary restaurant. In this rich, often surprising portrait of the real lives of kitchen workers, Gary Alan Fine brings their experiences, challenges, and satisfactions to colorful life. A new preface updates this riveting exploration of how restaurants actually work, both individually and as part of a larger culinary culture.
The traditional life course perspective is less widely applicable today than it was several decades ago. Drawing on data from 52 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, this article investigates a case of restaurant workers and how and why their experiences complicate the assumptions of the traditional life course stage model. Analysis of the data reveals that restaurant employees have multidimensional and nonlinear life course trajectories, and their accounts of aging both challenge and complement the characteristics of several developmental stages. This study illustrates how restaurant workers approach dilemmas accompanying non-normative development by “doing” strategic adulthood, whereby they sustain “legitimate” presentations of “adulthood” but continue to participate in “youthful” behaviors. The data show that restaurants can and do provide a pathway for unconventional ways of making a living and developing. These conclusions contribute to broadening the understanding of stage transitions, subjective age identity, and “nonstandard work” in the life course, and to theoretical explanations for people's ambivalence about adulthood.
In spite of the fact that chain referral sampling has been widely used in qualitative sociological research, especially in the study of deviant behavior, the problems and techniques involved in its use have not been adequately explained. The procedures of chain referral sampling are not self-evident or obvious. This article attempts to rectify this methodological neglect. The article provides a description and analysis of some of the problems that were encountered and resolved in the course of using the method in a relatively large exploratory study of ex-opiate addicts.
Stigmatized persons and secret deviants typically try to avoid negative consequences of labeling by keeping quiet and restricting interactions to those who accept their situation. We advance research on stigmas using an identity theory approach, which claims that persons are motivated by the need to preserve relationships and to self-verify. Our analyses of interviews with 20 respondents from a genital herpes self-help group reveal that their negative, emotional reactions are rooted in social disapproval and, like other stigmatized persons, they use secrecy, withdrawal, and preventive telling as strategies to manage their stigma. We find these strategies are motivated by identity processes but that they are often insufficient to meet respondents' needs. Consistent with our identity perspective, our respondents take the somewhat ironic step of revealing their stigma in attempts to protect predisease relationships and self-concepts. Finally, genital herpes threatens self-concepts and relationships to the extent that it, definitionally, widely implicates identities or implicates more prominent identities.
On the basis of findings of high levels of alcohol consumption and risk of alcohol-related disease among employees of the restaurant business, the ability of the Karasek work-strain model to predict heavy drinking was investigated in a cross-sectional study of 3204 Norwegian male and female waiters and cooks. In the logistic regression analyses, no strong associations between work stress and heavy drinking were found. However, the effectiveness of individual coping resources, measured as frequency of difficulty in relaxing after work, was an important predictor of heavy drinking, as were household type, age group, and occupation. Although no strong direct associations between work stress and heavy drinking were found, the results are consistent with a model where coping resources are the mediatiing variable between work stress and heavy drinking.
The teaching of qualitative analysis in the social sciences is rarely undertaken in a structured way. This handbook is designed to remedy that and to present students and researchers with a systematic method for interpreting qualitative data', whether derived from interviews, field notes, or documentary materials. The special emphasis of the book is on how to develop theory through qualitative analysis. The reader is provided with the tools for doing qualitative analysis, such as codes, memos, memo sequences, theoretical sampling and comparative analysis, and diagrams, all of which are abundantly illustrated by actual examples drawn from the author's own varied qualitative research and research consultations, as well as from his research seminars. Many of the procedural discussions are concluded with rules of thumb that can usefully guide the researchers' analytic operations. The difficulties that beginners encounter when doing qualitative analysis and the kinds of persistent questions they raise are also discussed, as is the problem of how to integrate analyses. In addition, there is a chapter on the teaching of qualitative analysis and the giving of useful advice during research consultations, and there is a discussion of the preparation of material for publication. The book has been written not only for sociologists but for all researchers in the social sciences and in such fields as education, public health, nursing, and administration who employ qualitative methods in their work.
Framed by Erving Goffman's (1963) concept of backspaces, this article interprets the accounts people provide for participating in playful deviance during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Backspaces provide a liminal license for people to transgress norms, participate in playful deviance, and present their secret self in urban settings. The major findings are that playful deviance is an urban tourist attraction that provides self-validation and enjoyment for participants. Examples of playful deviance include flashing the breasts, penises, buttocks; masturbating; performing or receiving oral sex; orhaving penetrative sex in public with strangers onBourbon Street during Mardi Gras.
What happens to high school youths when they take on jobs during the
school year, sometimes working long hours, while trying to maintain the
role of student? There is a consensus in the empirical literature that
teenage employment, particularly what is termed "intensive" employment,
results in a constellation of detrimental consequences: lower school
grades, diminished educational ambitions, and emotional alienation
from parents. There is even more consensus that work and intensive
work puts youths at great risk of committing delinquent acts and other
problem behaviors such as smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and using
marijuana and other drugs. In our view, the conclusion that either work
or intensive work has a harmful net effect on youths is based on a thin
empirical base. The problem is that previous empirical work has not
adequately addressed the issue of possible selection effects. In this
article, we reexamine the relationship between intensive employment
and delinquency and problem behaviors using data from the National
Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). We conduct two general types of
analysis. First, we conduct what we term a traditional analysis wherein
we employ observed covariates to capture the selection process. Here
we find the same positive relationship between intensive employment and
antisocial behavior that others before us have. Second, we conduct both a
random and a fixed-effect analysis where we adjust for both observed and
unobserved sources of population heterogeneity. In this second analysis,
we find that the positive association between work and antisocial
behavior observed in the traditional analysis disappears. We discuss
the implications of these results both for analyses of the relationship
between work and crime in general and for criminological theory.
The book is the product of a three-day conference on social and psychological factors in stress. The purpose of the conference was to identify crucial issues in this area of stress and to seek potential research approaches to those issues as the focus of the basic contract research program for the sponsor. The document gives a conceptual formulation for research on stress, major substantive and methodological issues, an integrative review of some research on social-psychological factors in stress, and a discussion of strategic considerations for future research on stress.
This paper describes alternative methods for careful sampling of special populations. It discusses the use of single or multiple lists, even when incomplete, along with supplementary measures using telephone and mail techniques. If the special populations are clustered there are several alternatives for reducing costs substantially. These involve telephone or mail screenings to eliminate zero segments with a single contact, use of two or three contacts to eliminate zero segments if face-to-face screening is required, use of lists to identify nonzero segments, use of combined screening, and reducing the sampling rate in nonzero areas that have low densities.
For some populations the use of network sampling can be very effective. Some populations can be defined by their activities and sampled at locations where they participate. These careful methods should be used if one is trying to generalize to a total special population.
Considers the dimensions of the workplace that have been shown to influence alcohol use to clarify the relevance of culture to job-related drinking. These dimensions are discussed under 4 conceptual headings: normative regulation of drinking, the quality and organization of work, factors external to the workplace, and drinking subcultures. Based on a review of the literature and results from ongoing studies conducted in heavy machinery assembly industries, it is concluded that cultural dimensions of the work environment can play an important role in the development of drinking subcultures, in the etiology of heavier and problem drinking, and in the maintenance of work-related alcohol problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A review of clinical, experimental, and field research on stress, together with the author's own research, provides the background for a theory that emphasizes the importance of cognitive processes. Harvard Book List (edited) 1971 #370 (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
consider an aspect of older adults' social relationships that has received less attention: social relationships as a source of companionship rather than of support per se / specifically . . . consider the contributions of companionship to psychological well-being in the context of older adults' everyday activities and plans rather than in the more specialized context of efforts to cope with stressful life events (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Selection into the restaurant business based on personality characteristics and its possible impact on the risk of heavy drinking was investigated in a sample of 3283 male and female waiters and cooks. Neuroticism and extraversion were assessed by an abbreviated version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. Restaurant employees scored significantly higher on extraversion compared with a population sample. On neuroticism, there was no difference between the male employees and male population, while the female employees scored significantly lower than the female comparison group. Adjusted for sociodemographic factors, the odds ratio (OR) for heavy drinking among those scoring in the upper third of the personality distributions, as compared with the lower, was 1.61 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.11–2.36) for extraversion and 1.48 (95%CI 1.01–2.15) for neuroticism. The group simultaneously scoring in the upper third of the distributions on extraversion and neuroticism showed an especially high risk of heavy drinking compared with those within the lower third.
This paper summarises data for the prevalence, correlates, and probable adverse health consequences of problem use of amphetamines, cannabis, cocaine, and opioids. We discuss findings from systematic reviews of the prevalence of illicit drug use and dependence, remission from dependence, and mortality in illicit drug users, and evidence for acute and chronic effects of illicit drug use. We outline the regional and global distribution of use and estimated health burden from illicit drugs. These distributions are likely to be underestimates because they have not included all adverse outcomes of drug use and exclude those of cannabis--the mostly widely used illicit drug. In high-income countries, illicit drug use contributes less to the burden of disease than does tobacco but a substantial proportion of that due to alcohol. The major adverse health effects of cannabis use are dependence and probably psychotic disorders and other mental disorders. The health-related harms of cannabis use differ from those of amphetamine, cocaine, and opioid use, in that cannabis contributes little to mortality. Intelligent policy responses to drug problems need better data for the prevalence of different types of illicit drug use and the harms that their use causes globally. This need is especially urgent in high-income countries with substantial rates of illicit drug use and in low-income and middle-income countries close to illicit drug production areas.
A stress-management model of job strain is developed and tested with recent national survey data from Sweden and the United States. This model predicts that mental strain results from the interaction of job demands and job decision latitude. The model appears to clarify earlier contradictory findings based on separated effects of job demands and job decision latitude. The consistent finding is that it is the combination of low decision latitude and heavy job demands which is associated with mental strain. This same combination is also associated with job dissatisfaction. In addition, the analysis of dissatisfaction reveals a complex interaction of decision latitude and job demand effects that could be easily overlooked in conventional linear, unidimensional analyses. The major implication of this study is that redesigning work processes to allow increases in decision latitude for a broad range of workers could reduce mental strain, and do so without affecting the job demands that may plausibly be associated with organizational output levels.
OBJECTIVES: The inverse relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and smoking is typically seen in terms of the greater economic and social resources of advantaged groups, but it may also relate to cultural resources. This study aims to test theories of symbolic distinction by examining relationships between smoking and ostensibly unrelated cultural preferences. METHODS: Using the 1993 General Social Survey, ordinal logistic regression models, and a three-category dependent variable (never, former, and current smoker), the analysis estimates relationships of musical likes and dislikes with smoking while controlling for SES and social strain. RESULTS: Preferences for classical music are associated with lower smoking, while preferences for bluegrass, jazz, and heavy metal music are associated with higher smoking. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that SES groups may use smoking, like other cultural tastes, to distinguish their lifestyles from those of others.
A review of the many attempts to establish an association between occupations and alcoholism reveals that most do not deal with data about clinically defined alcoholism but instead use data about cirrhosis mortality, self-reported alcohol problems, and frequent and heavy drinking. The present study establishes an association between occupations and diagnoses of Alcohol Dependence Disorder and Alcohol Abuse Disorder, using data from a large population-based household interview study. Statistical adjustment using logistic methods reveals that apparent associations between occupations and alcohol-related disorders previously reported in the literature are due to characteristics of those employed in various occupations. The prevalence of alcohol dependence and abuse in two high risk industries, construction and transportation, is confirmed. More than one in four construction laborers and one in five skilled construction trades workers received a DIS/DSM-III diagnosis related to alcohol abuse. In the transportation industry one in six heavy truck drivers and material movers received an alcohol diagnosis. Analyses of the data from individuals currently employed and not employed in their occupation reveals reduction in risk for those who leave some occupations and increased risk for those who leave other occupations. Evidence is presented that employment in some occupations may be protective for Alcohol Dependence. The findings support the view that occupation may be associated with Alcohol Dependence and Alcohol Abuse independent of demographic variations. Previously proposed explanatory models for associations between occupations and alcohol problems are called into question because they do not take into account the demographic characteristics and employment status of workers.
Data were drawn from a subsample of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey I, 1971 to 1975, consisting of persons 25 years of age and older who stated they were employed in one of roughly 400 US Census three-digit occupations (n = 8130). Occupations with fewer than five persons were excluded from the analysis. Diastolic and systolic blood pressures were calculated for each of 244 occupations, simultaneously adjusting for age, gender, and body mass in an analysis of covariance model. A disproportionately high number of craft, operative, laboring, and farming jobs have incumbents with higher than average blood pressures, and a disproportionately low number of professional, managerial, and clerical jobs have incumbents with higher than average blood pressures. Jobs whose incumbents have especially high blood pressures include bartenders and dry cleaning operatives. Whether jobs cause high blood pressure or persons with high blood pressure choose those particular jobs remains unknown.
Mortality risks among bartenders, waiters and waitresses were examined through a proportional mortality ratio (PMR) analysis of British Columbia death registrations from 1950 through 1978. Amongst male bartenders and waiters the predominant mortality profile involved alcohol- and tobacco-related causes of death. Significantly elevated PMRs (p < 0.01) were found for cancers of the mouth (PMR = 341), esophagus (PMR = 250), larynx (PMR = 440) and lung (PMR = 133). Deaths due to bronchitis and emphysema (PMR = 164), cirrhosis of the liver (PMR = 305), accidental poisoning due to drugs or alcohol (PMR = 218) and homicide (PMR = 235) also showed significantly increased PMRs. The results for female waitresses and bartenders were comparable. A more detailed assessment of the relative contribution of different lifestyle and environmental factors as mortality risks among bartenders, waiters and waitresses is recommended as it is relevant to public health concerns.
This study examined personal and contextual predictors of active and avoidance coping strategies in a community sample of over 400 adults and in a sample of over 400 persons entering psychiatric treatment for unipolar depression. Sociodemographic factors of education and income (except for active-cognitive coping), personality dispositions of self-confidence and an easy-going manner, and contextual factors of negative life events and family support each made a significant incremental contribution to predicting active and avoidance coping. Among both healthy adults and patients, active and avoidance coping were positively associated with negative life events. Individuals who had more personal and environmental resources were more likely to rely on active coping and less likely to use avoidance coping. Moreover, for both groups, most of the predictors continued to show significant relations with active and avoidance coping strategies even after the stable component in coping was controlled in a longitudinal design. A comprehensive framework to understand the determinants of coping can be of practical value in suggesting points for therapeutic interventions aimed at fostering more adaptive coping efforts.
It is frequently alleged that hotel and restaurant personnel drink more than other groups in the service industry, although only indirect evidence has been presented to substantiate this allegation. This paper reports data from two surveys concerning alcohol use in different segments of the service industry. In the first study 84 students at three different colleges in the Stavanger region were interviewed concerning their alcohol habits using the screening instrument AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test). The second survey concentrated on service employees in the Rogaland area. One hundred and five respondents answered the AUDIT questionnaire in this study. The results showed that hotel and restaurant affiliated individuals scored significantly higher on the AUDIT than the other respondents. The first survey indicated that students at the Norwegian College of Hotel Management obtained significantly higher AUDIT scores than other groups of students, whereas the second survey indicated that restaurant workers scored significantly higher than employees in other branches of the service industry. Implications of these results, as well as future research demands were indicated.
Mortality rates were drawn from the California Occupational Mortality Study (COMS) to analyze liver cirrhosis deaths within occupations and industries from 1979 to 1981. Age-adjusted Standardized Mortality Rates (SMRs) were made available by the State of California for separate analyses of women, men, blacks and whites. Rankings of occupations with narrow confidence intervals were strikingly similar for blacks and whites. Within occupations, the highest female SMRs were for waitresses, telephone operators, cosmetologists, dress makers, hospital orderlies, textile workers, and laborers. The lowest female SMRs were for skilled crafts workers and teachers. High male occupations included water transportation workers, bartenders, loggers, laborers, roofers, construction workers, farm workers, iron workers, and painters. Low male occupations included teachers, physicians and dentists, managers, factory supervisors, business sales workers, heavy equipment operators, and other professionals. High female industries included eating and drinking places, laundry/dry cleaning, nursing and personal care facilities, aerospace, beauty shops, and entertainment. Low female industries included wholesale trades and education. High male industries included water transportation, military, guard services, eating and drinking places, iron and steel mills, and railroads. Low male industries included research/engineering labs, education, and computer manufacturing. This study was descriptive. It remains unknown whether certain jobs cause excessive drinking and cirrhosis, or whether people who are prone to develop cirrhosis select certain jobs.
The role of social modelling and structural factors of the work-place in predicting the probability of heavy drinking was investigated in a sample of 3267 Norwegian male and female waiters and cooks. In the logistic regression analysis, the probability of heavy drinking was increased by two social modelling factors and one structural factor. Having co-workers who, at least weekly, took an end-of-work drink at the work-place gave an odds ratio for heavy drinking of 2.8 (95% CI 1.9-4.1), and having co-workers who went out after work at least every week gave an odds ratio of 1.8 (95% CI 1.2-2.8). Working at a place with a liberal alcohol policy gave an odds ratio 1.5 (95% CI 1.1-2.2). Among the background factors, only household type significantly predicted heavy drinking. As compared with living with children, the odds for heavy drinking when living alone was 4.3 (95% CI 2.9-6.4). The results indicate that preventive measures in the restaurant business should not only concentrate on the individual, but also deal with factors related to the occupational activity that promote and sustain heavy drinking.