Claartje L. ter Hoeven

The information needs of new radiotherapy patients: how to measure? Do they want to know everything? And if not, why?

PURPOSE To establish 1) further psychometric properties of the information preference for radiotherapy patients scale (IPRP); 2) what information new radiotherapy patients want to receive; 3) which patients have a lower information need. METHODS AND MATERIALS Eligible patients (n = 159; response rate 54%) of 15 radiation oncologists completed the IPRP and provided background characteristics before their first radiotherapy consultation. Exclusion criteria were: age <18 years, having undergone radiotherapy before, unable to read and write Dutch, cognitive problems or a brain tumor. RESULTS Reliability (Cronbachs alpha 0.84-0.97) and concurrent validity (r from .39 to .57, p < 0.001) of the subscales of the IPRP were good. New radiotherapy patients want extensive information about their disease, treatment, procedures, side effects, and prognosis (mean scores between 4.1 and 4.4 on a scale from 1 to 5) but less information about psychosocial issues (mean = 3.4). Patients who are older and male, have lung or rectal cancer, more difficulty understanding and a higher trait anxiety level, need less information. CONCLUSIONS The IPRP can reliably and validly address information needs of patients undergoing radiation treatment. Most new radiotherapy patients want much information. Yet, information giving should be tailored according to their background, understanding and anxiety.

The practical paradox of technology: The influence of communication technology use on employee burnout and engagement

ABSTRACT Technological advancements in the workplace frequently have produced contradictory effects by facilitating accessibility and efficiency while increasing interruptions and unpredictability. We combine insights from organizational paradoxes and the job demands–resources model to construct a framework identifying positive and negative mechanisms in the relationship between communication technology use (CTU) and employee well-being, operationalized as work engagement and burnout. In this study of Dutch workers, we demonstrate that CTU increases well-being through positive pathways (accessibility and efficiency) and decreases well-being through negative pathways (interruptions and unpredictability). We highlight the importance of (1) investigating CTU resources and demands simultaneously to grasp the relationship between CTU and employee well-being, and (2) considering CTUs downsides to successfully implement new communication technologies and flexible work designs.

Determinants of the Use of a Diabetes Risk-Screening Test

A study was designed to investigate why people do or do not make use of a diabetes risk test developed to facilitate the timely diagnosis of diabetes. Data were collected using a web-based questionnaire, which was based on the Health Belief Model, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and the Threatening Medical Situations Inventory. People who had and had not used the risk test were recruited to complete the survey. The sample consisted of 205 respondents: 44% who had used the test and 56% who had not. The hypothesized relationships between the dependent variable (diabetes risk test use) and the determinants used in this study were tested using logistic regression analysis. Only two significant predictors of diabetes risk test use were found: gender and barriers. More women than men use the test. Furthermore, people who experience more barriers will be less inclined to use the test. The contribution of diabetes screening tests fully depends on people’s willingness to use them. To optimize the usage of such test, it is especially important to address the barriers as perceived by the public. Two types of barriers must be addressed: practical barriers (time to take the test, fear of complexity of the test), and consequential barriers (fear of the disease and treatment, uncertainties about where to go in the case of an increased risk of diabetes).

Assessing measurement invariance of a health-related quality-of-life questionnaire in radiotherapy patients

ObjectiveIf the assumption of measurement invariance is not tested, we cannot be sure whether differences observed are due to true differences in health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL), or are measurement artifacts. We aim to investigate this assumption in a sample of heterogeneous cancer patients, focusing on whether age, sex, previous treatment for cancer, and information regarding treatment preferences result in biased HRQoL scores.Methods155 cancer patients who were about to begin their first session of radiotherapy were included. HRQoL was measured using the EORTC QLQ-C30. Structural equation modeling was applied to assess whether there was a violation of the assumption of invariance.ResultsA satisfactory single construct (Functioning HRQoL) measurement model was found and two violations of invariance were identified. Irrespective of patients’ Functioning HRQoL, older patients reported worse physical functioning and patients who had received treatment prior to radiotherapy reported worse emotional functioning than we would otherwise expect.ConclusionsIn the present study, accounting for measurement bias lead to a substantial improvement in the overall fit of the model. By ignoring the bias, we would have concluded that the model fit was unsatisfactory. The findings underline the importance of investigating measurement invariance in scales designed for heterogeneous samples.

Matching the Message: The Role of Regulatory Fit in Negative Managerial Communication

The experiments presented here examine how managers and executives can improve the effectiveness of their negative written communications (i.e., refusal of employees’ requests) by incorporating the concept of fit into their message framing. By applying regulatory focus theory, the authors suggest that an outcome-based fit between the message and the recipient leads to more favorable work outcomes. The results of Experiment 1 show that employees retain greater feelings of psychological empowerment when they receive a written refusal framed in terms that match (versus mismatch) their current regulatory focus. Moreover, data from Experiment 2 demonstrate that employees perceive a written refusal as more fair when it is framed in terms that match (versus mismatch) their activated regulatory focus. However, this effect was not found when an employee’s request was approved, an observation that stresses the importance of regulatory fit in negative managerial communications specifically. Finally, this article discusses management implications for designing successful negative written managerial communications.

Self-rated health and sickness-related absence: The modifying role of civic participation

In this study, we examined civic participation as an effect modifier between self-rated health and absence from work. Building on the theoretical framework of social exchange, we use German data to test a conceptual model relating self-rated health to sickness-related absence, as well as the interaction between self-rated health and civic participation. We used the 1996 wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study. Since sickness-related absence is a censored variable, we used a tobit regression model. The results confirmed the hypotheses: the effect between self-rated health and sickness-related absence was modified by civic participation, indicating that the effect of self-rated health on sickness-related absence is less pronounced for people who participate more as opposed to those who report less civic participation. In other words, those who are unhealthy and participate more, are fewer days absent from work. We argue that civic participation buffers the relationship between self-rated health and sickness-related absence because those who participate more have more resources to fulfill self-regulatory needs. Our findings emphasize the importance of civic participation outside the workplace for people at work when they do not feel physically well.

Reliable and unproductive? Stereotypes of older employees in corporate and news media

ABSTRACT Older employees face a severe employability problem, partly because of dominant stereotypes about them. This study investigates stereotypes of older employees in corporate and news media. Drawing on the Stereotype Content Model, we content analysed newspaper coverage and corporate media of 50 large-scale Dutch organisations, published between 2006 and 2013. The data revealed that stereotypical portrayals of older employees are more common in news media than in corporate media and mixed in terms of valence. Specifically, older employees were positively portrayed with regard to warmth stereotypes, such as trustworthiness, but negatively with regard to competence stereotypes, such as technological competence and adaptability. Additionally, stereotypical portrayals that do not clearly belong to warmth or competence dimensions are found, such as the mentoring role stereotype and the costly stereotype. Because competence stereotypes weigh more heavily in employers’ productivity perceptions, these media portrayals might contribute to the employability problem of older employees. We suggest that older employees could benefit from a more realistic media debate about their skills and capacities.

Age at work : Explaining variation in frames of older employees in corporate and news media

Despite the fact that workforce aging is recognized as a key social and economic concern of developed countries, previous research has largely neglected the role of corporate and news media in the debate about this topic. Relying on a content analysis of five Dutch newspapers and the corporate media of 50 Dutch organizations (N = 1328), this study traces variation in frames of older workers’ employability. Results reveal that organizations in their corporate media attempt to avoid associations with problems related to older employees and highlight the solutions they offer, while news media are more inclined to problematize the issue and victimize older employees. This study elucidates our understanding of how corporate and news media communicatively deal with older workers’ employability, and how key actors drive frame-formation processes in both domains.

Dealing with an aging workforce: Locating threats and opportunities in corporate media

ABSTRACT Although workforce aging is among the major challenges facing developed countries, organizational communication about this issue has received little scholarly attention. Drawing on a content analysis of corporate media, we reconstruct how Dutch organizations (N = 50) framed older workers’ employability during the period 2006–2013 in diagnostic (problem-definitions) and prognostic (solution-definitions) terms, and we trace the influence of corporate media types and organizational characteristics on these frames. Results reveal that organizations frequently highlight problems on the macrolevel (societal) and the mesolevel (organizational), while most solutions are located on the microlevel (individual). Using multilevel modelling, we found support for the expectation that the issue is more strongly problematized in internal compared to external corporate media, and that problems related to individual older employees are most pronounced in public sector organizations’ communication. Our findings highlight diverse ways in which organizations can communicatively address factors that hamper older workers’ employability.

“The Work Must Go On”: The Role of Employee and Managerial Communication in the Use of Work–Life Policies

The Netherlands is characterized by extensive national work–life regulations relative to the United States. Yet, Dutch employees do not always take advantage of existing work–life policies. Individual and focus group interviews with employees and managers in three (public and private) Dutch organizations identified how employee and managerial communication contributed to acquired rules concerning work–life policies and the interpretation of allocative and authoritative resources for policy enactment. Analyses revealed differences in employees’ and managers’ resistance to policy, the binds and dilemmas experienced, and the coordination of agreements and actions to complete workloads. There are also differences between public and private contexts in the enactment of national and organizational policies, revealing how national (e.g., gender) and organizational (e.g., concertive control) mechanisms play out in employee and managerial communication that determine the use of work–life policies.