Essay Sample on Paid Sick Leave and Nonfatal Occupational Injuries

Article Summary One

Asfaw et al. 2012 were focused on establishing the relationship between the access of US workers to paid leave and the employees' rate of nonfatal occupational injuries in different industries and occupations. The research was carried out in the United States of America. The study used a cross-sectional research design. Two hypotheses were developed for the analysis; that is, offering paid sick leave will lead to a lower incidence of nonfatal occupational injuries, and paid sick leave was associated with lower rates of nonfatal injuries in various occupations and the industrial sectors. The study used secondary data that was obtained from NHIS (National Health Interview Survey) that comprised of adults only and involved a survey form of questionnaires and interviews. The survey included approximately 38000 working adults. The data was for the years 2005 to 2008; it was representative of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of America.

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The dependent variable of the study was the employee rate nonfatal occupational injuries; the dependent variable was a binary variable that was categorized with values 1(if the employee reported nonfatal occupational injuries) and 0 otherwise. The use of a nominal scale hence measured the dependent variable. The independent variable was the worker's access to paid leave. It was divided into two (availability of the worker and the characteristics of the firm). Worker characteristics were represented by vector X, which comprised of dummy variables such as gender, age, education, marital status, family size, and the occupational type. Firm characteristics were represented by the vector Z, which was comprised of industry sector, size, location, and if the firm offered employer-sponsored health insurance. Another explanatory "availability of paid sick leave" was included in the equation.

NHIS survey asked the respondents various questions such as; whether the respondents had access to paid sick leave through their primary jobs, whether they had suffered any injury in 3 months before the survey, and participants who were injured were asked to provide a detailed data concerning the injury. The NHIS also used standard classification codes in the collecting data that involved occupation and the industry. This survey considered only the private sector workers. The study used various statistical methods that included Descriptive Statistics and Multivariate Data Analysis. The descriptive statistics were presented in the form of percentage frequency tables, while the Multivariate data analysis was estimated using the logistic regression method. The study reported that between 2005 and 2008, the percentage of workers who had access to paid sick leave was constant at 57%.

However, the study revealed a significant variation among the different industrial sectors in the said same period. The study also reported a substantial difference in the availability of paid sick leave by work gender. i.e., 59% of females and 55% males respectively. The logistic regression analysis revealed that the odds of male workers suffering from nonfatal occupational injuries was more than twice the odds of the female employees. The study also reported that the probability of suffering from nonfatal occupational injury increased with age at a decreasing rate. Overall the study revealed that with every other variable of the examination held constant, 28% of employees with access to paid sick leave were less likely to have nonfatal occupational injuries compared to workers without paid sick leave access. In conclusion, the study suggested various programs that could help to reduce the nonfatal occupational injuries such as, introducing or expanding paid sick leave program more so in high-risk professional sectors

Article Summary Two

Von Cheong et al. 2017 were focused on establishing the relationship between the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the existence of depressive symptoms in adulthood. Moreover, PSS was used to access if it could act as a moderator to the depression; hence, PSS could not be tested alone. The research was done in Ireland. The participants involved both men and women aged between 50 and 65 years of age. The study used a cross-sectional research design in which questionnaires were used as the method of collecting data. i.e. (center for disease control ACEs questionnaire), the study used questionnaires because it was reliable and a valid measure. The Oslo social support scale was used to measure Perceived Social Support (PSS), and the CES-D used to measure depressive symptoms.

The dependent variable in the research was the depression in old age. The depression was about other variables, which were mainly the social nature of an individual during childhood, and at an early age. On the other hand, the independent variables included the ACEs. The depressed people in old age were asked about the possibility of having the ACEs in their childhood. This way, the researchers were able to determine how the child experience impact adulthood depression. Therefore, the article was focused on inference on how ACEs without the support result in the depression and how the one with PSS affects depression. The question researched concentrated on is if the ACEs lead to old age depression and if PSS help in reducing it. They wanted to find if there are changes in depression in case a child had ECE and PSS and the disparities without PSS.

Predictors in ACEs comprised of both emotional, sexual and physical abuse, emotional and physical neglect, and household dysfunction, such as the divorce, among others. Perceived social support predictors included how many people one is close to. How easy it is to get help from people and the number of people who seem interested in one's life. This method had been used to measure PSS in related researches. The total sample size was 2047, and they were selected randomly. Patients were chosen as they get to the medical checkup in the health clinic. The purpose of the random selection was to do away with biasness that could result in skewing of the data in question. The total population of the research represented the total population of Ireland people as par the census of the country. The result from this study was considered to be the result of the total Ireland population. To enhance privacy, each respondent was to given a separate sealed envelope to present their responses, and all ethical approaches were followed and approved by the clinical research and ethics committee of the country.

The study used various statistical methods that included descriptive data, and the crude test approaches mean and standard deviations. Other methods included logistic regression and quantile regression. Student's t-test and one -way ANOVA test was used in determining the differences in the distribution of demographic health and lifestyle measures between the different groups with and without ACE. The quantile method was mainly used in the categorization of data in the research. The research found that 23.7% of the sample size had at least experienced one form of ACE. The study also reported that those who had the experience of ACEs had high chances of symptoms associated with depression but mainly among those individuals who had poor PSS. Exposure to single ACE cases had three times odd of having depressive symptoms if they had low PSS. On the other hand, those with high and medium PSS during childhood had 2.21 odds of having depression symptoms. The results were similar to those individuals who were exposed to ACE subtype and ACE scores, though the signs were strongly high among those individuals who were reporting cases of abuse. In conclusion, the study indicated that ACEs were common among the older adults in Ireland who were highly associated with higher odds of depression more so among those with weak PSS.

Articles' Comparative Analysis

Both the articles used a vast data set; in the first article, the data was obtained from the NHIS that that comprised of 38000 respondents. In the second article, the information was obtained from the Mitchelstown cohort that consisted of 2047 respondents. Both the data was a representation of the entire population of the study. The articles used a cross-sectional research design, meaning that they were not able to establish a causal relationship in their analysis. The target population of the items was the adults; the first articles used adults who were working in both the private and public sectors, while the second article used adults who were aged between 50-69 years old.

Both the applied descriptive statistics but differed in the analysis. In the first article, descriptive data presented in the form of percentage frequency tables, while in the second article, the descriptive statistics were presented in the way of means and standard deviations. The first article used multivariate analysis, while the second article used crude tests methods of data analysis. Both items used logistic regression in comparing the association and differences, while the crude test used other methods such as Student's t-tests and one -way ANOVA test. The first article had significant data that was missing that primarily affected the final results in the second article; a non-negligible data was not available.

References

Asfaw, A., Pana-Cryan, R., & Rosa, R. (2012). Paid sick leave and nonfatal occupational injuries. American journal of public health, 102(9), e59-e64.

Von Cheong, E., Sinnott, C., Dahly, D., & Kearney, P. M. (2017). Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and later-life Depression: perceived social support as a potential protective factor. BMJ Open, 7(9), e013228: https://aspace.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/270746