PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Training schemes help jobless men feel better about themselves

Study sheds light on impact of UK's welfare-to-work schemes

2014-08-05
(Press-News.org) Do the UK government's welfare-to-work training schemes improve the happiness and well-being of its unemployed citizens? Yes, and especially that of jobless men, says Daniel Sage of the University of Stirling in the UK in an article in Springer's Journal of Happiness Studies. His detailed analysis of data from the UK's Annual Population Survey shows that such active labor market programs that mimic the routines of the workplace work best.

Being unemployed can have a long-term scarring effect on a person's subjective sense of well-being and levels of life worth, happiness, anxiety and life satisfaction. It can lead to various psychosocial ills, such as depression, feelings of shame and even suicide. Therefore governments have in recent years also become increasingly aware of how their interventions make the unemployed feel.

The subjective well-being of UK citizens in general was gauged for the first time in the 2011 to 2012 wave of its Annual Population Survey. Of the 165,000 respondents to this part of the survey, 521 people participated in government training schemes. Such active labor market programs link social security recipients with back-to-work interventions to help speed up their chances of re-employment. They include initiatives such as intensive schemes of employment assistance, training programs through which to acquire new skills and qualifications, workplace experience placements and job creation schemes.

Sage's analysis shows that welfare-to-work schemes indeed increase the life satisfaction, happiness and feelings of life worth of the jobless. Interestingly, these programs had a greater impact on how people thought about their lives (so-called evaluative measures of well-being) than on their emotions (so-called affective measures). In line with previous research, this suggests that employment status has a greater influence on how people judge themselves than on how they feel each day.

Sage does not find it surprising that men benefit the most from such programs, because unemployment tends to hit them harder. The smaller benefits of labor market programs for unemployed women reflect the difficulty some women have in balancing efforts to find paid work with other responsibilities, such as childcare.

Sage also found that work-oriented programs, that provide training, work experience and extra skills, were far more effective than employment assistance initiatives that offer intensified forms of support and advice, such as the UK government's Work Programme. This is because work-oriented programs tend to replicate the paid work environment through features such as time structure, social activity and routine.

"Moving people onto welfare-to-work schemes has the serious potential to improve quality of life amongst the unemployed," concludes Sage, who believes that such interventions are the way to go for governments serious about promoting the psychosocial resilience of jobless citizens. "Being part of such programs is however still not comparable with the well-being impact of re-employment."

INFORMATION: Reference: Sage, D. (2014). Do Active Labour Market Policies Promote the Subjective Well-Being of the Unemployed? Evidence from the UK National Well-Being Programme. Journal of Happiness Studies. DOI 10.1007/s10902-014-9549-9

The full-text article is available to journalists on request.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Does your training routine really need to be that complicated?

2014-08-05
This news release is available in French. Ottawa, ON -- A new study just published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism investigated the value of the Pre-Exhaustion (PreEx) training method and found that that the various arrangements of different exercise protocols is of less relevance than simply performing resistance training exercises with a high intensity of effort within any protocol. As resistance training is becoming a major intervention for health and disease prevention, improved understanding in this area is increasingly important. PreEx ...

Surprise discovery could see graphene used to improve health

2014-08-05
A chance discovery about the 'wonder material' graphene – already exciting scientists because of its potential uses in electronics, energy storage and energy generation – takes it a step closer to being used in medicine and human health. Researchers from Monash University have discovered that graphene oxide sheets can change structure to become liquid crystal droplets spontaneously and without any specialist equipment. With graphene droplets now easy to produce, researchers say this opens up possibilities for its use in drug delivery and disease detection. The findings, ...

Warning to parents on high acidity drinks

2014-08-05
Dental researchers at the University of Adelaide are warning parents of the dangers of soft drinks, fruit juice, sports drinks and other drinks high in acidity, which form part of a "triple-threat" of permanent damage to young people's teeth. For the first time, researchers have been able to demonstrate that lifelong damage is caused by acidity to the teeth within the first 30 seconds of acid attack. The researchers say drinks high in acidity combined with night-time tooth grinding and reflux can cause major, irreversible damage to young people's teeth. "Dental erosion ...

Pheromones regulate aggression of non-mother female mice toward pups in wild-derived mice

Pheromones regulate aggression of non-mother female mice toward pups in wild-derived mice
2014-08-05
Laboratory mice are one of the most common animal models used in biological and medical research. Thousands of laboratory mouse strains are produced by artificial selection – the process by which humans breed animals over dozens of generations for particular traits. This has led to the domestication of mice: strengthening specific qualities that make them well-adapted for research under laboratory conditions, such as rapid reproduction, while eliminating characteristics that are not conducive to research, for example, aggression, the desire and ability to escape from danger, ...

Eating more dietary pulses can increase fullness, may help manage weight

Eating more dietary pulses can increase fullness, may help manage weight
2014-08-05
TORONTO, Aug. 5, 2014 – Eating about one serving a day of beans, peas, chickpeas or lentils can increase fullness, which may lead to better weight management and weight loss, a new study has found. A systematic review and meta-analysis of all available clinical trials found that people felt 31 per cent fuller after eating on average 160 grams of dietary pulses compared with a control diet, according to senior author Dr. John Sievenpiper of St. Michael's Hospital's Clinical Nutrition and Risk Factor Modification Centre. His group's findings were published in the August ...

Social networking is key to helping bugs spread, study shows

Social networking is key to helping bugs spread, study shows
2014-08-05
Fresh discoveries about how bacteria co-operate with each other when causing infection could help scientists identify animal diseases that might transmit to people. Bugs that can co-operate best with each other are most likely to be able to jump to new species, including humans, a new study shows. Bacteria interact by releasing molecules to help them adapt to their environment – for example, when killing competing infections in their victim. They co-ordinate these actions by releasing tiny amounts of chemicals as signals. Bacteria that can co-operate to create an ...

LEDs made from 'wonder material' perovskite

LEDs made from wonder material perovskite
2014-08-05
A hybrid form of perovskite - the same type of material which has recently been found to make highly efficient solar cells that could one day replace silicon - has been used to make low-cost, easily manufactured LEDs, potentially opening up a wide range of commercial applications in future, such as flexible colour displays. This particular class of semiconducting perovskites have generated excitement in the solar cell field over the past several years, after Professor Henry Snaith's group at Oxford University found them to be remarkably efficient at converting light to ...

Smart bacteria help each other survive

2014-08-05
The body's assailants are cleverer than previously thought. New research from Lund University in Sweden shows for the first time how bacteria in the airways can help each other replenish vital iron. The bacteria thereby increase their chances of survival, which can happen at the expense of the person's health. The bacteria Haemophilus influenzae is a type of bacteria in the respiratory tract that can cause ear infections and worsen the prognosis for COPD patients. In rare cases, it can also lead to meningitis and septicaemia. "By accepting help from a specific protein, ...

Carnegie Mellon photo editing tool enables object images to be manipulated in 3-D

Carnegie Mellon photo editing tool enables object images to be manipulated in 3-D
2014-08-05
PITTSBURGH—Editors of photos routinely resize objects, or move them up, down or sideways, but Carnegie Mellon University researchers are adding an extra dimension to photo editing by enabling editors to turn or flip objects any way they want, even exposing surfaces not visible in the original photograph. A chair in a photograph of a living room, for instance, can be turned around or even upside down in the photo, displaying sides of the chair that would have been hidden from the camera, yet appearing to be realistic. This three-dimensional manipulation of objects in ...

Rituals can help older people remember to take their asthma meds

2014-08-05
Storing it in the bathroom and making it part of a daily routine may be helpful advice that doctors can give their older asthmatic patients who struggle to remember to take their daily prescribed medication. This advice comes from Alex Federman, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, senior author of a study which discusses how elderly asthmatics cope with taking their inhaled corticosteroid medication as prescribed. The findings appear in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, published by Springer. The regular use of such ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

Pinning down the process of West Nile virus transmission

UTA-backed research tackles health challenges across ages

In pancreatic cancer, a race against time

Targeting FGFR2 may prevent or delay some KRAS-mutated pancreatic cancers

[Press-News.org] Training schemes help jobless men feel better about themselves
Study sheds light on impact of UK's welfare-to-work schemes