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Ted Johnston investigates the science content of the Bachelor of Education degree

Enforcing employee compliance with information systems security policies (ISSP) is a herculean task for organizations as security breaches due to non-compliance continue to soar. To improve this situation, researchers have employed fear appeals that are based on protection motivation theory (PMT) to induce compliance behavior. However, extant research on fear appeals has yielded mixed findings. To help explain these mixed findings, the authors contend that efficacy formation is a cognitive process that is impacted by the cognitive load exerted by the design of fear appeal messages.

The study draws on cognitive load theory (CLT) to examine the effects of intrinsic cognitive load, extraneous cognitive load and germane cognitive load on stimulating an individual’s efficacy and coping appraisals. The authors designed a survey to collect data from 359 respondents and tested the model using partial least squares.

The analysis showed significant relationships between cognitive load (intrinsic, extraneous, and germane) and fear, maladaptive rewards, response costs, self-efficacy and response efficacy.

This provides support for the assertion that fear appeals impact the cognitive processes of individuals that then in turn can potentially affect the efficacy of fear and coping appraisals. These findings demonstrate the need to further investigate how individual cognition is impacted by fear appeal design and the resulting effects on compliance intention and behavior.

Using archival and primary source evidence, this chapter introduces the first real wage series from 1891 to 1930 for Brazil’s most important immigrant and industrial city, São Paulo. This is the first price series, nominal wage series, and real wage series for the city that covers the duration of the Old Republic. While scholars look to Rio de Janeiro evidence to compare Brazil’s cost of living to other southern cone and immigrant-receiving countries, it is preferable to use evidence from the primary destination city. Price deviations between the two cities underscore the need for these series. The results show foodstuff prices increased steadily over the period and more dramatically in the period during and after World War I. Hedonic wage regressions show hourly wages for unskilled, low-skilled, and medium-skilled workers did not increase accordingly. While the decline in real wages tapered off in the 1920s, real wages across skill levels did not recover to prewar levels. This new index suggests the city of São Paulo’s labor market was more integrated with Buenos Aires’s than with Rio de Janeiro’s and that Paulistano real wages did not recover in the 1920s to the extent that they did in other southern cone cities. Given these results, the puzzle as to why migrants continued to flock to the city prove more intriguing. The results also suggest that Vargas-era labor legislation had the potential to greatly improve the lives of the city’s working class, perhaps more so than in other cities.

Social scientists often speculate that both acculturation and socioeconomic status are factors that may explain differences in the body weight between Mexican Americans and whites and between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants, yet prior research has not explicitly theorized and tested the pathways that lead both of these upstream factors to contribute to ethnic/nativity disparities in weight. We make this contribution to the literature by developing a conceptual model drawing from Glass and McAtee’s (2006) risk regulation framework. We test this model by analyzing data from the 1999–2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Our conceptual model treats acculturation and socioeconomic status as risk regulators, or social factors that place individuals in positions where they are at risk for health risk behaviors that negatively influence health outcomes. We specifically argue that acculturation and low socioeconomic status contribute to less healthy diets, lower physical activity, and chronic stress, which then increases the risk of weight gain. We further contend that pathways from ethnicity/nativity and through acculturation and socioeconomic status likely explain disparities in weight gain between Mexican Americans and whites and between Mexican immigrants and whites. Study results largely support our conceptual model and have implications for thinking about solutions for reducing ethnic/nativity disparities in weight.

The impact of stress on personal and work-related outcomes has been studied in the information systems (IS) literature across several professions. However, the cybersecurity profession has received little attention despite numerous reports suggesting stress is a leading cause of various adverse professional outcomes. Cybersecurity professionals work in a constantly changing adversarial threat landscape, are focused on enforcement rather than compliance, and are required to adhere to ever-changing industry mandates – a work environment that is stressful and has been likened to a war zone. Hence, this literature review aims to reveal gaps and trends in the current extant general workplace and IS-specific stress literature and illuminate potentially fruitful paths for future research focused on stress among cybersecurity professionals.

Using the systematic literature review process (Okoli and Schabram, 2010), the authors examined the current IS research that studies stress in organizations. A disciplinary corpus was generated from IS journals and conferences encompassing 30 years. The authors analyzed 293 articles from 21 journals and six conferences to retain 77 articles and four conference proceedings for literature review.

The findings reveal four key research opportunities. First, the demands experienced by cybersecurity professionals are distinct from the demands experienced by regular information technology (IT) professionals. Second, it is crucial to identify the appraisal process that cybersecurity professionals follow in assessing security demands. Third, there are many stress responses from cybersecurity professionals, not just negative responses. Fourth, future research should focus on stress-related outcomes such as employee productivity, job satisfaction, job turnover, etc., and not only security compliance among cybersecurity professionals.

This study is the first to provide a systematic synthesis of the IS stress literature to reveal gaps, trends and opportunities for future research focused on stress among cybersecurity professionals. The study presents several novel trends and research opportunities. It contends that the demands experienced by cybersecurity professionals are distinct from those experienced by regular IT professionals and scholars should seek to identify the key characteristics of these demands that influence their appraisal process. Also, there are many stress responses, not just negative responses, deserving increased attention and future research should focus on unexplored stress-related outcomes for cybersecurity professionals.

IN this issue we conclude our symposium on Modern Library Planning, and although it is not as complete as we could wish, it has certainly proved to be one of the most interesting subjects we have been able to deal with in recent years. We regret that lack of space has prevented us from including some interesting details about new libraries, and that we have laid ourselves open to the criticism of over‐crowding. We hope, however, that we shall be able, from time to time, to add further material as the occasion warrants. We had hoped to obtain a description of the Central Library Extension of the Hull Public Libraries, but this has, unfortunately, proved impossible. Lancashire County Library, too, is constructing four new branch libraries, an account of which we should have liked to include. Plymouth may be mentioned as still another library of which the material was not ready in time for our symposium. Also, we are sorry to have had to omit some of the illustrations which librarians have been kind enough to offer us for reproduction. In spite of these omissions, however, we have been able to gather together much that is new and interesting in modern planning, and one of the points that is well worth notice is the willingness of librarians to experiment in new ideas, even if conservatively.

This study proposes a new model, called the Integrated Human Health Model (IHHM), to improve the design and effectiveness of Workplace Health Promotion (WHP) interventions.

Eighteen participants were purposefully selected from 44 participants in a 2.5-day WHP intervention targeting multiple health behaviours (MHB). The intervention has shown to improve quality of life and health-related behaviours in rigorous studies. Qualitative data collection methods were observations, repeat semi-structured interviews and weekly e-journals collected over three months. Template analysis was used to develop the IHHM describing participants' experiences.

The IHHM describes the health behaviour change process using eight themes: facilitation, assessment, desired life, barriers, knowledge and skills, insights, action planning, and monitor and support.

With the paucity of evidence informing WHP intervention effectiveness, this study provides a preliminary model serving practitioners to design more effective interventions and scholars to improve evidence.

This study proposes a practical comprehensive model for practitioners and leaders to more effectively design and evaluate successful MHB WHP interventions compared to existing models.

The purpose of this paper is to design an improved parallel regenerative braking system (IPRBS) for electric vehicles (EVs) that increases energy recovery with a constant brake pedal feel (BPF).

The conventional hydro-mechanical braking system is redesigned by incorporating a reversing linear solenoid (RLS) and allowed to work in parallel with a regenerative brake. A braking algorithm is proposed, and correspondingly, a control system is designed for the IPRBS for its proper functioning, and a mathematical model is formulated considering vehicle drive during braking. The effectiveness of IPRBS is studied by analyzing two aspects of regenerative braking (BPF and regenerative efficiency) and the impact of regenerative braking contribution to range extension and energy consumption reduction under European Union Urban Driving Cycle (ECE).

IPRBS is found to maintain a constant BPF in terms of deceleration rate vs pedal displacement during the entire braking period irrespective of speed change and deceleration rate. The regenerative ratio of IPRBS is found to be high compared with conventional parallel regenerative braking, but it is quite the same at high deceleration.

A constant BPF is achieved by introducing an RLS between the input pushrod and booster input rod with appropriate controller design. Comparative analysis of energy regenerated under different regenerative conditions establishes the originality of IPRBS. An average contribution ratio to energy consumption reduction and driving range extension of IPRBS in ECE are obtained as 18.38 and 22.76, respectively.