Responses to a mail survey were used to investigate the contribution of PTSD symptom severity to work functioning in 69 previously employed adult survivors of accidental injury approximately 8 months post‐hospitalization. Associations of PTSD symptom severity with other established risk factors for poor work functioning were also examined. Participants were initially divided into three groups based on PTSD symptom severity and analysis of variance undertaken to determine the differences in work functioning between survivors with PTSD, subclinical PTSD, and no PTSD. As anticipated, survivors with PTSD reported significantly poorer work functioning than those with subclinical PTSD and no PTSD. Those with subclinical PTSD, however, reported significantly lower levels of work functioning than survivors with no PTSD, suggesting that this population may also be at risk of poor outcomes and in need of vocational interventions post‐accident. To determine the influence of PTSD symptom severity on work functioning over and above other established risk factors, a two‐model hierarchical regression that included the established risk factors in the first model and PTSD in the final model was undertaken. Results revealed that PTSD symptom severity uniquely predicted work functioning after controlling for the influence of other contributing risk factors. A composite of seven risk factors, including PTSD symptom severity, was shown to predict 62% (57% adjusted) of the variance in work functioning but only pre‐accident occupation, physical functioning, and PTSD severity significantly contributed to the prediction. Findings suggest that the rehabilitation management of people with PTSD or subclinical PTSD following accidental injury would benefit from early identification by the established predictors together with an integrated approach to physical, psychological, and vocational interventions.

Risk factors associated with post-injury return to work are well documented. Less is known of the impact of PTSD on work outcomes. Information on worker and accident risk factors was obtained by survey, hospital records and personal interview with 40 road trauma survivors two years post-accident: Results suggest that while PTSD was an independent risk factor for negative work outcomes, PTSD also significantly contributed to the overall adverse impact of anxiety, depression and pain on work outcomes. The lack of improvement in work outcomes between from 12 weeks post-accident for those with PTSD indicated that early vocational interventions are critical for this population.

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A questionnaire survey of 85 counsellors investigated potential contributors to stress in the workplace and valued coping strategies. The sample consisted of three groups: a Government group, a Private group and a Religious group, which represented three different types of work organisation. Recent research suggests that organisational factors contribute to occupational stress, and that personal coping strategies may not alleviate stress appreciably. The results of the study indicated that the most stressed group was the Government group of counsellors, that the most highly rated contributor to stress was management attitudes and that the most valued coping strategies were organisational in nature rather than personal.

For natural speech syllable stimuli, kindergarten and first‐grade children found target fricative and stop phonemes less easy to discriminate when the context phoneme changed from stimulus to stimulus than when it was held constant. In further experiments comparing stop and fricative discrimination, stop targets were more easily discriminated than fricative targets from other stops and fricatives. Regarding reading ability and phoneme awareness, positive correlations were found between performance on the phoneme tasks and word reading ability for some groups of beginning readers. In addition, independent groups of good and poor readers differed significantly on phoneme discrimination ability. The pattern of results suggested a developmental lag for the poor readers not a qualitatively different processing difficulty.