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BackgroundMaintenance of communication is important for people with dementia living in long-term care. The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility of using “Giraff”, a telepresence robot to enhance engagement between family and a person with dementia living in long-term care.MethodsA mixed-methods approach involving semi-structured interviews, call records and video observational data was used. Five people with dementia and their family member participated in a discussion via the Giraff robot for a minimum of six times over a six-week period. A feasibility framework was used to assess feasibility and included video analysis of emotional response and engagement.ResultsTwenty-six calls with an average duration of 23 mins took place. Residents showed a general state of positive emotions across the calls with a high level of engagement and a minimal level of negative emotions. Participants enjoyed the experience and families reported that the Giraff robot offered the opportunity to reduce social isolation. A number of software and hardware challenges were encountered.ConclusionsParticipants perceived this novel approach to engage families and people with dementia as a feasible option. Participants were observed and also reported to enjoy the experience. The technical challenges identified have been improved in a newer version of the robot. Future research should include a feasibility trial of longer duration, with a larger sample and a cost analysis.

The impact of work–family conflict on well-being outcomes is well established, as is the role of social support in buffering perceptions of conflict. What is less well understood is how these relationships vary for different groups of respondents. Using a two-wave longitudinal design with a 12-month time lag and samples of employees (total N = 2183) from Australia, New Zealand, China and Hong Kong, the present research investigated whether the mediating relationships between social support, work–family conflict and well-being outcomes were moderated by gender, geographical region and the presence of dependants in the household. Supervisor support and family support were associated with lower work–family conflict, and hence reduced psychological strain and increased job and family satisfaction, for women and for employees in China and Hong Kong, but not for employees in Australia and New Zealand. However, the presence of dependants was not a significant moderator. Our findings illustrate the importance of exploring gender and national differences in work–family conflict research, particularly the investigation of cross-domain effects.

The assessment of occupational stress is marred by an overwhelming adoption of simplistic research designs that generally fail to represent the complex reality of the occupational stress process. Informed by the theoretical tenants of both the transactional stress model and the job-demands-control-support model, this paper presents a rare simultaneous assessment of how two types of job demands (cognitive and emotional) are both moderated by job control and social support and mediated by coping for the prediction of work engagement and psychological strain over time. Self-report surveys were administered twice over 12 months to a sample of police-service workers and moderated mediation analyses were conducted on the matched sample of N = 2,481 respondents. The results offer support for the process of occupational stress by demonstrating how both accommodation and avoidance coping mediate the job-demands-outcome relationship over time. The results also demonstrate that this stressor-coping-strain process is simultaneously moderated by job support or job control. We found it interesting that this research also demonstrated that the estimation of work engagement was not unduly influenced by the type of job demands these police employees were exposed to. (PsycINFO Database Record

Purpose -Advancing knowledge about effectively managing the ageing workforce and ensuring economic sustainability for a growing retired cohort is a recognised priority for organisational health researchers, employers and governments. The purpose of this paper is to test social perceptions that older workers' cognitive performance and job attitudes compare adversely to their younger colleagues. Design/methodology/approach -The research assessed samples of older and younger workers in objective tests of cognitive abilities and subjective job attitudes. An opportunity sampling method was employed to recruit a heterogeneous group of participants in Australia (n ¼ 172). Findings -No significant differences in cognitive ability between the groups were identified; older workers were as cognitively skilled for their job as their younger colleagues. No significant group difference for perceptions of social support, job commitment, job satisfaction or turnover intentions was identified.Research limitations/implications -The cross-sectional research design adopted by this research prevented a more detailed examination of the data in terms of causal relationships. While the cognitive testing provided objective rather than subjective data and, therefore, is not as susceptible to response biases such as common method variance, the small sample who undertook the cognitive testing is acknowledged as a research limitation. Social implications -This research has implications for the reduction in unemployment of older workers and directly addresses the social issues of an ageing labour force. Originality/value -The paper demonstrates that stereotypical assumptions concerning inadequate performance and low job commitment commonly attributed to older workers are not in fact indicative of all ageing employees.