Stackable Negative Affect Phenomenon: Stories from Disadvantaged Jobseekers

Pilot Interviews

2011-01-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

I have conducted my pilot interviews for my thesis. The next lot of interviews will be a lot easier, especially with the digital recorder I got for Christmas! Now that is nerd dedication or what! My pilot interviews were interesting. I found I was more nervous than the participants, I am hoping that will ease as time goes on.

All participants had different stories and different levels of intensity of emotions experienced. I found stackable negative affect evident with all participants so far!

One interesting area was that not all participants considered themselves disadvantaged in employment, although, they fit the current "definition" of disadvantaged in employment according to DEEWR.

I still have not finished transcribing all of interviews and I have found this more time consuming than I first thought!

If anyone knows anyone that is a disabled or disadvantaged worker or jobseeker, please have them contact me at trishbov@gmail.com if they are interested in participating in an interview, or pass their contact details on, if they are in agreement. I would like to do one or two more pilot interviews before I move onto the main interviews.

I have also approached another company for interviewing their participants, I am hoping to hear some word soon.

I am hoping to have a published journal article this year!!! So watch this space. By for now.

Trish xx

Research Higher Degree Poster Competition

2010-08-14T03:27:00.000-07:00

I have been told that I have received a certificate of merit and was one of seven finalists in the Monash Research Higher Degrees poster competition from over 100 entries. Gave me a boost...now back to that Methods Chapter!

New Conceptual Framework - SNAP

2010-07-23T23:44:00.000-07:00

I've moved away from Emotional Contagion as the primary mediator, and moved towards Individual's experiencing Stackable Negative Affect Phenomenon, due to inter-subjectivity.

Journal Article

2010-07-13T12:22:00.001-07:00

I just wrote my first Journal Article......I'll see how it goes.

Trish xx

Updated Poster - Double Click to See the Bigger Version

2010-07-10T05:33:00.000-07:00

I have done a bit more work on my poster and I am quite happy with it. Any comments would be welcome! Double Click to see the bigger version.

Trish xx

PhD Poster Competition

2010-07-08T03:29:00.000-07:00

Hi

Posted below is my poster for a poster competition at Gippsland Campus (Double Click to bring to full size). Could you please let me know what you think - it needs to appeal to the general public - The criteria is:

Clarity of Written Content: Communicates the Value of the Research, Methodology Used and key findings to the industry/community in clear and engaging language appropriate for a Lay Audience.

Logic and Flow of ideas presented: Effectively Profiles a significant research problem/question

Overall Presentation: Presents the information in a format that achieves strong, effective visual appeal whilst complying with general guidelines identified in the proposed poster templates.

Trish xx

PhD Poster Competition

2010-07-08T03:24:00.000-07:00

Survey

2009-05-15T12:59:00.001-07:00

Hi All

I have been working on a questionnaire for stackable negative affect in vocational and higher education. You can do the survey here. Feedback and comments appreciated.

http://www.tigersurvey.com/survey.php?survey=8515

Bye for now.

Trish

Hello and Welcome

2009-05-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

Hi All

Welcome to my Blog on Stackable Negative Affect (SNA). SNA is the topic of my thesis and research and I welcome constuctive opinions from all who share an enthusiastic interest in this topic. My current thesis title is: Stackable Negative Affect - Stories from Disadvantaged Jobseekers. Those that are interested in research relating to disadvantaged and disabled jobseekers are also very welcome to follow my blog and comment. In saying that, if you are a reader who is disabled or disadvantaged and works or are seeking employment, please follow my blog and comments are greatly appreciated.

Just a bit of a background - I didn't start studying until I was 33 (I'm now 38), I took the postgraduate stream with CQU and I was successful in applying for my MPhil through non-traditional entry (yayayay go Monash!). I was accepted on the basis of equivalency for Honours Grade II based on my coursework and previous published papers. I also did a non-award course "Research Methods". I was accepted into an MPhil with Monash, Melbourne Australia. Of course, I have the best supervisors in the world - Dr. Melanie Bryant and Professor Paul Hyland. I am working towards and upgrade for PhD and this has been approved (to apply for upgrade) and I now need to present my confirmation shortly and fingers crossed it will all go well. Otherwise, I'll finish my MPhil and continue on towards PhD. I also would like to mention that I'm qualitative through and through and my methodology is phenomonology (Husserl) and I will be using convergent interviews. Ethics are done (just waiting clearance) and I have my site approval from the employer to interview the participants.

I've kind of ground to a bit of a halt lately as I have been quite ill for the last six-eight months and I study via distance. Oh the joys and tribulations of distance research students - but that is for another blog. Basically, I'm slowly working myself back up to my old pace - so watch this space!!

I started out interested in Workplace Bullying and worked on this topic throughout research methods and upon applying for my program. However, though my wonderful immersion in the literature, and through reading widely and delving into other paradigms, the concept of stackable negative affect was born. I previously had some published papers co-authored with Professor Phil Bretherton, CDU and the first paper I ever submitted with Phil, won the track paper for Higher Education at the Academy of Marketing Conference, Dublin, 2005. It was quite exciting to win some Euro's seeing I've never been out of Australia!!

These papers were about the Chilly Climate Environment (Sandler & Hall, 1986), which are feminist papers about micro-discrimination and inequality for women within the classroom and academe. Two Authors really changed everything for me - they were Dr. Sandy Darab (Southern Cross Uni) and Professor Alice Home (Ottawa University). Home's paper Predicting Role Conflict, Overload and contagion in Adult Women University Students with Families and Jobs (1998) And Darab's 2004 paper Time and Study: Open Foundation Female Students; integration of study with family, work and social obligations. These two Authors, pinpointed for me exactly what I have been thinking. Negative affect in the workplace is not always targeted, not always by the same person and is not always systematic and is holistic - in today's society, we have negative affect and time pressures, conflicting roles and stress. I ended up incorporating role strain, stress and contagian into the chilly climate studies and some more successful co-authored papers with Prof. Bretherton were submitted and presented.

As a previous victim of workplace bullying, I realised that the current research on workplace bullying did not sit well with what I had experienced. In fact, I was struggling to fit my experience into the definition of workplace bullying that is:

Workplace bullying is posited as a phenomenon experienced by employees within the workplace. Although there is no agreement amongst researchers of the one definition of workplace bullying, many researchers concur that workplace bullying consists of repeated and negative acts toward the targeted individual(s) and result in humiliation (Einarsen, 1999) implying a degree of subjectivity on the part of the victim. However, it is also postulated by researchers that single incidents can be interpreted by participants as bullying (Lee, 1999) and that psychological fear may be evident for the victim, that the attack will be repeated even after one direct attack (Maguire, 2001).

So I kept on reading (as we do) and I started to piece together all the different bodies of literature that discussed negative affect, from organisational psychology to feminist literature. Since the beginning of my thesis, I saw how my chilly climate studies related to workplace bullying, the both had the same underlying phenomenological constructs. My research supervisor has been totally supportive and encouraging of this and through piecing it all together and writing and re-writing my conceptual framework for Stackable Negative Affect and my change of title to my thesis all wonderfully unfolded. Again, Denise Stalin's work and my supervisor, Dr. Melanie Bryant's work opened my eyes and my world to how systems and processes are an antecedant to workplace bullying (Stalin) and emotional display theory (Bryant) well let's just say its golden!

Anyway, that is enough from me for today - I will continue another Blog and put up my conceptual framework and talk more about Stackable Negative Affect.

I'll end by saying that I had advice tonight that the first paper from my thesis has been accepted at the Academy of Marketing Conference in the Higher Education Stream, Co-Authored with Professor Phil Bretherton. This is also the first paper that will be published on Stackable Negative Affect anywhere in the world!! So I'm over the moon. Hope you enjoyed my blog so far - I look forward to your comments.

Trish xx