The purpose of this study is to investigate the relating factors of stress response among newly graduated nurses. A total of 265 newly graduated nurses working in 23 children’s hospitals was surveyed 6 months after graduation. Four subscales of perceived stress: imcompetence of nursing care, conflict with other staff, quantitative workload, pain of patients, and one scale of self-evaluation on job were constructed as the explanatory variables, and as the criterion variables 7 subscales of the Stress Response Scale (Ozeki, 1990) were constructed by principal component analysis. Another variables considered in our model were socio-demographic factors (age, sex, marital status, etc.), education (a kind of nursing school,etc.) and their working place (the developmental level of inpatient children, the number of rooming-in mothers, etc.). A series of multiple regression analysis the scores of the Stress Response Scale as criterion variables indicated that they were strongly correlated with “conflict with other staff”, which was one of the perceived stress’s subscales, and the multiple correlation coefficient was .647 (R²=.418) using all 13 explanatory variables. Reason for this is discussed,and implication and future directions are outlined.

Very little attention has been paid to the mental health of professional caregivers for the elderly in Japan despite the increasing importance of their role in this rapidly aging society. This study identified burnout as the most imminent mental health problem for which caregivers are at risk and investigated the burnout-preventive aspects of control coping, and further attempted to predict the use of control coping from health beliefs. A self-report survey was administered to 180 professional caregivers for the elderly in Tokyo, Japan. Measures included in the survey were (a) the translated and revised version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Kubo & Tao, 1994), (b) control coping (Latack, 1986), and (c) health beliefs about burnout and control coping (cf., Stretcher, Champion, & Rosenstock, 1997). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that greater use of control coping predicted decreased levels of burnout, and that certain health beliefs predicted the use of control coping. Significant age-related differences in these relationships were found. The findings were also discussed in terms of the “threshold” concept of burnout resiliency. In addition to individual-level interventions, the importance of organization-level prevention efforts was emphasized to the extent that interventions could be developed and implemented to foster health beliefs that promote control coping and also to be responsive to the caregivers’ control coping attempts.

The purpose of the study was to review previous littering behavior of individuals and its measures in the history of Japan, and propose more effective psychological measures based one the review. First, the history of trash in Japan was discussed. The patterns of littering behavior of individuals ware classified, and its measures were classified accordingly to whether the measure is a (1) restrictive or (2) economical method. Littering behavior of individuals was re-define, and the limitations in “economical methods” that have mainly been used against littering behavior of individuals in recent years in Japan were discussed.

For improvement in littering behavior of individuals, it is important not to simply use economical measures but to use various measures based on applied behavior analysis such as token economy, educational training, environmental arrangement for appropriate motivation represented by feedback, and physical environmental arrangement associated with appropriate littering behavior.

The author conducted a case study for the purpose of examining the role, effectiveness and limitations of nonviolent disobedience in resolving the conflict between an instructor and his superior in a junior college community. The following assertions were examined as a result. (1)Parties to conflicts, as well as other teaching staff members, managed to avoid treating students wrongly without detracting from educational quality. (2)Nonviolent disobedience is a method allowing those in weak positions, and those subjected to coercive power by superiors ignorant of nonviolent problem solving methods, to cope by themselves without taking action induced by the suppression or eruption of their own emotions, and even without the other parties’cooperation. (3)Because practitioners of nonviolent disobedience are also parties to conflict, it is difficult for them, as third parties, to plan training programs for nonviolence and conflict resolution, and to educate all members of the community. (4)In the case of disobedience, it is difficult to obtain the cooperation of other parties to the conflict even in nonviolence, and difficult to build relationships of trust, which makes it hard for mutual character transformation or growth to come about. (5)When one person practices nonviolent disobedience, there is a risk that he or she will be isolated or sacrificed if his or her group structurally practices harassment bullying or the like.