Browsing by Author "Boss, Harrison"

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    Assessing the Impact of Intergroup Contact and Diversity training on Employers’ Hiring Attitudes, Intentions and Behaviours Toward Refugees
    (2019-09-10) Boss, Harrison; MacInnis, Cara C.; Murry, Adam Thomas; Bourdage, Joshua S.
    The aims of this research project are to examine the impact of intergroup contact and diversity training on the general attitudes, hiring attitudes, hiring intentions, and hiring behaviour toward refugees among hirers residing in the United States. Hirers are operationalized as individuals with the final authority to make hiring decisions within their organizations. Refugees are a vulnerable and disadvantaged social group who face a number of barriers to successful employment. Studies exploring refugees in employment contexts are exceedingly rare, but integral to understanding refugee employment outcomes. Based on previous literature, two mediators for why intergroup contact and diversity training may impact attitudes toward social groups were examined: group empathy and intergroup anxiety. A sample of hirers (N = 379) was recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk using a two-step methodology, with the goal of increasing data quality through the reduction of participant misrepresentation. Intergroup contact quantity, intergroup contact quality and diversity training all were associated with general attitudes toward refugees, with intergroup contact quantity/quality both being fully mediated by empathy and intergroup anxiety. The impact of diversity training on general attitudes was fully mediated only by group empathy. When comparing the predictors simultaneously, intergroup contact quality appears to have the strongest relationship on most hiring outcomes. However, hiring intentions were not found to predict hiring behaviour toward refugees. Several explanations for this are explored. Nonetheless, this research provides valuable contributions to knowledge surrounding intergroup contact theory and diversity training, and their relations with hiring of disadvantaged social groups, specifically refugees. Future research on this topic should explore these variables experimentally, to help establish causality and temporal directionality of these variables.
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    Observing Incivility: What influences detection, perceived motivations, and intervention?
    (2024-09-03) Boss, Harrison; MacInnis, Cara; Bourdage, Joshua; Hershcovis, Sandy; Hamilton, Leah
    Workplace incivility can be operationalized as low-intensity rude, discourteous behaviours, that violate workplace norms of respect, and are ambiguous in their intent to harm the target. These behaviours are ubiquitous in workplaces. While incivility in the workplace is common, evidence suggests that minoritized groups are disproportionately targeted with uncivil behaviour, selective incivility, and represent a form of modern discrimination. The current dissertation explored whether non-target observers of incivility were able to differentiate between two different types of witnessed workplace mistreatment, 1) general incivility (i.e. incivility not motivated by target identity) and 2) selective incivility (i.e. incivility motivated by the target’ sociodemographic identity). Theoretically informed by literature on both Aversive Prejudice, and Bystander Intervention Models, experimental methodologies were employed in Study 1, by which participants listened to recordings of group interactions that contained general incivility, selective incivility, or no incivility. The role of experimental conditions on participants’ detection of mistreatment, motivational attributions surrounding the instigator, and interventional intentions were then assessed with regression analyses, while also exploring the potential interactive roles of bystander gender, ethnicity, and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) on these relationships using moderation. Study 2 enhanced this work, in part, by introducing evidence of longitudinal mistreatment in the recordings (i.e., reductions in incivility ambiguity), and importantly shifted to measure intervention behaviours. Regression-based analyses were conducted in Study 2, but also bolstered by the inclusion of qualitative assessments of participants’ intervention behaviours. Over both studies, data demonstrated that bystanders were able to meaningfully detect between different types of workplace incivility and attributed that mistreatment to prejudicial or generalized negative motivations of the perpetrator, based on discernible characteristics of the target (i.e. minoritized vs. non-minoritized identity). Participants that were higher in SDO tended to downplay the role of prejudice as a motivational factor behind the mistreatment of the minoritized target. Qualitative results indicated that participants had a diverse set of responses to incivility, which resulted in a variety of interventional behaviours, including providing emotional support to the victim, reprimanding the instigator, and inciting support from other observers. Notably, intervention behaviours favoured participants in the selective incivility condition (i.e., when the target was minoritized). In some cases, intervention behaviours were accompanied with evidence of victim blaming. Last, future directions for this research and other important practical implications are discussed.
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    What role does compassion have on quality care ratings? A regression analysis and validation of the SCQ in emergency department patients
    (2024-07-18) Boss, Harrison; MacInnis, Cara; Simon, Roland; Jackson, Jeanette; Lahtinen, Markus; Sinclair, Shane
    Abstract Objective To examine the unique contribution of patient reported experiences of compassion to overall patient quality care ratings. Additionally, we assess whether patients’ reported experiences of compassion in the emergency department differed between sociodemographic groups. Methods Provincial data for this cross-sectional study were collected from 03/01/2022 to 09/05/2022 from 14 emergency departments in Alberta, Canada. Data from 4501 emergency department patients (53.6% women, 77.1% White/European) were analyzed. The primary outcome was patients’ overall quality care ratings during their most recent ED visit. Measures included in the hierarchical stepwise regression included demographics, and those drawn from the Emergency Department Patient Experience of Care (EDPEC) questionnaire: single and multi-item measures of patient information (e.g., patient perceptions health) and patient experience (e.g., physician communication), and compassion (e.g., Sinclair Compassion Questionnaire; SCQ-ED). Results Data from 4501 ED patients were analysed. Stepwise hierarchical linear multiple regression indicated that of 21 included variables, compassion most strongly predicted overall quality care ratings (b=1.61, 95% CI 1.53-1.69, p<.001, f2=.23), explaining 19% unique variance beyond all other measures. One-way ANOVAs indicated significant demographic differences in mean compassion scores, such that women (vs. men) reported lower compassion (MD=-.15, 95% CI=-.21, -.09, p<.001), and Indigenous (vs. White) patients reported lower compassion (MD=-.17, 95% CI =-.34, -.01, p=.03). Conclusions Compassion was identified as a key contributor to ED overall quality care ratings, and experiences of compassion varied as a function of demographics. Patient-reported compassion is an indicator of quality care that needs to be formally integrated into clinical care and quality care assessments.