Motivational factors influencing older adults diagnosed with knee osteoarthritis to join and maintain an exercise program

In order to provide successful interventions to increase physical activity among inactive older adults, it is imperative to understand motivational factors influencing exercise. The authors present data from 191 (baseline) and 125 (12-month) community-dwelling men and women with mean ages of 68.71 (7.47) and 67.55 (7.55) years, respectively, from a strength-training trial. Approximately 53% had diagnosed knee osteoarthritis. Using a Likert scale, participants self-reported their degree of motivation from personal, social, and environmental factors. Using multivariate analyses, the authors evaluated demographic and clinical correlates of motivational factors to join and continue with exercise. The following results were reported: Knee osteoarthritis was positively related to motivation from an organized exercise opportunity and from efficacy/outcome expectations, and knee pain was positively related to motivation from social support and experience with the exercise task. Understanding these motivators might help in targeting recruitment efforts and interventions designed to increase physical activity in older adults with lower extremity arthritis.     

Beyond Authenticity? Humanism,Posthumanism and New Organization Development

In recent debates, the relevance of traditional objectivist organization development (OD) approaches has been questioned in terms of their appropriateness for contemporary organizations. A new OD has emerged wherein change is viewed as a socially constructed process and where there are multiple rather than singular authentic possibilities. We explore these possibilities by drawing on employees' discussions of how they manage conflicting interpretations of organizational change. Using the example of emotional labour, we compare traditional and new OD approaches in terms of how they view authenticity and then discuss posthumanist analysis, in which authenticity (or lack thereof) is no longer of focal concern. In particular, under traditional OD, where authenticity can be ‘discovered’, the need to negotiate multiplicity and to downplay ‘negative’ responses is a problem to be addressed. Under new OD such multiplicity becomes data for dialogue and discussion of future potentials. In contrast, a posthumanist analysis, while relational, neither reframes nor tempers authenticity but decentres the very notion of autonomy on which authenticity is based. The social constructionism of new OD is recast and implications for theory and intervention are discussed.     

Popularity: Does it magnify associations between popularity prioritization and the bullying and defending behavior of early adolescent boys and girls?

We investigated the contribution of popularity, popularity prioritization, and gender to the explanation of bullying and defending behavior. Participants were 191 early adolescents (124 girls and 67 boys), aged from 10.9 to 13.6 years. Results revealed that adolescents high on popularity were more likely to bully others. Greater popularity prioritization was also associated with more bullying among boys with high levels, and girls with low levels, of popularity. In addition, popularity was positively related to defending among girls, but not boys. Lower popularity prioritization also contributed to greater defending overall. The implications of these findings for understanding bullying and defending are discussed.     

Dispositional Coping,Personality Traits,and Affective Style Relating to Conflict between Work and Family Domains

Relations between dispositional characteristics (e.g., personality traits, affective style, and coping styles) and work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC) were investigated. Participants were employed adults recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Results showed conscientiousness and extraversion related to emotion-focused coping (EFC), positive affect positively related to problem-focused coping (PFC) and EFC, and neuroticism related to avoidance-focused coping (AFC). Additionally, AFC, conscientiousness, and negative affect related to FWC, and positive affect related to more WFC. Results highlight the importance of personality and affect relating to dispositional coping, yet coping styles added little to understanding of conflict. Overall, finding that negative affect and AFC related to conflict suggests that interventions that target these dispositional traits would likely be beneficial to reducing conflict between domains.     

Concepts of access for people with learning difficulties: towards a shared understanding

This article explores both the process and outcomes of a seminar series on the concept of access for people with learning difficulties. The seminar topics chosen to foster dialogue across professional and disciplinary boundaries included access to information, education, employment, the law, health, leisure, community, past histories and future plans. The seminars brought together people with learning difficulties and their support workers, researchers and professionals, to examine the expert knowledge of people with learning difficulties in negotiating access, the role of practitioners in mediating access and the contribution of research to understanding access. The aim was to develop a rich, shared understanding of the concept of access for people with learning difficulties. However, a huge amount of ‘access work’ had to be done to achieve this. The article discusses that access work and proposes a multidimensional model of access and ways of promoting it.     

Snippets and silences: Ethics and reflexivity in narratives of sistering

This paper considers two aspects of feminist orthodoxy regarding ethics and reflexivity during data analysis in qualitative research. These methodological issues surfaced in an exploratory study of how discourses of sistering socially construct and produce feminine subjectivity. Research was carried out with 37 women aged between 6 and 50 from different class and ethnic backgrounds living in the UK. Auto/biographical work in sociology influenced the design of the qualitative methods and the use of a grounded theory and case study approach to the analysis of the interview narratives. The discussion of methodological dilemmas-how to analyse multiple perspectives of relationships with varying degrees of disclosure among participants-is located within both feminist standpoint and poststructuralist theory. A case is made for guaranteeing anonymity rather than confidentiality, and offering selective reciprocity rather than an equal exchange between researcher and participants. The challenge of working with feminist reflexivity is considered through the notion of bounded privacy and a silenced 'I'.     

Evaluation of the importance of ornamental plants for pollinators in urban and suburban areas in Stuttgart,Germany

Urban Ecosystems - Urban landscapes are often characterized by a wide range of diverse flowering plants consisting of native and exotic plants. These flower-rich habitats have proven to be...     

Maternal input and infants’ response to infant‐directed speech

Caregivers typically use an exaggerated speech register known as infant‐directed speech (IDS) in communication with infants. Infants prefer IDS over adult‐directed speech (ADS) and IDS is functionally relevant in infant‐directed communication. We examined interactions among maternal IDS quality, infants’ preference for IDS over ADS, and the functional relevance of IDS at 6 and 13 months. While 6‐month‐olds showed a preference for IDS over ADS, 13‐month‐olds did not. Differences in gaze following behavior triggered by speech register (IDS vs. ADS) were found in both age groups. The degree of infants’ preference for IDS (relative to ADS) was linked to the quality of maternal IDS infants were exposed to. No such relationship was found between gaze following behavior and maternal IDS quality and infants’ IDS preference. The results speak to a dynamic interaction between infants’ preference for different kinds of social signals and the social cues available to them.     

Autoethnography: The story of applying a conceptual framework for intentional positioning to public relations practice

This autoethnography is an exercise in reporting, recording and reflecting on the process of attempting to apply a public relations theoretical construct to a practice environment. I take a social constructionist approach where the practice of autoethnography presumes that reality is socially constructed and where I, as the autoethnographer, can contribute to the social construction of what is known as public relations practice. I applied an analytical autoethnographic approach and used my own experiences, reflections and memories to construct myself in my writing as an academic and practitioner working within the context of a pro bono public relations consultancy project. The aim of this research was to ascertain whether the Framework for Intentional Positioning in Public Relations could assist practitioners to develop positioning strategies for future programs and campaigns. I applied the positioning framework to the design of a positioning strategy for a small university-affiliated environmental organization. My work indicated that the framework could aid in designing a positioning strategy, however, applying the framework to organizational circumstances could be challenging. The framework was found to have two distinct sections to it when applied to practice and this was not evident in previous analytical work. The project also indicated that further research is needed on how to adapt the framework to the concept of emergent strategy. My hope is that this autoethnography shows that even seasoned practitioners/academics can be challenged in practice situations.