The impact of personal resources and their goal relevance on satisfaction with food-related life among the elderly.

The study explored how actual resources, perceived levels of different types of resources and goal relevance of these resources affect older people's satisfaction with food-related life using a survey in eight European countries, where 3291 participants above 65 years of age and living in their own homes took part. Satisfaction with food-related life was measured using Satisfaction With Food-related Life (SWFL) scale developed by Grunert, Raats, Dean, Nielsen, Lumbers and The Food in Later Life Team. [(2007). A measure of satisfaction with food-related life. Appetite, 49, 486–493]. Results showed that older people rated the resources that they believed to have plentiful of as being highly relevant to achieve their goals. The individuals who rated the relevance and their level of different resources as high were also more satisfied with their food-related quality of life. Further, satisfaction with food-related life, as was expected, was predicted by income, health measures and living circumstances. However, the study also showed that perceived levels of other resources such as support of family and friends, food knowledge, storage facilities also added to the individuals’ satisfaction with food-related life. In addition, the congruence between perceived level and relevance of a resource was also shown to add to people's satisfaction with food-related life, implying that older people's satisfaction with food-related life depends not only on the level of resources they think they have but also on their goals and how important they think these resources are to achieving their goals.

Using projective techniques to tap into consumers' feelings, perceptions and attitudes ... getting an honest opinion

An investigation into customer loyalty to food retailers posed a methodological problem namely how to delve beneath the surface and access consumers' unspoken feelings, perceptions, attitudes and values. This paper explains how four different projective techniques were used to access the thoughts and feelings of 160 interviewees in order to obtain a thorough understanding of the interviewees' satisfaction with their 'main' food retailer and to characterize the relationship between the customer and retailer. A brief description of the use, analysis and examples of cartoon friends, word association, personification and mini case studies was provided in order to describe their role in the data collection process.

Overcoming Customer Dependency - A Case Study of Small Consumer Food Producers in Northern Ireland

Dependency on a small number of customer puts intense pressure on suppliers' profit margin and, in slow growing markets, limits their ability to grow. using stragtegic benchmarking information, a group of Northern Ireland consumer food producer are shown, depsite slow market growth and higher than averge customer dependency, to have increased market share while maintaining aboe vergate proitability. examination of the business strategic and develoment activites of the consumer food firms,and comparble information for other small food prodcuers in Ireland, suggests and emphasiss on cost-reduction and new prodcut development. A comparision of the productivity and prodcut range of the consuer food firms provides evidence of the success of these strategic. This suggests that even a relatively weak market situations, charactrised by dependency on a small number of customers, can be over come by effective and appropriate business strategy.

Autopoiesis and the Home Confined Consumer: The Role of Personal Communities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the consumption of a personal community and its role in the everyday life of the home-confined consumer. Design/methodology/approach – Using a Radical Constructivist approach, three cases of home confinement were explored in depth over a period of two years. Ongoing “conversations” captured the consumption experiences with personal communities. Findings – In relation to the home-confined context, the ability to attain individuality, empowerment and creativity are all heightened as a result of personal community construction. An underlying concern for home-confined consumers is their removal from independent living to institutionalized living, and, as a result the need to construct, manage and maintain a personal community is of major concern. Research limitations/implications – Although the study addresses a home-confined context, it is nevertheless reflective of concerns that are significant to all consumers, namely the attainment of individuality and independence irrespective of marginalization or not. Practical implications – The importance of a personal community in terms of both self-empowerment and self-identity with respect to marginalized groups and vulnerable individuals should not be underestimated. The supporting role of a personal community provides, in times of uncertainty, a framework to maintain self-identity and independence. Originality/value – This paper provides a better understanding of the role of a personal community in the consumption experiences of those consumers marginalized and vulnerable as a consequence of context. Home-confined consumers are “invisible” in the marketplace and the personal community is a means of redressing this imbalance by empowering such individuals.

Self-Care, the Body and Identity: The Non-Abelist Consumer Perspective

Consumers confined to the home due to disability or long term illness are the subjects of this study. Home confined consumers are not subject to the public gaze but are nevertheless just as conscious of idealised conceptions of what constitutes a normalised body and strive to attain this by means of highly disciplined body self-care practices. This paper examines their consumption experiences and finds that they strive to create a disciplined approach to inner and outer body maintenance. They do so in order to maintain and develop self-identity, and even the survival of the self in their self-created marketplaces.

Stress, coping and satisfaction in nursing students

Aim. This article is a report of a study conducted to explore the relationship between sources of stress and psychological well-being and to consider how different sources of stress and coping resources might function as moderators and mediators on well-being.


Background. In most research exploring sources of stress and coping in nursing students, stress has been construed as psychological distress. Sources of stress likely to enhance well-being and, by implication, learning have not been considered.


Method. A questionnaire was administered to 171 final year nursing students in 2008. Questions were asked to measure sources of stress when rated as likely to contribute to distress (a hassle) and rated as likely to help one achieve (an uplift). Support, control, self-efficacy and coping style were also measured, along with their potential moderating and mediating effects on well-being, operationalized using the General Health Questionnaire and measures of course and career satisfaction.


Findings. Sources of stress likely to lead to distress were more often predictors of well-being than were sources of stress likely to lead to positive, eustress states, with the exception of clinical placement demands. Self-efficacy, dispositional control and support were important predictors, and avoidance coping was the strongest predictor of adverse well-being. Approach coping was not a predictor of well-being. The mere presence of support appeared beneficial as well as the utility of that support to help a student cope.


Conclusion. Initiatives to promote support and self-efficacy are likely to have immediate benefits for student well-being. In course reviews, nurse educators need to consider how students’ experiences might contribute not just to potential distress, but to eustress as well.

Image segmentation based on multi-scan constraint satisfaction neural network

A novel image segmentation method based on a constraint satisfaction neural network (CSNN) is presented. The new method uses CSNN-based relaxation but with a modified scanning scheme of the image. The pixels are visited with more distant intervals and wider neighborhoods in the first level of the algorithm. The intervals between pixels and their neighborhoods are reduced in the following stages of the algorithm. This method contributes to the formation of more regular segments rapidly and consistently. A cluster validity index to determine the number of segments is also added to complete the proposed method into a fully automatic unsupervised segmentation scheme. The results are compared quantitatively by means of a novel segmentation evaluation criterion. The results are promising.