A review of behaviour change theories and techniques used in group based self-management programmes for chronic low back pain and arthritis

Background: Medical Research Council (MRC) guidelines recommend applying theory within complex interventions to explain how behaviour change occurs. Guidelines endorse self-management of chronic low back pain (CLBP) and osteoarthritis (OA), but evidence for its effectiveness is weak. Objective: This literature review aimed to determine the use of behaviour change theory and techniques within randomised controlled trials of group-based self-management programmes for chronic musculoskeletal pain, specifically CLBP and OA. Methods: A two-phase search strategy of electronic databases was used to identify systematic reviews and studies relevant to this area. Articles were coded for their use of behaviour change theory, and the number of behaviour change techniques (BCTs) was identified using a 93-item taxonomy, Taxonomy (v1). Results: 25 articles of 22 studies met the inclusion criteria, of which only three reported having based their intervention on theory, and all used Social Cognitive Theory. A total of 33 BCTs were coded across all articles with the most commonly identified techniques being '. instruction on how to perform the behaviour', '. demonstration of the behaviour', '. behavioural practice', '. credible source', '. graded tasks' and '. body changes'. Conclusion: Results demonstrate that theoretically driven research within group based self-management programmes for chronic musculoskeletal pain is lacking, or is poorly reported. Future research that follows recommended guidelines regarding the use of theory in study design and reporting is warranted.

Social Equality: On what it means to be equals

The first collected volume on social and relational equality.
Addresses a gap in the literature - while many philosophers have pointed to the importance of social equality, it requires much more theoretical development, which this volume aims to provide.
Offers a unique answer to the debate about whether or not equality is valuable.
Features a foreword by eminent political theorist David Miller
Includes new contributions by some of the most well-known contemporary moral and political philosophers, such as Samuel Scheffler and Jonathan Wolff.
Is equality valuable? This question dominates many discussions of social justice, which tend to center on whether certain forms of distributive equality are valuable, such as the equal distribution of primary social goods. But these discussions often neglect what is known as social or relational equality. Social equality suggests that equality is foremost about relationships and interactions between people, rather than being primarily about distribution.

A number of philosophers have written about the significance of social equality, and it has also played an important role in real-life egalitarian movements, such as feminism and civil rights movements. However, as it has been relatively neglected in comparison to the debates about distributive equality, it requires much more theoretical attention. This volume brings together a collection of ten original essays which present new analyses of social and relational equality in philosophy and political theory. The essays analyze the nature of social equality, as well as its relationship to justice and politics.

Readership: The book is primarily aimed at professionals in the field - philosophers (especially in moral, social and political philosophy) and political theorists. It is also aimed at the academic library market. Moreover, the book should be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students attending courses on theories of equality and/or social justice.

Moral asymmetries in judgments of agency withstand ludicrous causal deviance

Americans have been shown to attribute greater intentionality to immoral than to amoral actions in cases of causal deviance, that is, cases where a goal is satisfied in a way that deviates from initially planned means (e.g., a gunman wants to hit a target and his hand slips, but the bullet ricochets off a rock into the target). However, past research has yet to assess whether this asymmetry persists in cases of extreme causal deviance. Here, we manipulated the level of mild to extreme causal deviance of an immoral versus amoral act. The asymmetry in attributions of intentionality was observed at all but the
most extreme level of causal deviance, and, as we hypothesized, was mediated by attributions of Blame/credit and judgments of action performance. These findings are discussed as they support a multiple-concepts interpretation of the asymmetry, wherein blame renders a naïve concept of intentional action (the outcome matches the intention) more salient than a composite concept (the outcome matches the intention and was brought about by planned means), and in terms of their implications for cross-cultural research on judgments of agency.

Are there different moral domains? Evidence from Mongolia

In this paper we report a study conducted in Mongolia on the scope of morality, that is, the extent to which people moralize different social domains. Following Turiel’s moral-conventional task, we characterized moral transgressions (in contrast to conventional transgressions) in terms of two dimensions: authority independence
and generality of scope. Different moral domains are then defined by grouping such moral transgressions in terms of their content (following Haidt’s classification of morally relevant domains). There are four main results of the study. First, since all five Haidtian domains were moralized by the Mongolian participants, the study provides
evidence in favour of pluralism about moral domains. However, the study also suggests that the domain of harm can be reduced to the fairness domain. Furthermore, although the strong claim about reduction of all moral domains to the domain of fairness seems not to hold, a significant number of participants did indicate considerations of fairness across domains. Finally, a significant amount of participants moralized conventional transgressions a la Turiel, but it did not reach a statistical significance.