Single session web-based counselling: a thematic analysis of content from the perspective of the client

Despite the exponential growth of non-appointment-based web counselling, there is limited information on what happens in a single session intervention. This exploratory study, involving a thematic analysis of 85 counselling transcripts of people seeking help for problem gambling, aimed to describe the presentation and content of online conversations. Observed from the perspective of the client, we found that presentations were related to immediate help with a crisis and non-urgent assistance in developing strategies and skills. Almost all clients spent a great deal of time telling their story (i.e., the pattern, context, progression and impact of the problem, motivation for continuing and previous attempts to change) with less time spent exploring opportunities, readiness or self-efficacy related to change or relevant options and strategies. These findings provide important information that informs the application of traditional counselling approaches within web-based environments.

The information content of directors' trades: empirical analysis of the Australian market

We examine the trading activities of directors in shares of their own companies on the Australian Stock Exchange during the July-December 2005 period. We find that directors of small companies in particular earn abnormal return after both their 'Purchase' and as well as their 'Sale' trade. Directors of these companies have an uncanny ability to time the market by trading when mispricing is greatest, and are able to predict the future performance of their firms in short run. For directors of medium and large companies, we find evidence that 'Sale' trades are the ones which work as loss avoiders. Outsiders recognise to some extent that directors' trades are informative, however they are slow to incorporate the new information into prices, refuting much of the market efficiency literature.

Exploring marketing to marketers : a content analysis of advertisements in marketing news over 15 years

This paper explores advertising to marketers within Marketing News over four periods 1992, 1997, 2002 and 2007. The results identified the types of advertisements, in terms of appeal; products (most of which were for marketing research related activates) and coverage were relatively stable over time. There were increases in the number of advertisements, the appearance of web related services and a slight increase in products with a global focus and a reduction of a regional focus were evident.

How to write an unsuccessful entrepreneurial business plan : content analysis of the normative literature reveals a flawed paradigm

The study's aim was to investigate whether an Entrepreneurial Business Planning (EBP) paradigm could be discovered as a body of core, common maxims within the normative EBP literature (works of the 'how-to-write-a-successful-new-venture-business-plan' genre). It employed content analysis techniques adapted mainly from the methodological prescriptions of Krippendorf (1980) and Carney (1972). The textual investigation produced a comprehensive, quantitative data base capable of sufficient interpretative richness to discover that an established Entrepreneurial Business Planning paradigm does exist. Its major elements embrace two key assumptions, four strong mandates and four weaker mandates.

The discovery is significant for two main reasons. First, it provides a formally-researched, explicitly-articulated EBP paradigm. This can replace the anecdotal, unarticulated assumption (implicit in most of the normative EBP literature) that an EBP paradigm 'probably exists'. Second, the research redresses some of the imbalance between entrepreneurship teaching- where Entrepreneurial Business Planning is at the core of international curricula - and entrepreneurship research which has virtually ignored EBP as a topic worthy of serious scrutiny. A firm basis for critical, scholarly exploration of the neglected EBP field is now established. This takes the theory and practice of EBP into a new era beginning with recognition that the discovered EBP paradigm is badly flawed and likely, if blindly applied, to lead to the writing of unsuccessful business plans.

A content analysis of sponsor representation across professional sport websites : extension of attribute typology

The sport industry has identified the importance of using the internet as a tool that can benefit the organisation. Much like the purpose of entering into sponsorship of sporting events, corporate partners are also attracted to the opportunities that professional sport team websites offer to fulfil similar objectives. The major purpose of this research is to explore the various ways in which sponsor logos are represented across professional sport websites and to extend previous advertising research, specifically the work developing advertising attribute typologies. The subjects for this research are professional sport websites and a qualitative approach is adopted with a content analysis as the main method of analysis used. To ensure reliability and validity within the coding instruments used, percentage agreement and Cohen’s kappa were adopted as indexes to verify this. The findings show sponsors’ logos exist on most professional sport websites and are represented in a variety of ways. Furthermore, a typology for sponsor representation and location across sport websites has been established to present a reliable foundation for future research in the area of consumer attitudes, behaviour and response towards sponsors and their presence on sport websites.

A content analysis of early childhood teachers’ theoretical and practical experiences with infants and toddlers in Australian teacher education programs

 In Australia, the growth in the provision of early childhood services for very young children aged birth to three years has placed increased demands on pre-service teachers as new policy stipulates the need for qualified early childhood teachers. While many teacher education programs offer early childhood courses, they have traditionally had a greater focus on kindergarten and the formal years of schooling. Less is known about the amount of time devoted to developing the specialist educational capacity for teaching and caring for infants and toddlers. This paper explores 55 Australian early childhood teacher undergraduate education programs to provide data regarding what pre-service teachers learn about children from birth to three years of age during their formal program of study. It explores: if pre-service teachers engage in practical experiences with this age range; what content they learn; and how knowledge for this age range is assessed. Utilising information from fully accessible public program websites, data in the form of course details were examined to reveal the extent and nature of courses inclusive of teaching and learning focusing on children aged from birth to three years. Of the 55 programs, 18 programs provided practical experience with infants and toddlers, and to a lesser extent content was evident and assessed. Most of the programs which included a focus on birth to three years of age were delivered by Victorian institutions. Findings are important for the future of early childhood teacher education in Australia and hold key messages for teacher registration bodies.

Corporate social responsibility programs of big food in Australia: a content analysis of industry documents

OBJECTIVE: To examine Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) tactics by identifying the key characteristics of CSR strategies as described in the corporate documents of selected 'Big Food' companies. METHODS: A mixed methods content analysis was used to analyse the information contained on Australian Big Food company websites. Data sources included company CSR reports and web-based content that related to CSR initiatives employed in Australia. RESULTS: A total of 256 CSR activities were identified across six organisations. Of these, the majority related to the categories of environment (30.5%), responsibility to consumers (25.0%) or community (19.5%). CONCLUSIONS: Big Food companies appear to be using CSR activities to: 1) build brand image through initiatives associated with the environment and responsibility to consumers; 2) target parents and children through community activities; and 3) align themselves with respected organisations and events in an effort to transfer their positive image attributes to their own brands. IMPLICATIONS: Results highlight the type of CSR strategies Big Food companies are employing. These findings serve as a guide to mapping and monitoring CSR as a specific form of marketing.

Shifts in media images of women appearance and social status from 1960 to 2010: a content analysis of beauty advertisements in two Australian magazines

Ageing well and successful ageing have become important themes to describe how older individuals should keep ageing at bay. Products and services aimed at controlling ageing have become associated with ageing well. In this study we aimed to analyse the representation of older women in advertisements specific to appearance and ageing. In particular, we sought to explore how ageing for women was presented in the media over a period 50 years and when advertisements began to use the term 'anti-ageing'. A content analysis of 710 advertisements from two prominent Australian women's magazines, from 1960 to 2010, was conducted. Analyses showed that advertisements provided a narrow range of images representing women's physical appearance. The underlying messages were that ageing is problematic and that it had become unforgivable to show any signs of ageing. Text contained in advertisements for beauty products from the two chosen Australian magazines often gave specific and prescriptive advice to women on ways to avoid losing their youthful appearance. It was concluded that media relay powerful messages to spread and modify cultural beliefs informing individuals of a range of options that propose liberation from the problem of ageing.

Creating symbolic cultures of consumption: an analysis of the content of sports wagering advertisements in Australia

BACKGROUND: Since 2008, Australia has seen the rapid emergence of marketing for online and mobile sports wagering. Previous research from other areas of public health, such as tobacco and alcohol, has identified the range of appeal strategies these industries used to align their products with culturally valued symbols. However, there is very limited research that has investigated the tactics the sports wagering industry uses within marketing to influence the consumption of its products and services.

METHOD: This study consisted of a mixed method interpretive content analysis of 85 sports wagering advertisements from 11 Australian and multinational wagering companies. Advertisements were identified via internet searches and industry websites. A coding framework was applied to investigate the extent and nature of symbolic appeal strategies within advertisements.

RESULTS: Ten major appeal strategies emerged from this analysis. These included sports fan rituals and behaviours; mateship; gender stereotypes; winning; social status; adventure, thrill and risk; happiness; sexualised imagery; power and control; and patriotism. Symbols relating to sports fan rituals and behaviours, and mateship, were the most common strategies used within the advertisements.

DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS: This research suggests that the appeal strategies used by the sports wagering industry are similar to those strategies adopted by other unhealthy commodity industries. With respect to gambling, analysis revealed that strategies are clearly targeted to young male sports fans. Researchers and public health practitioners should seek to better understand the impact of marketing on the normalisation of sports wagering for this audience segment, and implement strategies to prevent gambling harm.

An analysis of factors influencing waste minimisation and use of recycled materials for the construction of residential buildings

Residential building construction activities, whether it is new build, repair or maintenance, consumes a large amount of natural resources. This has a negative impact on the environment in the form depleting natural resources, increasing waste production and pollution. Previous research has identified the benefits of preventing or reducing material waste, mainly in terms of the limited available space for waste disposal, and escalating costs associated with landfills, waste management and disposal and their impact on a  building company's profitability. There has however been little development internationally of innovative waste management strategies aimed at reducing the resource requirement of the construction process. The authors contend that embodied energy is a useful indicator of resource value. Using data provided by a regional high-volume residential builder in the State of Victoria, Australia, this paper identifies the various types of waste that are generated from the construction of a typical standard house. It was found that in this particular case, wasted amounts of materials were less than those found previously by others for cases in capital cities (5-10 per cent), suggesting that waste minimisation strategies are successfully being implemented. Cost and embodied energy savings from using materials with recycled content are potentially more beneficial in terms of embodied energy and resource depletion than waste minimisation strategies.

Evaluating a measure of content quality for accounting narratives (with an empirical application to narratives from Australia, Hong Kong, and the United States)

This paper evaluates a texture-based approach developed by Sydserff and Weetman (1999), to examine corporate annual report narratives. This is achieved by using the texture index to evaluate information content (which includes readability) in accounting narratives. Specifically, we examine the letter to shareholders of reports from Australia, Hong Kong and the United States.

We suggest a texture-based evaluation provides a robust measure of narrative quality due to the incorporation of readability and content analysis. The ability to measure content quality assists in promoting accountability, with the aim of improving usefulness of corporate
information and disclosures, and greater investor confidence in capital markets.

This paper also investigates these exploratory results to consider variations in quality between different countries. Considerable differences were found between the countries with Hong Kong reports generally superior. These tentative findings provide a small contribution to the comparative annual report literature and the emerging area of narrative evaluation.

Performance analysis of algorithms for frequent pattern generation

Data mining refers to extracting or "mining" knowledge from large amounts of data. It is also called a method of "knowledge presentation" where visualization and knowledge representation techniques are used to present the mined knowledge to the user. Efficient algorithms to mine frequent patterns are crucial to many tasks in data mining. Since the Apriori algorithm was proposed in 1994, there have been several methods proposed to improve its performance. However, most still adopt its candidate set generation-and-test approach. In addition, many methods do not generate all frequent patterns, making them inadequate to derive association rules. The Pattern Decomposition (PD) algorithm that can significantly reduce the size of the dataset on each pass makes it more efficient to mine all frequent patterns in a large dataset. This algorithm avoids the costly process of candidate set generation and saves a large amount of counting time to evaluate support with reduced datasets. In this paper, some existing frequent pattern generation algorithms are explored and their comparisons are discussed. The results show that the PD algorithm outperforms an improved version of Apriori named Direct Count of candidates & Prune transactions (DCP) by one order of magnitude and is faster than an improved FP-tree named as Predictive Item Pruning (PIP). Further, PD is also more scalable than both DCP and PIP.