Typology of alcohol mixed with energy drink consumers: motivations for use

Background: Previous research on alcohol mixed with energy drinks (AmED) has shown that use is typically driven by hedonistic, social, functional, and intoxication-related motives, with differential associations with alcohol-related harm across these constructs. There has been no research looking at whether there are subgroups of consumers based on patterns of motivations. Consequently, the aims were to determine the typology of motivations for AmED use among a community sample and to identify correlates of subgroup membership. In addition, we aimed to determine whether this structure of motivations applied to a university student sample. Methods: Data were used from an Australian community sample (n = 731) and an Australian university student sample (n = 594) who were identified as AmED consumers when completing an online survey about their alcohol and ED use. Participants reported their level of agreement with 14 motivations for AmED use; latent classes of AmED consumers were identified based on patterns of motivation endorsement using latent class analysis. Results: A 4-class model was selected using data from the community sample: (i) taste consumers (31%): endorsed pleasurable taste; (ii) energy-seeking consumers (24%): endorsed functional and taste motives; (iii) hedonistic consumers (33%): endorse pleasure and sensation-seeking motives, as well as functional and taste motives; and (iv) intoxication-related consumers (12%): endorsed motives related to feeling in control of intoxication, as well as hedonistic, functional, and taste motives. The consumer subgroups typically did not differ on demographics, other drug use, alcohol and ED use, and AmED risk taking. The patterns of motivations for the 4-class model were similar for the university student sample. Conclusions: This study indicated the existence of 4 subgroups of AmED consumers based on their patterns of motivations for AmED use consistently structured across the community and university student sample. These findings lend support to the growing conceptualization of AmED consumers as a heterogeneous group in regard to motivations for use, with a hierarchical and cumulative class order in regard to the number of types of motivation for AmED use. Prospective research may endeavor to link session-specific motives and outcomes, as it is apparent that primary consumption motives may be fluid between sessions.

Typology of alcohol consumers in five Australian nighttime entertainment districts

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS: Understanding how types of alcohol consumers differ is important for public policy targeted at reducing adverse events. The aims of the present study were to identify typologies of alcohol consumers in Australian nighttime entertainment districts based on risk factors for harm and to examine variation between the identified groups in drinking setting and harms. DESIGN AND METHODS: Street-intercept surveys were conducted with 5556 alcohol consumers in and around licensed venues in five Australian cities between November 2011 and June 2012. Latent class analysis identified groups based on age and sex, and blood alcohol concentration, pre-drinking, energy drink use and illicit drug use during that night. RESULTS: Four classes were identified: general patron group (33%), young pre-drinker group (27%), intoxicated male pre-drinker group (31%) and intoxicated illicit drug male group (9%). The proportion of the general patron group interviewed decreased over the night, while the other groups increased (particularly in regional cities). As compared with the general patron group, the remaining three groups reported increased odds of being involved in aggression and any alcohol-related injuries in the past 3 months, with highest rates of harm amongst the intoxicated illicit drug male group. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Alcohol consumers in nighttime entertainment districts are not a homogeneous group. One-third have a low likelihood of risky consumption practices; however, representation of this consumer class diminishes throughout the night. Elevated harms amongst groups characterised by certain risk factors (e.g. pre-drinking and illicit drug use) emphasise the importance of addressing these behaviours in public policy.

Subtyping based on readiness and confidence: the identification of help-seeking profiles for gamblers accessing web-based counselling

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Problem gamblers are not a homogeneous group and recent data suggest that subtyping can improve treatment outcomes. This study administered three readiness rulers and aimed to identify subtypes of gamblers accessing a national web-based counselling service based on these rulers. METHODS: Participants were 1204 gamblers (99.4% problem gamblers) who accessed a single session of web-based counselling in Australia. Measures included three readiness rulers (importance, readiness and confidence to resist an urge to gamble), demographics and the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). RESULTS: Gamblers reported high importance of change [mean = 9.2, standard deviation (SD) = 1.51] and readiness to change (mean = 8.86, SD = 1.84), but lower confidence to resist an urge to gamble (mean = 3.93, SD = 2.44) compared with importance and readiness. The statistical fit indices of a latent class analysis identified a four-class model. Subtype 1 was characterized by a very high readiness to change and very low confidence to resist an urge to gamble (n = 662, 55.0%) and subtype 2 reported high readiness and low confidence (n = 358, 29.7%). Subtype 3 reported moderate ratings on all three rulers (n = 139, 11.6%) and subtype 4 reported high importance of change but low readiness and confidence (n = 45, 3.7%). A multinomial logistic regression indicated that subtypes differed by gender (P < 0.001), age (P = 0.01), gambling activity (P < 0.05), preferred mode of gambling (P < 0.001) and PGSI score (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Problem gamblers in Australia who seek web-based counselling comprise four distinct subgroups based on self-reported levels of readiness to change, confidence to resist the urge to gamble and importance of change.

Job satisfaction among Australian general practitioners and specialists

OBJECTIVE:
To identify patterns of job satisfaction among Australian doctors using latent class analysis, and to determine the relationships of these patterns to personal and professional characteristics so as to improve satisfaction and minimize medical wastage.
METHODS:
MABEL (Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life) data in 2011 were used. The study collected information on 5764 doctors about their job satisfaction, demographic characteristics, their health, country of medical training, opportunities for professional development and social interaction, taking time off work, views of patients' expectations, unpredictable working hours, hours worked per week, preference to reduce hours and intention to leave the medical workforce.
RESULTS:
Four latent classes of job satisfaction were identified: 5.8% had high job satisfaction; 19.4% had low satisfaction with working hours; 16.1% had high satisfaction with working hours but felt undervalued; and 6.5% had low job satisfaction. Low job satisfaction was associated with reporting poor health, having trained outside Australia, having poor opportunities for professional development and working longer hours. Low satisfaction was associated with a preference to reduce work hours and an intention to leave the medical workforce.
CONCLUSION:
To improve job satisfaction and minimize medical wastage, policies need to address needs of overseas trained doctors, provide continuing professional development and provide good health care for doctors.

The relationship between psychological distress and adolescent polydrug use.

Polydrug use is relatively common among adolescents. Psychological distress is associated with the use of specific drugs, and may be uniquely associated with polydrug use. The purpose of this study was to test the association of psychological distress with polydrug use using a large adolescent sample. The sample consisted of 10,273 students aged 12-17 years from the State of Victoria, Australia. Participants completed frequency measures of tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, inhalant, and other drug use in the past 30 days, and psychological distress. Control variables included age, gender, family socioeconomic status, school suspensions, academic failure, cultural background, and peer drug use. Drug-use classes were derived using latent-class analysis, then the association of psychological distress and controls with drug-use classes was modeled using multinomial ordinal regression. There were 3 distinct classes of drug use: no drug use (47.7%), mainly alcohol use (44.1%), and polydrug use (8.2%). Independent of all controls, psychological distress was higher in polydrug users and alcohol users, relative to nondrug users, and polydrug users reported more psychological distress than alcohol users. Psychological distress was most characteristic of polydrug users, and targeted prevention outcomes may be enhanced by a collateral focus on polydrug use and depression and/or anxiety.

A profile of four patterns of vulnerability to functional decline in older general medicine patients in Victoria, Australia: a cross sectional survey

BACKGROUND: There are limited published data reporting Australian hospitalized elders' vulnerability to functional decline to guide best practice interventions. The objectives of this study were to describe the prevalence of vulnerability to functional decline and explore profiles of vulnerability related to the performance of physical activity in a representative group of elders in a single centre in Victoria, Australia.

METHODS: A cross-sectional survey of patients aged ≥ 70 years (Mean age 82.4, SD 7 years) admitted to a general medical ward of an Australian tertiary-referral metropolitan public hospital from March 2010 to March 2011 (n = 526). Patients were screened using the Vulnerable Elders Survey (VES-13). Distinct typologies of physical difficulties were identified using latent class analysis.

RESULTS: Most elders scored ≥3/10 on the VES-13 and were rated vulnerable to functional decline (n = 480, 89.5 %). Four distinct classes of physical difficulty were identified: 1) Elders with higher physical functioning (n = 114, 21.7 %); 2) Ambulant elders with diminished strength (n = 24, 4.6 %); 3) Elders with impaired mobility, strength and ability to stoop (n = 267, 50.8 %) and 4) Elders with extensive physical impairment (n = 121, 23 %) Vulnerable elders were distributed through all classes.

CONCLUSIONS: Older general medicine patients in Victoria, Australia, are highly vulnerable to functional decline. We identified four distinct patterns of physical difficulties associated with vulnerability to functional decline that can inform health service planning, delivery and education.

Shareholder class actions - a critical analysis of the procedure under Part IVA of the Federal Court of Australia Act

Part IVA of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1974 (C’th) governs the class action procedure, which has been available in Australia since March 1992. The procedure was not popular amongst the shareholders until in the late 1990s, and since then the number of shareholder class actions has steadily increased. Many of these shareholder class actions settled before a final court hearing. This article critically examines the class action procedure and in doing so, it highlights the current issues that contribute to a rapid rise in shareholder class actions. The article calls for reform to the class action procedure. It identifies areas for reform in an attempt to improve the position of the group members so that they can receive a better outcome than what they can get under the current class action model.

Re-gendering labour: class and gender determinants of New South Wales electoral behaviour 1930-32

Historians have neglected tbe impact of female enfranchisement on Australian electoral outcomes. This papers employs multivariate analysis to explore electoral behaviour in New South Wales during the Great Depression. It argues that women were less prone to support Labor than men, but that women in paid employment constituted a partial exception to this pattern. In 1932 the conservative parties significantly eroded Labor's working-class support. Part of this success was due to the ability of employers to coerce workers with the threat of dismissal. Female wage earners were particularly vulnerable to this coercion. Conservative electoral appeals recast masculinity in terms of family responsibility rather than class assertion. Conflict in the household economy possibly influenced women to vote against Labor due to its identification with the cause of male breadwinners. Overall female voting behaviour was more stable than that of men and this despite the higb profile of issues that would have been expected particularly to influence female voters.

An ecobehavioural analysis of interactive engagement of children with developmental disabilities with their peers in inclusive preschools

Ecobehavioural analysis procedures were used to examine the interactive engagement of children with developmental disabilities due to Down syndrome who attended inclusive preschools for 2 years. Compared with typical children, the children with disabilities displayed infrequent interactions with peers for the duration of the study. For the children with disabilities, interactive engagement was largely unrelated to the characteristics of class activities, while typical children responded positively to activities expected to promote peer interaction. The results are discussed in terms of the inadequacy of informal strategies commonly applied in inclusive preschool settings to promote interactive engagement in children with disabilities.

The re-emergence of the public accountancy profession in China: a contextual analysis

Little has been published on the professionalisation projects in non-English speaking countries. In particular, where these countries operate under a non-capitalist environment, the role of accountants and their professionalisation process have been relatively under-explored. This paper seeks to contribute to addressing this apparent gap by choosing the public accountancy profession in China as the subject matter of the research. This paper draws on Gramsci's concept of hegemony to examine the circumstances leading to the re-emergence of the public accountancy profossion in China. In particular, the paper attempts to understand the political ana' ideological influence upon the professionalisation process of the Chinese accountants. To this aim, the paper examines the social and cultural environment of China highlighting the importance attached to propagating the political ideology by the hegemonic ruling class in the history of China. The paper concludes that while the re-emergence of the CPA profession is a by-product of the government's push for economic reconstruction, the real contextual factor that led to the revival of the public accountancy profession is the political ideologies, which were propagated by the ruling political force in an attempt to establish hegemony.

Sports training, science and class among British amateur athletes in the mid to late nineteenth century

Organised amateur sports emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century. This paper, an exercise in historical sociology, analyses how a new system of sports training was devised by the amateurs to meet their particular needs. The data comes from contemporary British training manuals and the analysis is informed by the theories of Bourdieu and Foucault. That amateurs came from the higher social classes was highly
significant: it meant that they could not adopt existing training practices because these were associated with plebeian professional athletes. For amateurs to have followed the preparation of the professionals would have placed their bodies under the control of a social inferior and promoted a somatic shape more in keeping with the lower than with
the higher social orders. Mirroring the social distance between them, amateurs came to stridently reject professional training practices. Instead, they devised new training techniques which were justified through recourse to contemporary bio-medical knowledge. It is argued that amateur training originated for social reasons, with the proponents’ class positions and social capital facilitating the evocation of scientific knowledge as a legitimating ideology.

A causal analysis for the expenditure data of business travelers

Determining the causal relation among attributes in a domain
is a key task in the data mining and knowledge discovery. In this
paper, we applied a causal discovery algorithm to the business traveler
expenditure survey data [1]. A general class of causal models is adopted in
this paper to discover the causal relationship among continuous and discrete variables. All those factors which have direct effect on the expense
pattern of travelers could be detected. Our discovery results reinforced
some conclusions of the rough set analysis and found some new conclusions which might significantly improve the understanding of expenditure behaviors of the business traveler.

What do they think when we stack them in? A comparative analysis of student perceptions relating to large and small marketing subjects

University education is in a period of flux with emphasis being focused on quality education, competition for students both local and international as well as changes in governmental financial support and direction. It is with this scenario as a backdrop, that universities in an endeavour to obtain economies of scale offer subjects with large student enrolments. This study investigates marketing students’ perception of and participation in marketing subjects relating to teaching quality, staff availability and support, and individual student involvement in marketing education with large enrolments compared to subjects with small enrolments. This research builds on the investigations of effects of class size by Cuseo (2004) and Binney et al (2004). The study used a multi-method approach. Data from a sample of 621 students was analysed using Factor analysis, MANOVA and ANOVA. Students indicated that there was little difference in the quality of learning obtained in small or large classes. Of interest from a marketing perspective, however, is the perception by students that they are more likely to obtain practical assistance and support from tutors in smaller classes. Student perceptions generally show no major differences between large and small classes in relation to subject selection, ability to learn and lecture  attendance. Students expressed a preference for the opportunity to choose from a number of lecture streams available in subjects with large enrolments. Of interest, however is the student belief that they are less likely to actively participate in large lectures than in small lecture environments.

A primary numeracy : a mapping review and analysis of Australian research in numeracy learning at the primary school level : report

The outcome from this project produces a database of over 185 projects and 726 publications relating to numeracy research to systematically ‘mapped’ Australian research on primary school numeracy over the last decade. The database incorporates research summaries and findings that are easily accessible to teachers and teacher educators, and act as a valuable tool for determining further research directions. The project report examines the available research and organises the discussion of the research findings under a set of themes and sub-themes.

Some summarised examples from the report reveals that:

* Effective teachers of numeracy:
- have high expectations of their students;
- focus on children’s mathematical learning, rather than on providing pleasant classroom experiences;
- provide a challenging curriculum;
- use higher-order questioning;
- make connections both within mathematics and between mathematics in different contexts; and
- use highly interactive teaching involvement with students in class discussion.

* Effective professional development programmes:
- provide teachers with the time and appropriate resources to enable them to reflect on their teaching;
- provide continuing support and encouragement while teachers explore possibilities and trial new strategies in their classrooms;
- involve teachers in school-based and wider networks;
- are of sufficient duration to allow significant changes to habitual beliefs and practices; and
- create opportunities for the exploration of theory-practice relationships.