Multi-sectoral health promotion and public health : the role of evidence

Background Evidence-informed health promotion and public health is an emerging and ever-changing theme in research and practice. A collaborative approach to gathering and applying evidence is crucial to implementing effective multi-sectoral health promotion and public health interventions for improved population outcomes. This paper presents an argument for the development of multi-sector evidence and discusses both facilitators and challenges to this process.

Methods Sector-specific contacts familiar with decision-making processes were selected from referrals gained through academic, government and non-government networks and interviewed (in-person or via telephone) as part of a small scale study to scope the use of evidence within non-health sectors where decisions are likely to impact on public health.

Results The views gathered are preliminary, and this analysis would benefit from more extensive consultation. Nonetheless, information gathered from the interviews and literature search provide valuable insights into evidence-related decision-making paradigms which demonstrate similarities with, and differences from, those found in the health sector.

Conclusions Decisions in health promotion and public may benefit from consideration of the ways in which disciplines and sectors can work together to inform policy and practice.

The pragmatics of text facilitation : the study of academic English of native and non-native writers

In this paper I describe the discursive strategies related to the writer–reader textual reciprocity. I focus on one way of achieving such reciprocity -- the employment by the writer of facilitative schematic structures and metalanguage where one text segment signposts information conveyed in the segment that follows. I refer to these facilitative schematic structures as "organising relational schemata". I see organising relations as the most explicit components of the rhetorical structure of texts: they illuminate the main message and aid the reader's cognitive processes in the orientation of how information is conveyed by text.
This paper discusses the way the choices of organising relations and associated metalanguage by the writers in different cultures and different discourse communities contribute to the communicative homeostasis in the world of text. It shows how the influence of a native culture and intellectual style together with the forces operating within the writer's international disciplinary community interact in the authorial guidance in the scholarly prose.
I introduce and exemplify three types of organising relational structures: Advance Organisers, Introducers and Enumerators. I trace the utilisation of these three types of relations in sociology research papers written in English and produced in "Anglo" and Polish academic discourse comunities by native English speaking and native Polish speaking scholars. The relational typology adopted is based on a study by Golebiowski (2002), which proposed a theoretical framework for the examination of discoursal structure of research papers, referred to as FARS – Framework for the Analysis of the Rhetorical Structure of Texts. FARS entails a relational taxonomy which displays a pattern of rhetorical relations utilised by the writer to achieve textual coherence.
I describe intertextual differences in the frequency of occurrence of organising relations, their degree of explicitness and their positioning in the hierarchical structure of texts. Differences in the mode of employment of textual organisers suggest that the rhetorical structure of English research prose produced by non-native speakers cannot escape being shaped by the characteristics and conventions of the authors’ first language. They are also attributed to cultural norms and conventions as well as educational systems prevailing within the discourse communities which constitute the social contexts of texts.

It's academic : American studies in a time of crisis

My archive- the collection of resources I have drawn upon for my comments- includes, among other sources, a panel on international American studies held at the American Studies Association conference in Montreal in November 1999, the Wednesday Higher Education supplement of the Australian newspaper, and another supplement- this is one in the Derridean sense of the word- the Howard government. I hope to draw these threads together to focus on the present crisis facing American studies and, not coincidentally, this Association. To arrive at this point I take a tour through theoretical and disciplinary responses to the prevailing situation.

What is referenced in marketing publications and has it changed over time?

Academic research has identified that business/marketing journals tend to draw on knowledge from a diverse set of disciplines. However, there has been limited examination of the source of these ideas in terms of types of materials (journals, books, conferences, business/popular press and other sources) or whether the use of these sources has changed over time. This paper examines these issues and found that within the three leading marketing journals (JM, JMR, JCR), the citation of journal articles has generally increased over time and the citation of nonjournal sources (i.e., journals, books, conferences, business/popular press and other sources), have generally decreased. There are, however, differences in the specific citation behaviour in the three journals and thus the citation of materials may be journal specific.