My place through my eyes : a social constructionist approach to researching the relationships between socioeconomic living contexts and physical activity

There is a growing evidence-base in the epidemiological literature that demonstrates significant associations between people’s living circumstances – including their place of residence – and their health-related practices and outcomes (Leslie, 2005; Karpati, Bassett, & McCord, 2006; Monden, Van Lenthe, & Mackenbach, 2006; Parkes & Kearns, 2006; Cummins, Curtis, Diez-Roux, & Macintyre, 2007; Turrell, Kavanagh, Draper, & Subramanian, 2007). However, these findings raise questions about the ways in which living places, such as households and neighbourhoods, figure in the pathways connecting people and health (Frolich, Potvin, Chabot, & Corin, 2002; Giles-Corti, 2006; Brown et al, 2006; Diez Roux, 2007). This thesis addressed these questions via a mixed methods investigation of the patterns and processes connecting people, place, and their propensity to be physically active. Specifically, the research in this thesis examines a group of lower-socioeconomic residents who had recently relocated from poorer suburbs to a new urban village with a range of health-related resources. Importantly, the study contrasts their historical relationship with physical activity with their reactions to, and everyday practices in, a new urban setting designed to encourage pedestrian mobility and autonomy. The study applies a phenomenological approach to understanding living contexts based on Berger and Luckman’s (1966) conceptual framework in The Social Construction of Reality. This framework enables a questioning of the concept of context itself, and a treatment of it beyond environmental factors to the processes via which experiences and interactions are made meaningful. This approach makes reference to people’s histories, habituations, and dispositions in an exploration between social contexts and human behaviour. This framework for thinking about context is used to generate an empirical focus on the ways in which this residential group interacts with various living contexts over time to create a particular construction of physical activity in their lives. A methodological approach suited to this thinking was found in Charmaz’s (1996; 2001; 2006) adoption of a social constructionist approach to grounded theory. This approach enabled a focus on people’s own constructions and versions of their experiences through a rigorous inductive method, which provided a systematic strategy for identifying patterns in the data. The findings of the study point to factors such as ‘childhood abuse and neglect’, ‘early homelessness’, ‘fear and mistrust’, ‘staying indoors and keeping to yourself’, ‘conflict and violence’, and ‘feeling fat and ugly’ as contributors to an ongoing core category of ‘identity management’, which mediates the relationship between participants’ living contexts and their physical activity levels. It identifies barriers at the individual, neighbourhood, and broader ecological levels that prevent this residential group from being more physically active, and which contribute to the ways in which they think about, or conceptualise, this health-related behaviour in relationship to their identity and sense of place – both geographic and societal. The challenges of living well and staying active in poorer neighbourhoods and in places where poverty is concentrated were highlighted in detail by participants. Participants’ reactions to the new urban neighbourhood, and the depth of their engagement with the resources present, are revealed in the context of their previous life-experiences with both living places and physical activity. Moreover, an understanding of context as participants’ psychological constructions of various social and living situations based on prior experience, attitudes, and beliefs was formulated with implications for how the relationship between socioeconomic contextual effects on health are studied in the future. More detailed findings are presented in three published papers with implications for health promotion, urban design, and health inequalities research. This thesis makes a substantive, conceptual, and methodological contribution to future research efforts interested in how physical activity is conceptualised and constructed within lower socioeconomic living contexts, and why this is. The data that was collected and analysed for this PhD generates knowledge about the psychosocial processes and mechanisms behind the patterns observed in epidemiological research regarding socioeconomic health inequalities. Further, it highlights the ways in which lower socioeconomic living contexts tend to shape dispositions, attitudes, and lifestyles, ultimately resulting in worse health and life chances for those who occupy them.

The reputation of the corporate social responsibility industry in Australia

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly seen as an imperative for sustainable business and there is a growing literature on the effect of CSR on corporate reputation. Despite this, a pall of ambiguity and uncertainty remains around what CSR means and how it should be practiced. This paper offers a unique addition to the body of literature to date by revealing that CSR is an emerging industry in Australia, which is in the process of developing its own reputation as a set of business practices. The paper is based on exploratory qualitative research using a case study methodology. Interviews were conducted with key actors within the industry to investigate shared understandings of what CSR means, perceptions of CSR practice and of the industry as a whole, and who is involved in shaping these perceptions. The research revealed that the CSR industry in Australia is in its early stages of development and is therefore in need of increased internal cooperation if it is to develop a strong reputation.

The interactions of consumption characteristics on social norms

Purpose: An extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model tests how customer loyalty intentions may relate to subjective and descriptive norms. The study further determines whether consumption characteristics – product enjoyment and importance – moderate norms-loyalty relationships.----- Methodology: Using a two-study approach focusing on youth, an Australian study (n = 244) first augmented TPB with descriptive norm. A Singapore study (n = 415) followed up with how consumption characteristics might moderate norms-loyalty relationships. With both studies, linear regressions tested the relationships among the variables.----- Findings: Extending TPB with descriptive norm improved TPB’s predictive ability across studies. Further, product enjoyment and importance moderated the norms-loyalty relationships differently. Subjective norm related to loyalty intentions significantly with high enjoyment, whereas descriptive norm was significant with low enjoyment. Only subjective norm was significant with low importance.----- Research limitations: Single-item variables, self-reported questionnaires on intended rather than actual behavior, and not controlling for cultural differences between the two samples limit generalizablity.----- Practical implications: The significance of both norms suggests that mobile firms should reach youth through their peers. With youth, social pressure may be influential particularly with hedonic products. However, the different moderations of product enjoyment and importance imply that a blanket marketing strategy targeting youth may not work.----- Originality/Value: This study extends academic knowledge on the relationships between norms and customer loyalty, particularly with consumption characteristics as moderators. The findings highlight the importance of considering different norms with consumer behavior. The study should help mobile firms understand how social influences impact customer loyalty.

The role of land use and psycho-social factors in high density residents' work travel mode choices : implications for sustainable transport policy

Imperatives to improve the sustainability of cities often hinge upon plans to increase urban residential density to facilitate greater reliance on sustainable forms of transport and minimise car use. However there is ongoing debate about whether high residential density land use in isolation results in sustainable transport outcomes. Findings from surveys with residents of inner-urban high density dwellings in Brisbane, Australia, suggest that solo car travel accounts for the greatest modal share of typical work journeys and attitudes toward dwelling and neighbourhood transport-related features, residential sorting factors and socio-demographics, alongside land use such as public transport availability, are significantly associated with work travel mode choice. We discuss the implications of our findings for transport policy and management including encouraging relatively sustainable intermodal forms of transport for work journeys.

Defining friendworks : communication perspective on social networks types

This paper introduces friendwork as a new term in social networks studies. A friendwork is a network of friends. It is a specific case of an interpersonal social network. Naming this seemingly well known and familiar group of people as a friendwork facilitates its differentiation from the overall social network, while highlighting this subgroup's specific attributes and dynamics. The focus on one segment within social networks stimulates a wider discussion regarding the different subgroups within social networks. Other subgroups also discussed in this paper are: family dependent, work related, location based and virtual acquaintances networks. This discussion informs a larger study of social media, specifically addressing interactive communication modes that are in use within friendworks: direct (face-to-face) and mediated (mainly fixed telephone, internet and mobile phone). It explores the role of social media within friendworks while providing a communication perspective on social networks.

Looking for Daisy : constructing teacher identities

Research on teacher identities is both important and increasing. In this forum contribution I re-interpret assertions about an African American science teacher’s identities in terms of Jonathon Turner’s (2002) constructs of role identity and sub-identity. I contest the notion of renegotiation of identities, suggesting that particular role identities can be brought to the foreground and then backgrounded depending on the situation and the need to confirm a sub-identity. Finally, I recommend the inclusion of teachers’ voices in identity research through greater use of co-authoring roles for teachers.

A learning community approach to doctoral education in the social sciences

The paper reports on the findings of a community learning approach to doctoral education involving scholarly writing groups (SWGs) which was developed and implemented in the context of a higher degree research programme within the social sciences in an Australian university. The research evaluated the impact of the teaching intervention on students' perceptions of the community learning experience, their knowledge of scholarly writing and their attitudes towards writing. The findings are suggestive of the advantages of community approaches to learning in higher degree research education as a supplement to independent supervision. The SWGs were associated with improvements in both participants' knowledge of scholarly writing and their attitudes towards writing. However, a variety of characteristics of doctoral education are potential impediments to the creation of ongoing and regular interactions in learning communities such as SWGs. The paper concludes that a flexible approach to the recognition and enhancement of community approaches to learning is required to acknowledge the complex and diverse context of contemporary doctoral education.

The relationship of loneliness and social anxiety with children’s and adolescents’ online communication

Children and adolescents now communicate online to form and/or maintain relationships with friends, family, and strangers. Relationships in “real life” are important for children’s and adolescents’ psychosocial development; however, they can be difficult for those who experience feelings of loneliness and/or social anxiety. The aim of this study was to investigate differences in usage of online communication patterns between children and adolescents with and without self-reported loneliness and social anxiety. Six hundred and twenty-six students aged between 10-16 years completed a survey on the amount of time they spent communicating online, the topics they discussed, the partners they engaged with, and their purposes for communicating over the Internet. Participants were administered a shortened version of the UCLA Loneliness Scale and an abbreviated sub-scale of the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A). Additionally, age and gender differences in usage of the aforementioned online communication patterns were examined across the entire sample. Findings revealed that children and adolescents who self-reported being lonely communicated online significantly more frequently about personal things and intimate topics than did those who did not self-report being lonely. The former were motivated to use online communication significantly more frequently to compensate for their weaker social skills to meet new people. Results suggest that Internet usage allows them to fulfill critical needs of social interactions, self-disclosure, and identity exploration. Future research, however, should explore whether or not the benefits derived from online communication may also facilitate lonely children’s and adolescents’ offline social relationships.

Whiteness, Epistemology and Indigenous representation

With its focus on Australia, Whitening Race engages with relations between migration, Indigenous dispossession and whiteness. It creates a new intellectual space that investigates the nature of racialised conditions and their role in reproducing colonising relations in Australia.

Project team’s internal and external social networks and their influence on project performance

The research on project learning has recognised the significance of knowledge transfer in project based organisations (PBOs). Effective knowledge transfer across projects avoids reinventions, enhances knowledge creation and saves lots of time that is crucial in project environment. In order to facilitate knowledge transfer, many PBOs have invested lots of financial and human resources to implement IT-based knowledge repository. However, some empirical studies found that employees would rather turn for knowledge to colleagues despite their ready access to IT-based knowledge repository. Therefore, it is apparent that social networks play a pivotal role in the knowledge transfer across projects. Some scholars attempt to explore the effect of network structure on knowledge transfer and performance, however, focused only on egocentric networks and the groups’ internal social networks. It has been found that the project’s external social network is also critical, in that the team members can not handle critical situations and accomplish the projects on time without the assistance and knowledge from external sources. To date, the influence of the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks on project performance, and the interrelation between both networks are barely known. In order to obtain such knowledge, this paper explores the interrelation between the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks, and their effect on the project team’s performance. Data is gathered through survey questionnaire distributed online to respondents. Collected data is analysed applying social network analysis (SNA) tools and SPSS. The theoretical contribution of this paper is the knowledge of the interrelation between the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks and their influence on the project team’s performance. The practical contribution lies in the guideline to be proposed for constructing the structure of project team’s internal and external social networks.

Social scientists don’t say titwank’

Drawing on the textual evidence of a number of referees’ reports, this article maps key differences between the humanities and social sciences approaches to the study of pornography, in order to facilitate better understanding and communication between the areas. 1. Social scientists avoid ‘vulgar’ language to describe sex. Humanities scholars need not do so. 2. Social scientists remain committed to the idea of ‘objectivity’ while humanities scholars reject the idea – although this may be a confusion in language, with the term in the social sciences used to mean something more like ‘falsifiability’. 3. Social science assumes that the primary effects of exposure to pornography must be negative. 4. More generally, social science resists paradigm changes, insisting that all new work agrees with research that has gone before. 5. Social science believes that casual sex and sadomasochism are negative; humanities research need not do so.

A 'deleterious' effect? : Australian legal education and the production of the legal identity

A body of critical legal scholarship argues that, by the time they have completed their studies, students who enter legal education holding social ideals and intending to use their legal education to achieve social change, have become cynical about the ability of the law to do so and no longer possess such ideals. This is explained by critical scholars to be the result of a process of ideological indoctrination, aimed at ensuring that graduates uphold the narrow and conservative interests of the legal profession and capitalist society, being exercised by law schools acting as adjuncts of the legal profession, and exercised upon the passive body of the law student. By using Foucault’s work on knowledge, power, and the subject to interrogate the assumptions upon which this narrative is based, this thesis intends to suggest a way of thinking differently to the approach taken by many critical legal scholars. It then uses an analytics of government (based on Foucault’s notion of ‘governmentality’) to consider the construction of the legal identity differently. It examines the ways in which the governance of the legal identity is rationalised, programmed, and implemented, in three Queensland law schools. It also looks at the way that five prescriptive texts to ‘surviving’ law school suggest students establish and practise a relation to themselves in order to construct their own legal identities. Overall, this analysis shows that governance is not simply conducted in the profession’s interests, but occurs due to a complex arrangement of different practices, which can lead to the construction of skilled legal professional identities as well as ethical lawyer-citizens that hold an interest in justice. The implications of such an analytics provide the basis for original ways of understanding legal education, and legal education scholarship.

How do other people influence your driving speed? Exploring the 'who' and the 'how' of social influences on speeding from a qualitative perspective

Using only legal sanctions to manage the speed at which people drive ignores the potential benefits of harnessing social factors such as the influence of others. Social influences on driver speeds were explored in this qualitative examination of 67 Australian drivers. Focus group interviews with 8 driver types (young, mid-age and older males and females, and self-identified Excessive and Rare speeders) were guided by Akers’ social learning theory (Akers, 1998). Findings revealed two types of influential others: people known to the driver (passengers and parents), and unknown other drivers. Passengers were generally described as having a slowing influence on drivers: responsibility for the safety of people in the car and consideration for passenger comfort were key themes. In contrast, all but the Rare speeders reported increasing their speed when driving alone. Parental role modelling was also described. In relation to other drivers, key themes included speeding to keep up with traffic flow and perceived pressure to drive faster. This ‘pressure’ from others to ‘speed up’ was expressed in all groups and reported strategies for managing this varied. Encouragingly, examples of actual or anticipated social rewards for speeding were less common than examples of social punishments. Three main themes relating to social punishments were embarrassment, breaching the trust of others, and presenting an image of a responsible driver. Impression management and self-presentation are discussed in light of these findings. Overall, our findings indicate scope to exploit the use of social sanctions for speeding and social praise for speed limit compliance to enhance speed management strategies.

What is the relationship between social governance and schooling?

The most frequently told story charting the rise of mass schooling should be fairly familiar to most of us. This story normally centres around the post-enlightenment social changes of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and details how society slowly became more caring and more humane, and how we all decided that rather than simply being fodder for the mills, all children – including those from the working-classes - had the right to an education. The more civilised we became, the more we pushed back the school leaving age, until we eventually developed schools which clearly reflected the values and ambitions of the wider community. After all, are school not simply microcosms of society at large? In addition to this, the form that modern schooling takes is regarded as an unproblematic part of the same story. Of course we should organise our learning in the way we do, with the emphasis on formalised learning spaces, graded curricula, timetables of activities, various forms of assessment, and a clear hierarchy of authority. These features of the contemporary education merely reflect the fact that this is self-evidently the best system available. After all, how else could education possibly be organised?

New routes for the field trip

As with the broader field of education research, most writing on the subject of school excursions and field trips has centred around progressive/humanist concerns for building pupil’s self-esteem and for the development of the ‘whole child’. Such research has also stressed the importance of a broad, grounded, and experiential curriculum - as exemplified by subjects containing these extra-school activities - as well as the possibility of strengthening the relationship between student and teacher. Arguing that this approach to the field trip is both exhausted of ideas and conceptually flawed, this paper proposes some alternate routes into the area for the prospective researcher. First, it is argued that by historicising the subject matter, it can be seen that school excursions are not simply the product of the contemporary humanist desire for diverse and fulfilling educational experiences, rather they can, in part, be traced to eighteenth century beliefs among the English gentry that travel formed a crucial component of a good education, to the advent of an affordable public rail system, and to school tours associated with the Temperance movement. Second, field trips can be understood from within the associated framework of concerns over the governance of tourism and the organisation of disciplinary apparatuses for the production of an educated and regulated citizenry. Far from being a simple learning experience, museums and art galleries form part of a complex of disciplinary and power relations designed to produce a populace with very specific capacities, aspirations and styles of public conduct. Finally, rather than allowing children ‘freedom’ from the constraints of the classroom, on the contrary, through the medium of the field-trip, children can become accustomed to having their activities governed in the broader domain of the generalised community . School excursions thereby constitute an effective tactic through which young people have their conduct managed, and their social and scholastic identities shaped and administered.