Supermarkets as a setting to promote health eating : some lessons learnt in Victoria

Issue addressed: Supermarkets are a potential setting in which to deliver nutrition promotion to the community. A pilot project was able to examine the requirements for health authorities to form partnerships with other sectors and opportunities and limitations of using industry- based communication strategies to promote healthy eating messages. Methods: Pre-intervention interviews helped determine communication strategies. Post-intervention interviews were used to assess content and appropriateness of nutrition resources, collaboration between key participants, satisfaction with training and barriers/promoters to implementation. An intercept survey with consumers measured the impact of the intervention. Results: The survey of more than 1,120 women indicated only limited success. 12% of respondents from the intervention supermarkets had watched demonstrations and 20% had noticed the recipe leaflets, with only 5% able to name the promotion. Supermarket owners, representatives from participating food companies and demonstrators were supportive of the concept and content used in the promotion and qualitative analysis provides indicators for similar promotions. Conclusions: Health authorities considering 'partnerships' with the food/supermarket industry should recognise the diversity of roles and responsibilities of the organisations involved in the supply of food through the retail market and allow for long term planning when working with them. Head office of the supermarket group has a key coordinating role, however, individual supermarkets will be driven by financial returns. So what?: The recognition and trust in the name of health authorities by consumers means that organisations value an association with them.

A preliminary examination of Berry, Seiders and Grewal’s (2002) five dimensional measure of convenience in a service setting

Convenience - the ability to reduce consumer’s time and energy costs in purchasing or using goods and services - has become an important attribute for time poor consumers. Berry, Seiders and Grewal (2002) proposed that convenience can be measured as a five dimensional construct comprising decision, access, transaction, benefit, and post-benefit. This paper examines the empirical reliability and validity of Berry et al’s five dimensions within one service setting. The results of a survey with 443 service consumers found that the five measures were all reliable (i.e. an alpha of above .60) and discriminate validity held (correlations below .85). These items warrant additional empirical evaluation in other settings to determine their generalisabiliy.

Valuing local built heritage in a global setting : identity & visual perceptions of cultural built heritage in Northern Ireland

‘In these troubled times with the world in search of its bearings and way ward minds using the terms “culture” and “civilization” in an attempt to turn human beings against one another, there is an urgent need to remember how fundamental cultural diversity is to humanity itself’ (UNESCO 2002). The progressive idea of culture can be used in regressive ways by extremists who used it occasionally to pursue the politics of xenophobia and exclusion. The hypothesis that different communities can share the same culture but have different visual perception of their built environment might seems contradictory. It is essential to describe what is meant by the ‘same culture’. The ever evolving changes of definition and re-definition of the word has not yet settled. This paper adopts the descriptive definition of culture while challenging its interpretation. The descriptive definition refers to ‘all the characteristics activities by a people’. While this description is generally accepted, the interpretation of what ‘a people’ means is divisive. It is not clear how Eliot defines ‘a people’. Is the term genetically prescribed or is ‘a people’ place related? And what about the moral and religious orientation? This paper argues that culture is basically place related and the forces that shape a culture of a ‘people’ are deeply embedded in the environmental forces that also shape other aspects of the place making and its identity. The paper addresses the questions of conflicts, value systems, and culture definitions and the inseparable links with architecture aesthetics.

Local built heritage in Northern Ireland is taken as a case study. Unlike many parts of the world, visual perceptions in Northern Ireland is well recognised with iconic as well as formal representations. The population is well aware of the signified as well as the signifiers. The boundaries between iconology and formalism theories are very blurred in the Northern Ireland context. This paper examines how the two communities visually perceive their shared built heritage and the extent of overlapping between the understanding of iconic and formalist visual representations in the built environment. The paper takes the buildings of the successful economic ventures of the shirt industry in the 19th century as a case study. The case study provides an insight of how a signified value of a successful economic regeneration initiative that is deeply imbedded in the social structure and within the urban fabric can overcome divisive visual perception. The paper examines the possibility of building upon the historical success of the shirt industry to promote architectural cultural dialogue in which cultural built heritage in Derry is able to facilitate knowledge creation and social capital in different arenas.

Critical care nurses' decision-making activities in the natural clinical setting

• This article reports on observation of 18 nurses in urban and rural based critical care settings.

• The purpose of the study was to observe and describe the decision-making activities of critical care nurses within natural clinical settings.

• During the 2-hour observation, the researcher dictated a detailed commentary on to audio-tape of each nurse's actions. Tapes were transcribed and subjected to content analysis.

• Findings indicated three main categories of decisions. Decision frequencies were linked to nurses' critical care experience, appointment level, and location, as well as nursing shifts.

• The findings are discussed in relation to previous empirical evidence and the implications for practice.

• The author concludes that future research should be directed towards measuring the contextual influences on nurses' decision-making on the outcome of patient care.

Priority setting in health: origins, description and application of the Australian Assessing Cost-Effectiveness initiative

This article reports on the ‘Assessing Cost–Effectiveness’ (ACE) initiative in priority setting from Australia. It commences with why priority setting is topical and notes that a wide variety of approaches are available. In assessing these various approaches, it is argued that a useful first step is to consider what constitutes an ‘ideal’ approach to priority setting. A checklist to guide priority setting is presented based on guidance from economic theory, ethics and social justice, lessons from empirical experience and the needs of decision-makers. The checklist is seen as an important contribution because it is the first time that criteria from such a broad range of considerations have been brought together to develop a framework for priority setting that endeavors to be both realistic and theoretically sound. The checklist will then be applied to a selection of existing approaches in order to illustrate their deficiencies and to provide the platform for explaining the unique features of the ACE approach. A case study (ACE-Cancer) will then be presented and assessed against the checklist, including reaction from stakeholders in the cancer field. The article concludes with an overview of the full body of ACE research completed to date, together with some reflections on the ACE experience.

Peer mentoring in an accounting setting : a case study of mentor skill development

This paper provides the background to the adoption of a peer mentoring program including the preparation of mentors and the classroom role of mentors. The paper also includes a discussion of alternative models of peer mentoring and an examination of factors to be considered in adopting mentoring as a teaching and learning resource. Using a case study of third-year undergraduate accounting students who were employed to mentor fellow students in a second-year accounting unit at an Australian university, the paper examines peer mentoring as a classroom resource in the teaching of accounting concepts. The study includes an evaluation of the perceptions of generic skill development by peer mentors illustrating how mentoring can be a reciprocal process, in that the mentor's skills can be enhanced while fulfilling a supporting role to junior students. The programme evaluation also demonstrated that accounting educators could contribute to the development of students' generic skills outside the traditional classroom setting.

Diagnosing borderline personality disorder : examination of how clinical indicators are used by professionals in the health setting

This paper reviews the history of the recognition of borderline personality disorder as a clinical disorder, followed by a review of the contemporary practice of diagnosing borderline personality disorder in psychiatric settings. Many researchers have cautioned against the conflation of difficult patients with the diagnostic category of borderline personality disorder. The current study examines how clinical indicators used to screen for this complex disorder differ across service settings, professions, specialised training and years of clinical experience. A purpose-designed survey was administered to 108 mental and emergency medicine health practitioners across an Australian health service and a New Zealand health service to record the level of significance placed on different clinical indicators in the application of the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. A heavy reliance was placed on observable behavioural symptoms, such as self-mutilation and impulsive behaviours that are self-damaging, in the screening of borderline personality disorder as a psychiatric diagnosis. Statistically significant differences were found between emergency medical staff and mental health clinicians in their use of diagnostic indicators of borderline personality disorder, χ²(4) = 17.248, p = .002. Implications of these findings for the screening, assessment and diagnosis of patients with borderline personality disorder are discussed.

Technology education in early childhood setting

Across Victoria, Early Childhood educators are incorporating technology experiences into the daily activities for their children. A small research project, which asked teachers to describe what they did and how they did it, has highlighted some interesting findings. This paper will describe case studies of four pre-school settings and some of the activities undertaken by the children - both as part of the formal program and through incidental play. It will consider these through a socia-cultural framework, noting how teachers used their understandings of play and children's cognitive development, to enhance children's understandings.