Personal, social and environmental determinants of educational inequalities in walking: a multilevel study

Objective: To investigate the contribution of personal, social and environmental factors to mediating socioeconomic (educational) inequalities in women’s leisure-time walking and walking for transport.
Methods: A community sample of 1282 women provided survey data on walking for leisure and transport; educational level; enjoyment of, and self-efficacy for, walking; physical activity barriers and intentions; social support for physical activity; sporting/recreational club membership; dog ownership; and perceived environmental aesthetics and safety. These data were linked with objective environmental data on the density of public open space and walking tracks in the women’s local neighbourhood, coastal proximity and street connectivity.
Results: Multilevel modelling showed that different personal, social and environmental factors were associated with walking for leisure and walking for transport. Variables from all three domains explained (mediated) educational inequalities in leisure-time walking, including neighbourhood walking tracks; coastal proximity; friends’ social support; dog ownership; self-efficacy, enjoyment and intentions. On the other hand, few of the variables examined explained educational variations in walking for transport, exceptions being neighbourhood, coastal proximity, street connectivity and social support from family.
Conclusions: Public health initiatives aimed at promoting, and reducing educational inequalities in, leisure-time walking should incorporate a focus on environmental strategies, such as advocating for neighbourhood walking tracks, as well as personal and social factors. Further investigation is required to better understand the pathways by which education might influence walking for transport.

The influence of perceived body image, vanity and personal values on food consumption and related behaviour

Although food is a vital part of the chemical process of life, the manner in which people choose the foods that they eat is subject to a wide variety of external and internal influences. This study employed a sequential mixed method research design to investigate the influence of perceived body image, vanity and personal values on food purchasing behaviour among 18- to 30-year-old females. It was found that although personal values and orientation have a major influence on the food purchasing and consumption process, vanity, physical health and perceived body image were major factors of influence in the purchasing and consumption decision.

Personal-organizational values fit and organizational commitment in Australian domestic and international students

This study examines the relationship between affective organizational commitment and the personal and perceived organizational values of international and domestic students in an Australian university. Results provide support for the values factors found by Abbott, White & Charles, 2005), and consistency with Schwartz's (1992) pan-cultural values hierarchy. Both groups of students rated their personal values as consistent with the rankings of the major pan-cultural values and perceived organizational values were drivers of affective commitment. This study highlights the need for higher education institutions as well as global organizations to address profit for values such as benevolence, self-direction, and universalism to encourage higher levels of student and employee commitment to their organizations and increase effectiveness.

An investigation into the cross-cultural equivalence of the personal wellbeing index

The Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) is being developed for the cross-cultural measurement of subjective wellbeing (SWB). This paper reports the findings of its utility with the Hong Kong Chinese and Australian populations. An item on affect, ‘satisfaction with own happiness’ was also investigated to determine whether it should be added to the index. Three-hundred and sixty participants (180 per country), with equal representation from groups aged 18–35, 35–64 and 65 years and above, were recruited from each country. The PWI demonstrated good psychometric performance in terms of its reliability, validity and sensitivity, which are comparable in both countries. The item ‘satisfaction with own happiness’ was found to contribute significantly to the scale’s psychometric performance in Australia but not in Hong Kong. Cultural differences in the perception of the concepts ‘satisfaction’ and ‘happiness’ were suggested as an explanation for this finding. The PWI data are also consistent with homeostasis theory, which proposes that each person’s SWB level is maintained within a limited positive range. For the Australian population, their mean SWB level fell within the established Western range of 70–80, on a scale from 0 to 100. The Hong Kong population, however, fell below this range. Cultural response bias was identified as a plausible explanation for the differences between the Hong Kong and Australian samples.

The effects of accounting students` ethical reasoning and personal factors on their ethical sensitivity

Purpose – Rest posited that to behave morally, an individual must have performed at least four basic psychological processes: moral sensitivity; moral judgment; moral motivation; and moral character. Though much ethics research in accounting has been focused on component two, ethical judgment, less research has been undertaken on the other three components. The purpose of this study is to focus on component one, ethical sensitivity, of Rest's four-component model.
Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 156 accounting undergraduates was employed to investigate the ethical sensitivity of accounting students and the effects of their ethical reasoning and personal factors on their ethical sensitivity.
Findings – Results of this study show that accounting students vary in their ability to detect the presence of ethical issues in a professional scenario. There is no significant relationship between accounting students' ethical sensitivity and their ethical reasoning (P-score). Accounting students characterized as “internals” are more likely to show an ability to recognize ethical issues than those characterized as “externals.” The results also indicate that an accounting ethics intervention may have positive effect on accounting students' ethical sensitivity development. Hence, an individual who possesses the ability to determine what is ethically right or wrong (high ethical reasoning) may fail to behave ethically due to a deficiency in identifying ethical issues (low ethical sensitivity) in a situation.
Originality/value – Whilst much research has concentrated on ethical reasoning and ethics education to enhance the ethical conduct of accountants, it is important that the profession and researchers also direct their attention and efforts to cultivating the ethical sensitivity of accountants. The findings of this study provide additional evidence to support Rest's theory of a more comprehensive cognitive model of ethical decision-making and suggest a more balanced research effort in evaluating the ethical development of individuals.

Stranger in a Strange Land: The struggle for cultural and personal identity in Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

In order to explicate Murakami's version of the official culture, I have analyzed the novel with the works of several different theorists. Primarily, I drew my own understanding of the official culture from Raymond Williams's examination of culture in Marxism and Literature. His terminology became helpful in writing about the operation of the System and the Town, though it did not define that operation precisely. Williams's work also introduced me to the theory behind the official culture's manipulation and exclusion of historical aspects in order to create their "official" version of history, from which the official culture draws its identity. For further analysis of the treatment of history, I turned to Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. Though it examines the official culture's manipulation of history in a much more in-depth manner, it seems to have influenced Murakami's treatment of individual memories and cultural histories. For instance, the herd ofunicoms in the End of the World resembles Nietzsche's description of the ''unhistorical herd," or has the potential to resemble it. With these theories I was able to access the mechanisms of cultural control that Murakami depicts in the form of the System and the Town, and from there I was able to develop a model for how the narrator struggles to subvert that control. Both sides of that struggle are depicted and re-imagined many times throughout Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

`Out on the borderlands`: Time, generation and personal agency in women`s lives

What tools can we use in attempting to understand the recurring patterns of some girls’ early school leaving and consequent exclusion from well-paid employment? From which disciplinary fields can we take them? Using Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘scholastic point of view’ - the inherent intellectual bias of a discipline, in his case sociology - as a springboard, we suggest that if one turns to different ‘fields’, approaches might be found which point towards differing perspectives. This article brings Bourdieu into dialogue with the work of feminist historians and their conceptual tools. Carolyn Steedman’s notion of the politics of envy and Sally Alexander’s appropriation from psychoanalysis of the idea of repetition offer generative ways of exploring the ‘unthought categories of thought which delimit the thinkable and predetermine the thought’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 40). In their focus on gender, they have much in common with feminist sociologists’ responses to Bourdieu’s work, suggesting that a gendered ‘perspective’ offers a way of avoiding the ‘singular viewpoint’ inherent in any one discipline.