Francois A.M. Jean, Ali Jouni, Manuel P. Bouvard, Guillaume Camelot, Anita Beggiato, Isabelle Scheid, Alexandru Gaman, Celine Bouquet, Myryam Ly-Le Moal, Josselin Houenou, Richard Delorme, Marion Leboyer and Anouck Amestoy
This study aims to explore the overlap between symptoms of depression, anxiety, irritability and aggressiveness in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), to measure specific and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the overlap between symptoms of depression, anxiety, irritability and aggressiveness in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), to measure specific and idiosyncratic emotional responses.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 42 high functioning adolescents and adults, between 12 and 39 years old, meeting the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders – 5 criteria for ASD were selected from the InFoR Autism cohort. Data were analyzed in an exploratory way using Hill and Smith and K-medoids cluster analysis.
Findings
The authors found an aggregation of anxiety, depression, aggressive behaviors and irritability. Cluster analysis was maximized for two groups with 17 and 25 participants, respectively. The first group was characterized by high levels of symptoms of irritability, aggressiveness, hyperactivity and intermediate levels of anxiety and depression. In the first group, participants had significantly higher levels of autistic symptoms considering the social responsiveness scale and repetitive behavior scale-revised scales (relatives’ reports) suggesting that a particular group of subjects with a high level of ASD specific symptoms may express anxiety and depression in a specific way based on externalizing behaviors in addition to the common mood and anxiety symptoms.
Research limitations/implications
Improved understanding of the aggregation of externalized symptoms with symptoms of anxiety and mood disorders in ASD should lead to a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms related to emotion dysregulation in ASD.
Practical implications
Improved knowledge of the symptoms could lead to enhanced detection of psychiatric comorbidities in ASD.
Originality/value
The study was based on a transdiagnostic approach of psychiatric symptoms in individuals with ASD. Aggregation and clustering analysis was used to explore naive patterns of these psychiatric symptoms.
Details
Keywords
Hannele Kauppinen‐Räisänen, Richard A. Owusu and Bylon Abeeku Bamfo
The changing health care market is affecting consumers who are now expected to take greater responsibility for their health. Their means for doing this include purchasing…
Abstract
Purpose
The changing health care market is affecting consumers who are now expected to take greater responsibility for their health. Their means for doing this include purchasing self‐medication and medical self‐service, which coincides neatly with an increase in the number of over‐the‐counter (OTC) pharmaceuticals. Additionally, OTC pharmaceuticals are progressively becoming available in a wider range of stores, where the pharmacists' knowledge of the OTC products is absent. This study aims to examine packaging as media that conveys the product message at the point of purchase, and to explore the impact of its extrinsic verbal and visual product cues.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory conjoint analysis was conducted in Finland, the USA, and Ghana. In total, 89 respondents conducted conjoint tasks for two product types, i.e. a painkiller and sore throat medicine.
Findings
The results showed differences and similarities in the impact of the packaging product cues across Finland, the USA, and Ghana. Differences and similarities were also detected across the two different, but related, product types. The study found that the impact of product cues is contextual, varying across the samples and product types.
Practical implications
The results are limited by the exploratory nature of the conjoint analysis. They highlight that medical marketers should recognize the varying impact of salient cues on consumers' product preferences and choices.
Originality/value
The study deals with a mostly unexplored issue and provides exploratory insights into the phenomenon.
Details
Keywords
Wenqing Zhao, Yan Jin and Elise Karinshak
This study aims to examine the effects of risk disclosure and call to action (i.e. encouraging individuals to consult a health provider before they make any purchase decision) on…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the effects of risk disclosure and call to action (i.e. encouraging individuals to consult a health provider before they make any purchase decision) on young adults’ cognitive and behavioral responses to dietary supplement advertising.
Design/methodology/approach
A 2 (risk disclosure: absence vs presence) × 2 (call to action: absence vs presence) between-subjects online experiment was conducted with 124 college-attending young adults.
Findings
Including risk disclosure in probiotic supplement advertising increased young adults’ perceived message credibility, intentions to ask a medical doctor and sense of confidence in decision-making. The addition of call to action in probiotic supplement advertising improved perceived message credibility, trust in advertised brand, favorable attitude toward brand, intention to ask a medical doctor and purchase intention; however, a significant joint effect was not found between risk disclosure and call to action.
Originality/value
Although risk disclosure and call to action are significant techniques in pharmaceutical and health-care marketing, they have been overlooked by both research and practice of dietary supplement marketing. This study closes this gap by providing empirical evidence to generate a clear idea about the benefits of including risk disclosure and call to action in dietary supplement advertising.
Details
Keywords
Jeanine P.D. Guidry, Richard D. Waters and Gregory D. Saxton
This paper aims to examine what type of messaging on Twitter is most effective for helping move social marketing beyond focusing on personal changes to find out what messages help…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine what type of messaging on Twitter is most effective for helping move social marketing beyond focusing on personal changes to find out what messages help turn members of the public into vocal advocates for these organizations’ social changes. Social marketing scholarship has regularly focused on how organizations can effectively influence changes in awareness and behaviors among their targeted audience. Communication scholarship, however, has repeatedly shown that the most influential form of persuasion happens interpersonally. As such, it is imperative that organizations learn how to engage audiences and facilitate the discussion about organizational messages between individuals. Social media provide platforms for such conversations, as organizational messaging can be shared and discussed by individuals with others in their networks.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a content analysis of 3,415 Twitter updates from 50 nonprofit organizations, this study identifies specific types of messages that are more likely to get stakeholders retweeting, archiving and discussing the organizations’ messaging through regression analysis.
Findings
Messages focusing on calls-to-action and community building generated the most retweets and Twitter conversation; however, they were also the least used strategies by nonprofit organizations.
Originality/value
Research has regularly examined the types of messages sent out by nonprofit organizations on Twitter, but they have not tested those messages against measures of engagement. This study pushes the understanding of social media communication to the next level by analyzing those message categories against metrics provided by Twitter for each tweet in the sample.
Details
Keywords
Antoine Genest-Grégoire, Jean-Herman Guay and Luc Godbout
Politicians of all stripes appeal to the support of the middle class and aim their policy proposals at this group. Reference-group theory explains why citizens could believe…
Abstract
Politicians of all stripes appeal to the support of the middle class and aim their policy proposals at this group. Reference-group theory explains why citizens could believe themselves to be middle class, even if their income level or social status places them above or below. It postulates that, since the reference groups of most people are relatively homogeneous, anyone could feel ‘average’ compared to the reference group. The authors aim to test this theory by comparing perceptions about the middle class with a categorisation using objective income statistics. A survey of the adult population of the Canadian province of Quebec showed a significant proportion of citizens believing to be part of the middle class, even though their equivalised income levels placed them outside of a generally recognised income range for this group. Most notably, this subjective misplacement on the income distribution was heavily concentrated among individuals whose incomes were too high to be a part of the middle class. Our results also show that support for higher taxes on the rich might be overstated, as some respondents simply do not realise that they are a part of this group.
Details
Keywords
Behnam M. Tehrani, Jun Wang and Dennis Truax
Despite the importance of cognitive monitoring, limited studies attempted to continuously monitor cognitive status of workers regarding mental fatigue effects on fall hazard…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the importance of cognitive monitoring, limited studies attempted to continuously monitor cognitive status of workers regarding mental fatigue effects on fall hazard. Thus, the objective of this study is to investigate and understand the effects of working at height on mental fatigue development for fall hazard prevention.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative framework using two well-known methods, i.e. Wavelet Packet Decomposition and Sample entropy, is developed to analyze the captured brain signals from Electroencephalography (EEG) to quantitatively assess mental fatigue levels, and seven mental fatigue indices were obtained. Between-subjects lab experiment was designed and conducted to assess mental fatigue in Virtual Reality (VR) environment.
Findings
Both of the quantitative methods confirmed that height exposure can adversely affect subjects' vigilance levels and indicated higher levels of mental fatigue. Significant differences were found between the two tested groups (i.e. working at height or on the ground) for six out of seven indices. The results suggested that working-at-height group had higher mental fatigue levels.
Research limitations/implications
One limitation of this study is the limited number of subjects recruited for the experiment. Overall, this study is a preliminary and exploratory work towards mental fatigue monitoring and assessment in subjects exposed to fall risk.
Originality/value
This is the first study to explore and focus on mental fatigue assessment, particularly for construction falling-from-height hazard prevention by continuously monitoring mental fatigue levels of workers. The research provides insight into construction safety enhancement using smart technologies.
Details
Keywords
Muhammad Mustafa Raziq, Qazi Mohammed Ahmed, Mansoor Ahmad, Saquib Yusaf, Aymen Sajjad and Salman Waheed
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of advertising skepticism and need for cognition with consumers’ attitudes toward brand. There is currently limited…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of advertising skepticism and need for cognition with consumers’ attitudes toward brand. There is currently limited understanding on how advertising skepticism and need for cognition relate to the consumers’ attitudes.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a “within-brand-comparison” strategy, a mock print advertisement of a telecom brand is shown to 204 cellular services users in Pakistan. This is followed by a survey. Data are analyzed using a variance-based structural equation modeling.
Findings
The relationship of advertising skepticism with attitude toward brand is negative and partially mediated by the sequence of brand image, advertisement believability and attitudes toward advertisement. In contrast, the relationship between need for cognition and attitude toward brand is positive and fully mediated by the sequence of brand image, advertisement believability and attitudes toward advertisement.
Originality/value
The paper fills some theoretical as well as empirical gaps by showing how (in a within-brand comparative advertisement context) advertising skepticism and need for cognition relate to the consumers’ attitudes toward brand.
Details
Keywords
Judith B. Quinlan, Harriet V. Leonard, Virginia Gilbert, Carol J. Veitch, Jack Lipkind, Patricia Turner and David Pilachowski
One of the more popular exhibits at the ALA meeting in Philadelphia in July was the online demonstration of the Academic American Encyclopedia. Clusters of librarians gathered to…
Abstract
One of the more popular exhibits at the ALA meeting in Philadelphia in July was the online demonstration of the Academic American Encyclopedia. Clusters of librarians gathered to watch and assess the performance of this reference source. Some greeted it with skepticism, others with enthusiasm; but it was quite evident that the day of the single format reference source has passed. Multiple format reference sources were discussed and demonstrated throughout the exhibition hall.