Search results

A staff canteen in the workplace can offer a healthier diet, which may lower the blood pressure (BP). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether the presence of staff canteen in the workplace is associated with consumption of healthy food and lower systolic and diastolic BP.

A cross-sectional study was conducted, randomly selecting workers through a multistage sampling, stratified by company size in Brazil. Demographic, socioeconomic, and life style characteristics were evaluated, and weight, height, and BP were measured. Statistical analysis used generalized linear models, controlling for design effect and confounding factors, to assess the association between BP and staff canteen and the intake of food items.

In total, 4.818 workers, aged 35.4±10.7 years, 76.5 percent men, with 8.7±4.1 years of formal education were enrolled. Prevalence of hypertension was 24.7 percent (p-value <0.001) among workers from industries with staff canteen vs 30.6 percent among those with no staff canteen. Workers of industries with staff canteen consumed higher proportion of fruits, green leafy vegetables, and milk than workers of industries without canteen, and had lower systolic and diastolic BP, independently of the frequency of intake.

Workers of industries with staff canteen consumed a healthier diet, and had lower systolic and diastolic BP, and lower prevalence of hypertension than workers from workplaces without staff canteen.

This study was the first carried out among workers of industries reporting that the presence of a staff canteen in the workplace is associated with lower systolic and diastolic BP and prevalence of hypertension.

The application of the systemic approach in working with people with learning disabilities, their families and their support systems has grown over the last decade in the UK. The way in which the family, support systems and wider contexts interact with each other may affect how the person with learning disabilities presents for help to services, and will also affect engagement, expectations and possible solutions to crises. If the relationship in focus is the person's behaviour in a family setting, family therapy may be useful to explore relational difficulties within the family. This article considers the issues that might benefit from using this model, explains how to include the adult with learning disabilities in the process, and summarises the evidence of its effectiveness.

Four types of calculations are currently being used to identify discrepancies between intellectual ability and achievement. These include deviation from grade level, expectancy formulas, simple standard score differences, and regression-based differences (Fletcher et al., 1994; Gresham, 2001; Sattler, 1992; Van den Broeck, 2002).

The usage of robot waiters in the hospitality industry is growing, thus increasing the number of human–robot interactions in frontline services. Focusing on robot waiters in restaurants, this study aims to propose the social cognition (SC)–psychological ownership (PO)–customer responses (CR) model, while examining the association between SC, PO, robot anthropomorphism and CR.

The hypotheses of this study are tested using a three-step mixed-method approach that includes partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), necessary condition analysis (NCA) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

PLS-SEM demonstrates the mediating role of psychological ownership on the relationship between SC, customer attitudes regarding being attended by a robot and revisiting intentions. Robot anthropomorphism enhances the relationship between SC and psychological ownership. NCA indicates that SC and psychological ownership are necessary conditions for the presence of favorable attitudes and revisiting intentions. FsQCA suggests that different configurations of the antecedent conditions lead to better attitudes and revisiting intentions.

Frontline hospitality robots need to be perceived as warm, competent, responsive and adaptable to customer requests to elicit positive responses. Managers should employ attractive robots displaying anthropomorphic features. Managers need to ensure that customers have some knowledge about robots before interacting with them. Managers should also consider customer heterogeneity and the context in which the robots will be deployed.

Based on the psychological ownership theory, this paper analyzes the relationship between SC, psychological ownership and CR. Anthropomorphism moderates the relationship between SC and psychological ownership.

In 2018, we have surpassed the population landmark of 7.5 billion, and yesterday’s global crisis of under-nutrition in poorer nations is now accompanied by a journey into overweight and obesity. The purpose of our research is to focus on the health and resistance of those who avoid overweight and obesity rather than continuing to focus on the pathology and disease of this phenomenon.

Taking a consumer-centric perspective and using the lens of the social-economic framework, the authors report qualitative research conducted with 31 young people (ages 17-26) who have been resistant to weight gain in an increasingly obesogenic environment, followed by a survey of the general population, n = 921. The authors look at this type of consumer resistance to better understand how to develop government and community leadership and build more obesogenically resilient societies.

The findings support the contention that obesity is a social problem that requires a social solution.

The main contribution to the conversation addressing increasing levels of overweight and obesity is that this research demonstrates that these are complex social problems and require complex intervention at the societal level, not the individual level.

The Transformers programme is a community-based intervention for people with an intellectual disability (ID) who have emotion regulation difficulties, which can manifest as aggressive and challenging behaviour. The programme was adapted from the Stepping Stones programme (Oxnam and Gardner, 2011) – an emotion regulation programme for offenders with an ID who live in an inpatient setting. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the Transformers programme that has been implemented at an ID service, which provides secure and supervised care to people who have been convicted of an imprisonable offence or have high and complex behaviour needs.

The Transformers programme is delivered in weekly sessions over a six-month period in a group format. The focus is on helping group members to develop skills in recognising and understanding negative emotions and learning skills to cope effectively with such emotions. Treatment covers a variety of modules including relaxation, goal setting, chain analysis, emotion recognition, and emotion regulation. Specific strategies used include role-plays, DVDs, and quizzes.

This paper presents the rationale, developmental history, and description of a specific approach to the treatment of emotion regulation difficulties.

The paper aims to inform health professionals working in the field of ID.

Based on the aforementioned data, the risk index (RI) identifies the percentage of all students of a given racial/ethnic group in a given disability category. The RI is calculated by dividing the number of students in a given racial/ethnic group served in a given disability category (e.g. LD) by the total enrollment for that racial/ethnic group in the school population. The 1998 OCR data revealed risk indices for all racial/ethnic groups that were higher for LD than those found for MR. The NRC (2002) report stated that, “Asian/Pacific Islander have placement rates of 2.23%. Rates for all other racial/ethnic groups exceed 6%, and for American Indian/Alaskan Natives, the rate reached 7.45%” (p. 47). The second index, odds ratio, provides a comparative index of risk and is calculated by dividing the risk index on one racial/ethnic group by the risk index of another racial/ethnic group. In the OCR and OSEP databases, the odds ratios are reported relative to White students. If the risk index is identical for a particular minority group and White students, the odds ratio will equal 1.0. Odds ratios greater than 1.0 indicate that minority group students are at a greater risk of identification, while odds ratios of less than 1.0 indicate that they are less at risk. Using the 1998 OCR placement rates, the LD odds ratio for American Indian/Alaskan Natives is 1.24, showing that they have a 24% greater likelihood of being assigned to the LD category than White students. Odds ratios for Asian/Pacific Islander are low (0.37). For both Black and Hispanic students, the odds ratios are close to 1.0. The third index, composition index (CI), shows the proportion of all children served under a given disability category who are members of a given racial/ethnic group and is calculated by dividing the number of students of a given racial or ethnic group enrolled in a particular disability category. Two underlying assumptions of the CI are that the sum of composition indices for the five racial/ethnic groups will total 100%, and baseline enrollment of a given racial/ethnic group is not controlled. More specifically, the CI may be calculated using the percent of 6- through 21-year old population with the racial/ethnic composition of IDEA and U.S. census population statistics. For example, if 64% of the U.S. population is White, 15% is Black, 16% is Hispanic, 4% is Asian, and 1% is American Indian these data not interpretable without knowing the percentage of the racial/ethnic composition with IDEA. Hypothetically, IDEA data may show that of the 6–21 year olds served under IDEA, 63% are White, 20% are Black, 14% are Hispanic, 2% are Asian, and 1% is American Indian. To calculate disproportionality, a benchmark (e.g. 10%) against which to measure the difference between these percentages must be used. If the difference between the two percentages and the difference represented as a proportion of the group’s percent of population exceeds +10, then the racial/ethnic group is overrepresented. Conversely, if the difference between the two percentages and the difference represented as a proportion of the group’s percent of the population is larger than −10, then, the racial/ethnic group is underrepresented.

Public financial management has been characterized by the implementation of several innovations and reforms that embrace different areas and scope. These reforms aim at expenditure rationalization and efficiency enhancement, as well as the improvement of accountability and performance. Despite research having already paid attention to these innovations and reforms, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats empirically faced by public sector organizations still need to be investigated. This editorial introduces the special issue by emphasizing on the lessons that can be learned from past reform experiences.

The editorial synthesizes some of the findings of the previous literature and evidences the necessity of both successful and unsuccessful stories, presenting a future agenda of research which emphasizes the use of case studies as a suitable method to get insights out of multiple experiences.

The four articles presented in this special issue, covering the topics of accrual accounting adoption, the use of financial statements by councilors, the use of performance information by politicians and the outsourcing of auditing in local governments, provide an overview of the efforts and challenges faced by public administrations by analyzing the influence of the institutional context, the relevance of political implications and their practical footprint.

In this special issue, four successful stories that touch upon multiple facets of public financial management in different country contexts are discussed, and they signal important takeaway messages for further reforms.