Although videoconferencing technologies perform an important function in organizational communication, many users remain apprehensive about using the medium for routine communication. The study draws on media choice theory to assess the impact of communication apprehension and participation on perceptions of task characteristics and media traits. The results demonstrate that user aversion to vi...

AIMS Risky drinking among young people is an issue of public concern globally. In Australia and elsewhere, there has been a steady increase in alcohol-related harms among young people in recent years. The aims of this study were to review the nature of parental supply of alcohol to adolescents aged 13-17 years, explore parental social networks as a potential avenue for intervention, and propose...

This paper analyzes the conditions that lead to the political power position of business by developing a signaling model of corporate lobbying in democratic capitalist societies. Abandoning the traditional dichotomy of structural economic determinants versus business’ political action, the model predicts under which conditions elected political decisionmakers modify their policy pledges to acco...

The most obvious explanations come from three standard findings of the new psychology of happiness. First, a person’s happiness is negatively affected by the incomes of others (a negative externality). Second, a person’s happiness adapts quite rapidly to higher levels of income (a phenomenon of addiction). And third, our tastes are not given – the happiness we get from what we have is largely c...

BACKGROUND Support has been gradually acknowledged as a significant factor that exerts a positive influence on hemodialysis patients' lives as well as on the outcome of the disease. The purpose was to explore factors associated with social support of hemodialysis patients. METHODS The sample studied consisted of 258 patients undergoing hemodialysis in public hospitals in Athens, Greece during...

INTRODUCTION Successful efforts to reduce obesity will require public policy strategies that target both individuals and external factors such as social conditions, economic circumstances, and physical environments. Public opinion data suggest that many policy changes to reduce obesity are likely to face public resistance. METHODS We conducted 4 focus groups involving 33 adults living in or n...

Content analyses have consistently documented the disproportionate portrayal of Black Americans as criminals in the news. This experiment examines the impact of such portrayals on consumers by investigating the relationship between viewer ethnicity, viewing Black criminal suspects in the news, and beliefs related to public policy. Participants viewed a 30-minute local newscast containing crime ...

This paper focuses on staff perceptions of the use of merit principles in staff management. It focuses specifically on hiring, firing, transfer, demotion and promotion practices in the public sector in Tanzania and Uganda and on how such practices influence organisational performance and staff motivation to work in such ostensibly neopatrimonial (NP) settings. The central argument is that the N...

T he work of the Task Force on Community Preventive Services (the Task Force) joins a growing body of literature confirming the critical importance of neighborhood conditions to health in America. Saying simply that the " incidence rates are not spread evenly across a region " understates the reality. The fact is that, in virtually all regions of the country, health problems are highly concentr...

BACKGROUND Public health agencies in the USA are increasingly challenged to adopt Quality Improvement (QI) strategies to enhance performance. Many of the functional and structural barriers to effective use of QI can be found in the organizational culture of public health agencies. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of public health practice based research network (PBRN) evaluati...