1,721,084 research outputs found
Public health approaches to measurement, surveillance and the promotion of walking among Australian adults
Get PDFThe aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the importance of walking to public health. The first part is characterized by epidemiological research. First, a typology for the measurement of walking is developed. A systematic review is conducted of observational studies to determine the health benefits of walking in its own right. Studies consistently confirm that 30 minutes walking on most days of the week is sufficient to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases and non-communicable disease risk. Then, a series of epidemiological analyses describes the prevalence and correlates of walking, using multiple health and non-health surveillance data sets. Surveillance data indicate that the prevalence of walking at the above recommended levels is low across all domains. Between 1991 and 2001 an increase in walking occurred, and was the main contributor to reductions in leisure time physical inactivity; however, the proportion of the population who achieved the recommended amount of physical activity by walking did not change in leisure and transport domains. The next part of the thesis is characterized by health promotion research examining the impact of three population-based approaches to increasing walking among Australian adults. The first was an evaluation of a conversion of rail to trail, as an environmental change intervention; the second was a mass media campaign promoting walking to work, and the third was a targeted print media walking program. Providing environmental supports with minimal promotion had no effect on walking. A nation-wide mass media campaign promoting walking to work increased walking and other moderate intensity physical activity, but process evaluation indicated other promotional efforts contributed as well. The targeted print media randomised trial had the greatest effect on walking, but the increases were not greater than spontaneous change in the control. Increases in total physical activity were achieved only when the intervention was supplemented by the use of a pedometer.
The expectation that broader approaches to the promotion of walking will bring about changes at the population level, were not corroborated by these case studies. There is a need for enhancement of walking-specific interventions to influence total PA at the population levels
Predictors of initiating and maintaining active commuting to work using transport and public health perspectives in Australia
No full textObjective: To identify predictors for initiating and maintaining active commuting (AC) to work following the 2003 Australia's Walk to Work Day (WTWD) campaign. Methods: Pre- and post-campaign telephone surveys of a cohort of working age (18-65years) adults (n = 1100, 55% response rate). Two dependent campaign outcomes were assessed: initiating or maintaining AC (i.e., walk/cycle and public transport) on a single day (WTWD), and increasing or maintaining health-enhancing active commuting (HEAC) level (≥ 30min/day) in a usual week following WTWD campaign. Results: A significant population-level increase in HEAC (3.9%) was observed (McNemar's χ = 6.53, p = 0.01) with 136 (19.0%) achieving HEAC at post campaign. High confidence in incorporating walking into commute, being active pre-campaign and younger age (< 46years) were positively associated with both outcomes. The utility of AC for avoiding parking hassles (AOR = 2.1, 95% CI: 1.2-3.6), for less expense (AOR = 1.8, 95% CI: 1.1-3.1), for increasing one's health (AOR = 2.5, 95% CI: 1.1-5.6) and for clean air (AOR = 2.2, 95% CI: 1.0-4.4) predicted HEAC outcome whereas avoiding the stress of driving (AOR = 2.6, 95% CI: 1.4-5.0) and the hassle of parking predicted the single-day AC. Conclusions: Transportation interventions targeting parking and costs could be further enhanced by emphasizing health benefits of AC. AC was less likely to occur among inactive employees
Sports, Exercise and Public Health: the perfect combination.
No full textIt is a great pleasure of mine to congratulate you for a wise decision to embark on the Exercise and Sports undergraduate degree. In the following paragraphs I will try to uncover one of the most interesting career paths; integrating exercise and sports science with public health. Drawing from my own experience, I started my career as a practitioner after completing my undergraduate degree in exercise and sports science, including physical education and dance teaching diplomas. I worked as a teacher and exercise trainer for 15 years. During this time I continued my postgraduate studies in the Master of Public Health (MPH) program. I could support myself from my work as a trainer 8 hours a week and was fortunate to get a tuition scholarship. The public health discipline fascinated me; it provided me with vast opportunities to apply my undergraduate background in sports, exercise and physical education to population health as a researcher. It was the perfect blend for me and I continued to do my PhD about the public health perspective of the most fundamental human movement, which is walking. I am therefore happy to provide you with some “food for thoughts” for your own career whether you will choose to be a researcher or a practitioner
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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