Behavioral Health Research - Science topic

Our institute is working on the development of a behavioral diagnosis instrument. You may have some idea on this matter

Hi Heather,

Unfortunately, I am not aware of any way that STAI-Y6 can be used to determine anxiety severity.

While this may not help you for your current study, in future the SCL-A20 might be useful - it is essentially a shortened, anxiety-specific version of the Symptom-Checklist-90: https://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/19365/InTech-Measuring_states_of_anxiety_with_clinician_rated_and_patient_rated_scales.pdf

While other scales (such as the BAI) denote a threshold for identifying clinical anxiety, the SCL-A20 also denotes scores within a specific sub-clinical range as 'at-risk', allowing for the identification of anxiety presentations which, while not reaching clinical severity, can be considered to be elevated above a normal level. This is something we unfortunately seem to miss in a lot of clinical scales, despite the noted benefits of early-detection and intervention...

Hope this helps!

Can I directly use the scale if it has been already put to use by some other researcher in their respective paper?

In Hungary very well work the "3. age university" system for education and mental pervention of elderly. In that system we do curs, presentations, and essence the slowing down the process of aging, maintaining self-sufficiency.

A fruitful alternative approach in order to generate rich qualitative data could be an ethnography. You could, for example, accompany disabled migrants as they visit authorities and record their struggles. That way, you would focus on structural factors as they are actually experienced, not as pre-determined by yourself.

Interviews are great to explore the perceptions and reflections of the subjects, but with an (additional) ethnography, you can also explore how they in fact behave when facing discrimination, and what the authorities are really doing that might be considered discrimination, even if the subjects don't label it as such.

Such an approach goes very well with Grounded Theory as rightfully proposed by Lucinda Austin. There are numerous introductions on ethnography, I don't want to recommend a specific one. Case-studies as a benchmark example can be found in a volume of Michael Burawoy on Global Ethnography (see link below). The latter is famour for doing 'public sociology', which you might relate to as well, given your topic and research interest.

Hey Alex, the YRBS in the US measures these risky behaviors, but the measures are relatively short. You may check it out to see if that fits your purposes: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/questionnaires.htm.

Hi Sue,

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has a simplified version of NAS pathway: 

A comprehensive version as PDF from Queensland illustrates a complete form of NAS:

 https://www.health.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/432218/nas-pathway.pdf

I hope you find the sites helpful

Kemal

"What do you think about the instruments to measure congnitive performance"

Many neuropsychologists have a pathological aversion to IQ tests, and go to extraordinary lengths to avoid using them.   Meta-analytic reviews find that IQ is the most fundamental deficit in schizophrenia, so before using more specialized cognitive tests,  a well-supported complete IQ test should be used, especially the Wechsler ones.

Please let me know if this reference is useful to you in your research:

Title:  Probabilistic Bayesian Network Model

Building of Heart Disease

Authors:  Jayanta K. Ghosh and Marco Valtorta

{ghosh,mgv}@cs.sc.edu

Reference:  Article freely downloadable at the following site:

https://cse.sc.edu/~mgv/reports/tr1999-11.pdf.

Dennis

Dennis Mazur

Hi Mara, 

Great! Thank-you so much :) 

Kindest, 

Emily 

Looking forward to reading your paper Beatrice

Go to look at China's research data regarding Chinese medicine treatments clinical trials.

Thank you for your suggestion and links.

Thank you Tushar

Please see this reference; while it talks about aggregated food waste in American, there are descriptions of waste reversal strategies that consumers may take; may give you some ideas.

We use the AQ-27.... Corrigan, P., Markowitz, F. E., Watson, A., Rowan, D. & Kubiak, M. A. (2003). An Attribution Model of Public Discrimination Towards Persons with Mental Illness. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 44, 162-179.

Another old and nice article: Link, B. G., Yang, L. H., Phelan, J. C. & Collins, P. (2004). Measuring Mental Illness Stigma. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 30, 511-541.

I'll send you three bottles  -- how's that?

Dear Marco,

As you may have experienced, there are many checklists and tools in order to reporting and to assess the quality of SRL, RCT, meta-analysis, observational studies, etc. PRISMA is a good one but it was "not designed to be a quality assessment instrument to gauge the quality of a systematic review, but to help authors improve the reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses".

AMSTAR has been used on many occasions as an useful tool for assessing the methodological quality of SRL. The reliability of AMSTAR score is very good and the checklist is simple to accomplish. AMSTAR checklist can be found on URL https://amstar.ca/Amstar_Checklist.php

However. I think we must pay attention to tools by Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP). May be, these tools are the "most cost-effective" in terms of  effort and mental resources spent. CASPE checklist can be found on URL http://www.casp-uk.net/casp-tools-checklists

I hope this is useful for you.

Curtis LT, Patel K. Nutritional and environmental approaches to preventing and treating autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): a review.

J Altern Complement Med. 2008 Jan-Feb;14(1):79-85. doi: 10.1089/acm.2007.0610.

PMID: 18199019

@Monyer - Thanks a ton

@ Sana - Still struggling, i have deadline to finish everything this week and i am far far far behind :(

Any help anyone else.!!

Depends on what your aims are in assessing activity. If you're interested in assessing activity habits, go with the IPAQ-E. If you're more interested in assessing activity capacity, ADLs would be good to use either as your main set of measures or as a complement to your data from the IPAQ-E.

At this point there are promising practices but no proven practices.  In general peer education is effective with college students so you should use students in both your planning and intervention.  You might start with some students and ask them what would help them.  Then try with a small group of students before you upscale to the entire student population.

Dear researcher,

One of the most common and widely used assessment

instruments in the risk-tolerance literature is the Survey

of Consumer Finances (SCF)

single-question measure.

More information available in this link:

Good luck

Dear Martin,

Please excuse me for coming back late, days had been a bit too hectic these days  :)

You know what? I'm amazed by you... You are from a totally different discipline and you are so kind as to look for literature for me. I also saw that you are active in so many different domains.  amazing! ---  although this is in my understanding how good researchers should exactly be like!  :D  But can I ask you why? Just curious, and as researchers we are supposed to find out the true answers instead sitting and assuming by ourselves  ;) :D

Greetings from Belgium!

Fei

Hello,

The following are relevant:

Lee, R. M., & Davis, C. (2000). Cultural orientation, past multicultural experience, and a sense of belonging on campus for Asian American college students. Journal of College Student Development, 41, 110-115.

Lee, R. M., Draper, M., & Lee, S. (2001). Social connectedness, dysfunctional interpersonal behaviors, and psychological distress: Testing a mediator model. Journal of counseling psychology, 48(3), 310-318.

Good luck.

These are really helpful. Thank you!

Estimado  Olayemi

No he utilizado escalas que relaciones los dos temas.

Sin embargo se puede construir un instrumento de recolección de datos en base a la asociación entre tipo de alimento, composición, cantidad de sustancias cancerígenas que contiene y relacionar con los tipos de cáncer que se asocian a su uso.

Saludos 

Nancy

I feel they fit in both psychosocial as well as long term outcomes. You will find psychosocial measures for quality of life and vitality. Quality of life and wellness/ overall health are long term outcomes for diabetics. For instance, you can't focus on self management without having an end in sight for long term prevention of complications. Quality of life is linked with complications, overall health, etc.

This is really a good research, I shall push to my station and see if they know how.

Dear Eman, Our PhD scholars worked on the WOMAC, and then in 2012 we developed the Malay version of the WOMAC for the convenience of the Common elderly Malay users (OA patients). I have that, just got to get it within reach...and then I can send it to you. Hopefully, I can pass it on to you within a few days from now.

Dear all, thank you kindly for you input on this topic. You have really given me some great advice and just to expand, the project i seek to commence will be in pre-adolescent children. THANK YOU!

May I add a view from Chinese medicine? In Chinese medicine, if the spleen is not healthy, nutrition absorption rate is low. western exercises cannot activate the spleen function except the Chinese exercise (qigong) or get Chinese medicine treatments of acupuncture, herbs, magnet therapy or the whole body healing system,

Very good Subject ;) Good luck for your survey ... 

Hello Michael C Seto

please check the resources

Hi Armira,

For textbooks, I suggest using:

1. Behavioral Finance, By William Forbes

2. Behavioral Finance: Psychology, Decision-Making, and Markets

By Lucy Ackert, Richard Deaves

For articles: please see the reference list of the attached article.

Hope this helps.

The University of Rhode Island Change Assessment (URICA) has been used commonly for this purpose.

Dear Malgorzata,

Maybe the THE MEDITERRANEAN LIFESTYLE INDEX (MEDLIFE) - user-friendly and brief (< 10 Min.) - is an option for you:

The MEDLIFE assessing three blocks: food consumption, traditional Mediterranean dietary habits and physical activity, rest and social interaction patterns: http://www.fasebj.org/content/28/1_Supplement/LB375.short

Sotos-Prieto M, Santos-Beneit G, Bodega P, Pocock S, Mattei J, Peñalvo JL. VALIDATION OF A QUESTIONNAIRE TO MEASURE OVERALL MEDITERRANEAN LIFESTYLE HABITS FOR RESEARCH APPLICATION: THE MEDITERRANEAN LIFESTYLE INDEX (MEDLIFE). Nutr Hosp. 2015 Sep 1;32(3):1153-63. http://www.nutricionhospitalaria.com/pdf/9387.pdf

Sotos-Prieto M, Moreno-Franco B, Ordovás JM, León M, Casasnovas JA, Peñalvo JL. Design and development of an instrument to measure overall lifestyle habits for epidemiological research: the Mediterranean Lifestyle (MEDLIFE) index. Public Health Nutr. 2015 Apr;18(6):959-67. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/900C766A0478A08428BE9F1810793601/S1368980014001360a.pdf/div-class-title-design-and-development-of-an-instrument-to-measure-overall-lifestyle-habits-for-epidemiological-research-the-mediterranean-lifestyle-medlife-index-div.pdf

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for you,

Martin

Thanks Farid

Denise

Thanks Jan..

I have decided to create my own tool for my intervention because the STOFLA didn't seem to meet my requirements. 

Thanks again Paul. Would we also need to take interaction into consideration? For example if our three independent variables were stress, pain, and resilience, would we need to look at the interaction say between stress*high risk group to know more about how the high risk group stress predicts depression?

Hi David-

To me, there is no way to answer your question in a broad way unless you are asking “Is it EVER acceptable…” to which the answer is “Yes.” But I don’t think that’s a helpful answer: I think the answer always has to be asked with regard to the specific circumstances. For example, does the patient find it helpful or supportive? What are their treatment goals? If the patient is losing their capacity to continue to consent are there others (e.g., with power-of-attorney) who can assess the helpfulness and appropriateness of the therapy?

For years? Yes, possibly. It depends what the purpose is. You said “to maintain condition or prevent…decline.” It's not clear to me in what sense this is meant: To prevent the decline of Alzheimer’s? Of course not. To slow decompensation, reduce stress and confusion, increase support in a way that may prevent an acceleration of distress and disturbance? Sure.  For example, there is empirical research supporting psychotherapeutic interventions having a sustained impact on Alzheimer’s patients’ depression and aggression. A Google or ResearchGate search of “psychotherapy effect on dementia” will give you a quick overview. But on a more ‘human’ level, I might ask: what kind of family or social support do these patients have, and might the long-term psychotherapy be serving this kind of social support function?

You do need to use the weight variable to weight your data if you want to make generalizations to the population.  You do not have to create your own weighting.  They have used raking to create the weight variable.

If you do not weight your data by using the weighting variable, you need to make very clear that your findings only apply to the sample and not to the general population.

Hi Joyce, I am now Professor Emeritus (2014) from George Washington U (2014)

and have moved to Florida. I published the 5th edition of my "Evaluation ..." textbook with Oxford U, Press (2015) and continue to be involved with smoking and drinking research with pregnant women. I think one of the primary issues with NRT and youth (< 17) is age and Informed Consent. I also suspect that legal liability is an issue. Cheers

Richard

Read the works of Angus Deaton (Nobel Laureate).  "The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality"  

Thank you very much everyone. This has really been helpful

Awesome !! Thank you so much for the great help :)

What they will allow me to do is choose three providers, formulate survey questions to ask providers, and analyze the assessment tools the providers use in my content analysis.  My question is how do they address intergenerational trauma or do they through those assessments, how culturally competent are those assessments. 

Islamic republic of Iran health delivery system is a model

Dear Witold, 

Check these out: 

Ethn Health. 2015;20(1):49-65. 

Depression in Europe: does migrant integration have mental health payoffs? A cross-national comparison of 20 European countries.

Levecque K, Van Rossem R.

Fortschr Neurol Psychiatr. 2014 Oct;82(10):579-85. 

[Gender-specific differences relating to depressiveness in 1st and 2nd generation migrants: results of a cross-sectional study amongst employees of a university hospital].

[ in German]

Maksimović S, Ziegenbein M2 Graef-Calliess IT, Ersöz B, Machleidt W, Sieberer M  From the conclusion: It would appear that a strong orientation to the native culture increases the risk of depression for 2G(eneration) female migrants, whereas for 1G male migrants this factor is associated with a lower risk of depression.

Int J Soc Psychiatry. 2012 Nov;58(6):605-13. 

Depressive symptoms in first-and second-generation migrants: a cross-sectional study of a multi-ethnic working population.

Sieberer M, Maksimovic S, Ersöz B, Machleidt W, Ziegenbein M, Calliess IT.

Migration and Mental Health: An Empirical Test of Depression Risk Factors among Immigrant Mexican Women

William A. Vega, Bohdan Kolody and Juan Ramon Valle

International Migration Review

Vol. 21, No. 3, Special Issue: Migration and Health (Autumn, 1987), pp. 512-530

Yes Yochai - the posts, so far, have been trying to further understand the nature of what it is that you are actually doing or wanting to do. I get the impression that you have not implemented organizational policy change - but you are wanting to. The tool posted by Stefan is a useful one - but instruments such as this assess a 'snapshot' of the current state of play in an organization. You have said that you want to assess actual change. My recommendation would be not to think about a measuring tool - but an actual approach. Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a valid and recognized approach (call it a measuring tool if you want - as it contains regular use of both process and outcome evaluation) to implementing and assessing organizational change related to health promotion programmes. Here is a past article of mine that highlights how it is implemented and illustrates a framework model that demonstrates its processes.

you're welcome! :)

Marie

I am attaching a link to a paper I wrote quite some time ago that has a section pertaining to the HBM. See the references I provide, since I recall those references having specific measurements.

I agree that MI interventions would be best.  However there are too many unanswered questions - how do we screen? AUDIT? and if so what cut-off.  do we ask about pregnancy before a woman knows she is pregnant or from when she knew she was pregnant- do we recommend no drinking or very little - guidelines vary on this.  we carried out a pilot feasibility study http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1745-6215-13-174.pdf using the screening time of when a woman finds out she is pregnant and we found that less than 2% of women were drinking at the very low levels we had as a cut-off.  This is a difficult, relatively unanswered question that requires much more research. 

this depends on national policy

Dear Ankur, your question is quite valid, because most of the illiterate belong to low socio - economic status, such people can be educated and empower them to tackle their problem. Here we can apply steps of behaviour change , start to assess about the problem they know or not, if know then how much they know about the problem, they are concerns, if they concerns , then they want to change this behaviour to healthy behaviour, if interested to change then the medium we can use for change , for this message & medium should according to the target specific. One message should be at onetime.I think if we want for sustaining effect of various methods for change, then both audiovisual medium is effective and along with we can use other methods e.g., pictorial. Other ways are we can select peer educator among the target group, then trained the peer educator. These peer educator are more effective,as they are from the same community and know the socio- cultural factors which become the barriers for communication.

Without further refinement of the question, the only thing I can suggest is what I would do performing a literature review of such a broad topic. All of the post have give specifics to the individual items/characteristics that all make-up a patient encounter or the result of it, whether it is face-to-face or virtual (phone, video, chat, etc.). Since encounters are about the patient, I would start the the ideal characteristics that make up the purest form of the patient encounter...the face-to-face patient-physician time using a patient -centered approach primary care (highest variation of encounter types). In principle, all other communications that happen in their various forms (nurse, another doctor, pharmacist, nutritionist, family member, etc.) are a result of this event. This will allow you to work your way out from the source and know how many degrees of separation a specific communication is from the origin (grapevine effect). Within the literature, how doctors approach individual patients has been examined long before everyone started calling it "patient-centered" care. The following are some cites to get you started...good luck!

Roter DL, Stewart M, Putnam SM, Lipkin M, Stiles W, Inui TS. Communication patterns of primary care physicians. JAMA. 1997; 227(4): 350-356.

Shaughnessy AF, Slawson DC, Becker L. Clinical Jazz: harmonizing clinicial experience and evidence-based medicine. J Fam Pract. 1998; 47(6): 425-428.

Bensing JM, Roter DL, Hulsman RL. Communication patterns of primary care physicians in the United States and the Netherlands. J Gen Intern Med. 2003; 18(5): 335-342.

Crabtree BF, Miller ML, Tallia AF, Coben DJ, DiCicco-Bloom B, McIlvain HE, Aita VA, Scott JG, Gregory PB, Strange KC, McDaniel RR. Delivery of clinical preventive services in family medicine offices. Ann Fam Med. 2005; 3 (5): 430-435.

Haidet P. Jazz and the 'art' of Medicine: improvisatioin in the medical encounter. Ann Fam Med. 2007; 5(2): 164-169.

Great postings. I work with eating disorders and the percentage of people suffering from anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) specifically are very low. BN because people are embarrassed of symptoms and often function well despite them and much suffering that they hide. AN because the disorder is egosytonic. If they want to lose weight and know that therapy will involve weight gain, they're not going to "undo all their hard work". Mostly people with AN are referred by worried family members or school counsellors and actively resist at least at the beginning.

Hello Ankur,

thanks for your advice. I am almost done with my study (my entry is about 14 months old and I think ResearchGate should flag this a bit better) and, yes, I ran a pilot before starting. Thanks a lot for your paper!

Andre

thank you we developed a web based questionnaire which has really easy to use in high schools

Dear Harriet, 

There are many resources available for individuals which are deaf under the IDEA legislation. ,I would recommend reviewing the legislation to determine what accommodations health care facilities have related to individuals which are deaf.  It is important to remember they are  hearing impaired and not blind so they can still read and understood the content of what is being stated.  I would recommend looking at the policies and then interviewing a couple of health care provided to determine what is in place.  You might want to visit http://www.ncdhhs.gov/dsdhh/

Michele

The MDGs 4 , 5 , 6 deal with health care & include reducing Infant mortality rate , Maternal mortality rate & treatment of important Infectious diseases , such as HIV , Malaria & Tuberculosis . It is essential that every medical conference emphasizes the role of  doctors in achieving these targets . Every doctor should be aware of MDGs & their participation & support is essential to achieve these targets . After 2015 , the SDGs will play an important role for the next 15 years till 2030 . These goals are more broad based & includes diagnosis & management of both Infectious diseases & Non Communicable diseases & doctors would have a very important role in achieving these targets . I hope the Indian textbooks of Medicine would emphasize the significance of MDGs & future SDGs & highlight the importance of doctors to participate in helping to achieve these targets .

Dear Mr Almeira Pino-Oliveira,

I enclose the article of my colleague Dr Sonja van Dillen in which the 5A framework is used (van Dillen SM, Noordman J, van Dulmen S, Hiddink GJ (2014). Quality of weight-loss counseling by Dutch practice nurses in primary care: an observational study. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2014 Jul 2. doi: 10.1038/ejcn.2014.129. [Epub ahead of print]

Best regards,

Gerrit J Hiddink

This research is good .It is often like what I hear from some medics who say many take care of the health of others and overwork themselves and put their health in jeopardy.Apart from coaches who participate with their athletes, many physical education teachers and lecturers in Nigeria are due to poor enabling environment often are preachers and not doers of what they preach

We tend to see 'objective' measures as a gold standard at the moment but we also need to be aware of the pitfalls in all measurement techniques. Bear in mind that if you attempt to 'validate' a self-report measure with an 'objective' measure such as accelerometry or pedometry that such validation will never be perfect as all these measures do not assess physical activity in exactly the same way, they each measure a different aspect of physical activity. So accelerometers would not be able to assess the type of physical activity or anything contextual, as a diary would, and would miss out certain forms of activity depending on the placement of the device on the body. So for example an accelerometer placed on the hip would miss any upper body motion, such as lifting weights or carrying shopping bags. Many accelerometers would have to be taken off to swim. A pedometer merely counts steps but says nothing about the frequency, intensity or duration of physical activity. Like self-report measures, these devices rely on the participant engaging with them appropriately. Also, be aware that physical activity guidelines (e.g. 5 x 30 mins per week) were developed on the basis of self-reported physical activity; guidelines based on accelerometry, when they emerge, may well require less of people. These are a few things I discovered when I undertook a rapid scoping review of literature on physical activity measurement in the spring of this year - please let me know if you want references for these points.

Pharmacotherapeutic challenges in the management of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and chronic tics in a school aged child.

Sood, Rishi; Coffey, Barbara J.. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology23.9 (Nov 2013): 628-631.

This article discusses pharmacotherapeutic challenges in the management of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and chronic tics in a school aged child. The child was hospitalized at age 4 years for a severe cough. He had a history of cough-variant asthma for which he took montelukast and albuterol as needed. He had a history of difficulty falling asleep and waking up at night. He was treated initially with methylphenidate and clonidine at bedtime by his pediatrician. Clonidine was increased to 0.2 mg for difficulty with sleep initiation and increase in tics. Methylphenidate was continued at 18 mg twice a day for several months; risperidone 0.25 mg twice a day was added to target impulsivity and tics, and clonidine was discontinued. This case is a typical example of a clinical problem that most pediatricians, neurologists, and child and adolescent psychiatrists encounter on a regular basis. This case presents an example of a perfect candidate for a switch to guanfacine to target chronic motor tics and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)

Barbara.coffey@mssm.edu may give you an informed answer

The Iceland model Open Dialogue is proving very successful and they are conducting studies to quantify this method... Its worth looking up.

In cases where exclusion criteria identify individuals who would be harmed, not benefit, or not be able to do the intervention, you would not offer it. In cases where exclusion criteria are used to screen out people as a means of control (e.g., limit to certain age ranges), it is probably not necessary. If you are going to give them the intervention anyway, you could include them in the study and see if the exclusion variables relate to outcomes, e.g., age effects. Often when individuals are randomly assigned to intervention or a control group, the control group is given the intervention at the end of the study, assuming the intervention worked, or at least was not harmful. There can be advantages in doing so as one can see if the control group benefits from the intervention in order to replicate findings from the initial intervention group.

This is the dilemma each and every Social Work Professional would have come across at least once in life time. I need to know when this Question arises to the Professional (A professional begins a profession, Mid Career Professional or an Expert? What is the issue that would result in..... (is it Life threatening to the other or by breaching (while reporting) what is the effect that would cause to the one who shared with you. It is the professional judgement and the one’s own conviction and integrity to Professional Values. I am not sure what in what context your dilemma arises. If you could give me the incident or narrate the situation with which you encounter with this dilemma we could discuss. You need not mention the Agency you work for or where you encounter this issue, Narrate the incident so that we can discuss. Another way to tackle this issue is through the Principle of Double Effect (a principle – in plain choose the lesser evil, usually used in medical issues like - Pregnancy and abortion – What is your intention and whether your integrity (social work ethics ) is not questioned, to what extent that is going to affect the other and the one who shared ? Whether is there any legal implication attached to it (It depends upon country to country). To my best of my knowledge it is always better to get the consent from the person before you could start the intake that you discuss certain issues like dilemmas with the experts/agencies, which would sort all your issues. Hence you share the responsibility with the experts/ agencies in treating this special issues and it would lead to better discussion than brood over dilemma always...( I am Dr.S.Ubahara Sahayaraj, a Psychiatric Social Worker, completed MSW (2003) from Loyola College, Chennai, India ; M.Phil (Psychiatric Social Work) (2007) and Ph.D (2013) from the Department of Psychiatric Social Work, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India. I worked as a Psychiatric Social Worker for three years at the Department of Psychiatric Social Work, NIMHANS, Bangalore, At Present working at Centre for Addiction Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, NIMHANS, Bangalore, India. When you work with a multi disciplinary team all these issues would be solved, because the discussion is based on a team than by one (You alone). I am ready to discuss further on this issue...

It can be really hard to turn folks away. Hence compassion and still "hearing" their story is of great value. Especially with an older adult population. I think everyone appreciates a thank you and recognition for their willingness to support research. You can certainly post the criteria and indicate that the current research focus won't allow inclusion of a huge number of people without this specific criteria. You can do this up front and limit the volunteers. And many people simply send out a letter indicating their thanks and appreciation with the information about not being included. Offering to share your results with folks at the appropriate time - whether they were within the study or not- can also be a way of recognizing their value. Clearly any steps need to honor the ethics of the study and research. Good luck with your study!

Hallo nach Ulm,

Yeah..I have looked at Seca and am thinking we do have it in my Uni as well. I will need to check and see how I can do it. I don't intend to send them all over to Uni. Most people would not like to do so (esp. older adults).

Viele Gruesse aus dem sonnigen Malaysia

I like the viewpoint by Field, A. E., Camargo, C. A., & Ogino, S. (2013). The Merits of Subtyping Obesity: One Size Does Not Fit All. JAMA, 310(20), 2147-2148. In this viewpoint, the authors argue that "One reason for the lack of stronger associations with risk factors or more consistently successful treatment is that all types of overweight and obesity are often grouped together. This approach potentially obscures strong associations between risk factors and specific subtypes of obesity."

That sounds like a good plan, Andre. I like the idea of the booster push - an intermediate contact of some kind seems to be important from what I've seen in the literature. The higher intensity MI sessions (more frequent sessions) seem to do better. I could only use a handful of case studies since I could not get a big enough sample for between-group comparisons. It's the nature of this environment, I'm afraid. But I did get 9 and the potential moving forward is to be able to recruit other psychiatric units in future research. As for measurement, I recorded attendance to sessions regardless of what the content was since it's as much to be able to get some of the clients doing anything at all. Even in cases where attendance wasn't made, the client seemed to be doing a lot of 'change talk', which in MI is a good sign. You're right about sample size though - it needs to be big enough to cope with losses along the way. Did you see Hillsdon and colleagues' study a few years back? They recruited 1600 people for a RCT and recorded self-reports of PA at baseline and 12 months. Interesting outcomes.

How are you planning to measure PA?

In response to Nidal, I would suggest more contemporary models than the Health Belief Model, which has largely fallen out of usage in favour of models which consider other additional factors and their inter-relationships.

Dear Alice

Thanks for your question about the type of research we are doing at St Andrews. We spend a lot of effort on trying to understand the links between the expression of emotion in conversations between health providers and patients. As I think

I mentioned previously the way in which health providers respond to open, frank or hidden emotive content in a patient's speech is of importance to outcome. I have been impressed by the late Peter Maguire from Univ of Manchester UK and his work with staff at Christie's Hospital with cancer patients. If emotional concerns in diagnostic interviews expressed by patients were 'blocked' by clinicians then lowered mood in patients was detected at follow up.

Do look at examples of my work with the talented Research Fellow - Yuefang Zhou in a couple of recent papers we have published (the PLoS-One article and the paper in Annals of Behavioral Medicine). The former is about medical students' responses to simulated patient emotional expression and the later about reassurance producing counter-intuitive effects in young children receiving a preventive intervention). Both papers show the importance of timing and investigating contextual factors. The later article has been captured nicely in a piece now on Reuter's Health web-site page.

Hope this is of interest and adds to the discussion.

I guess you'll get a range of suggestions here Burkhard, and to add my 5 cents-worth I'm reading an excellent book at the moment, which is of interest long after my doctorate training. It's Freidman and Cohen Silver Foundations of Health Psychology, Oxford . For example they cast an interesting context on the idea of the client-centred approach, suggesting this is better thought of in terms of a 'relationship-centred' approach, with some evidence for this.

Anyway, good luck in your search for a resource that suits you.

Rob

Hi Romain

There are so many great books out there and in my work with early childhood education students I tend to use bits and pieces from a range of texts. Some have great sections on several theorists, while others are more broad.

Here are a few of my favourites:

Berk, L. (2012). Infants and children: Prenatal through middle childhood (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

and

Educational Psychology for Learning and Teaching, 4th Edition - See more at: http://www.cengagebrain.com.au/shop/isbn/9780170218610#sthash.wK3H196O.dpuf

I apologise in advance if this is not the sort of thing you were after, as you did mention education theory. :)

Cheers, Alice Brown

For example, older people have more trust

in others. Which can be exploited.

Regards,

Joachim (not an expert)

Nutrition literacy means that people's literacy knowledge and calculating skills on diet and nutrition. For example; if people can read and understand information on food labels they will know which food healthy or not.

Dear Wolfgang and Brian

It is indeed a complicated subject with many aspects. One known problem is the fact

that it is related not only to "what to do " but to " who should do what " ? Local authorities? HMOs ? Health ministery?, volunteer organisations etc. ? As with many other questions the answers could be offered by academic research. I agree with you . I will soon post such subject as bachelor thesis .>

Arthur

Hi Timothy, thanks for your thoughts on this, it certainly raises an interesting point and one which was carefully discussed in the preparation of our manuscript. The point was also raised and carefully considered during the peer review process which included review from a well respected and prominent Professor of Behavioural Science. I think on this occasion our definition has perhaps been misunderstood out of the context for which it was intended. I agree that classification of a behavioural intervention as cognitive based or otherwise is far from straightforward and also lacks clear definitions. In this study we simply aimed to differentiate between interventions which included a component to alter a patient's thought processes, motivations and feelings (which we defined as cognitive-based) and those which followed a more traditional (for the field) approach based on provision of education or behaviour modification.

I hope this helps to clarfiy, I wonder if you perhaps have any suggestions for a different terminology that could have been used? Your feedback is greatly welcomed.

I will get back to you on your email

I certainly believe there is support for Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary's theory. I didn't want to assume you had read her book entitled Post Traumatice Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. So I would like to offer it for starters. Also, Dr. Kenneth Hardy's work on trauma and oppression and his book entitled The Psychological Residuals of Slavery provides a good foundation to begin to research your question. I'd be interested to know what you think. Thanks. Norma Mtume

In my clients I have seen both weight gain and weight loss. The loss is what is usually expected and attributed to 'failure to thrive' syndrome. I had one client that gained weight and could not lose it until she gave up wheat.

Many of the gluten sensitive people that I have known socially or professionally want to be able to eat all of the same junk food only without wheat. There is an entire food industry dedicated to selling gluten free junk food. This is where the weight gain comes from. A gluten free diet, as I follow because I am gluten sensitive, should be fruits, vegetables and meat. This is not what people want. People want the cakes, cookies, breads and other nutrition devoid foods.