Developing community-based preventive interventions in Hong Kong: a description of the first phase of the family project

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This paper describes the development of culturally-appropriate family-based interventions and their relevant measures, to promote family health, happiness and harmony in Hong Kong. Programs were developed in the community, using a collaborative approach with community partners. The development process, challenges, and the lessons learned are described. This experience may be of interest to the scientific community as there is little information currently available about community-based development of brief interventions with local validity in cultures outside the West.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The academic-community collaborative team each brought strengths to the development process and determined the targets for intervention (parent-child relationships). Information from expert advisors and stakeholder discussion groups was collected and utilized to define the sources of stress in parent-child relationships.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Themes emerged from the literature and discussion groups that guided the content of the intervention. Projects emphasized features that were appropriate for this cultural group and promoted potential for sustainability, so that the programs might eventually be implemented at a population-wide level. Challenges included ensuring local direction, relevance and acceptability for the intervention content, engaging participants and enhancing motivation to make behavior changes after a brief program, measurement of behavior changes, and developing an equal partner relationship between academic and community staff.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This work has public health significance because of the global importance of parent-child relationships as a risk-factor for many outcomes in adulthood, the need to develop interventions with strong evidence of effectiveness to populations outside the West, the potential application of our interventions to universal populations, and characteristics of the interventions that promote dissemination, including minimal additional costs for delivery by community agencies, and high acceptability to participants.</p

The Role of Teachers' Expectations in the Association between Children's SES and Performance in Kindergarten: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

This study examines the role of teachers' expectations in the association between children's socio-economic background and achievement outcomes. Furthermore, the role of children's ethnicity in moderating this mediated relation is investigated. In the present study, 3,948 children from kindergarten are examined. Data are analysed by means of structural equation modeling. First, results show that teachers' expectations mediate the relation between children's SES and their later language and math achievement, after controlling for children's ethnicity, prior achievement and gender. This result indicates that teachers may exacerbate individual differences between children. Second, children's ethnicity moderates the mediation effect of teachers' expectations with respect to math outcomes. The role of teachers' expectations in mediating the relation between SES and math outcomes is stronger for majority children than for minority children

Predicting water consumption habits for seven arsenic-safe water options in Bangladesh

BACKGROUND: In Bangladesh, 20 million people are at the risk of developing arsenicosis because of excessive arsenic intake. Despite increased awareness, many of the implemented arsenic-safe water options are not being sufficiently used by the population. This study investigated the role of social-cognitive factors in explaining the habitual use of arsenic-safe water options. METHODS: Eight hundred seventy-two randomly selected households in six arsenic-affected districts of rural Bangladesh, which had access to an arsenic-safe water option, were interviewed using structured face-to-face interviews in November 2009. Habitual use of arsenic-safe water options, severity, vulnerability, affective and instrumental attitudes, injunctive and descriptive norms, self-efficacy, and coping planning were measured. The data were analyzed using multiple linear regressions. RESULTS: Linear regression revealed that self-efficacy (B = 0.42, SE = .03, p < .001), the instrumental attitude towards the safe water option (B = 0.24, SE = .04, p < .001), the affective attitude towards contaminated tube wells (B = -0.04, SE = .02, p = .024), vulnerability (B = -0.20, SE = .02, p < .001), as well as injunctive (B = 0.08, SE = 0.04, p = .049) and descriptive norms (B = 0.34, SE = .03, p < .001) primarily explained the habitual use of arsenic-safe water options (R2 = 0.688). This model proved highly generalizable to all seven arsenic-safe water options investigated, even though habitual use of single options were predicted on the basis of parameters estimated without these options. CONCLUSIONS: This general model for the habitual use of arsenic-safe water options may prove useful to predict other water consumption habits. Behavior-change interventions are derived from the model to promote the habitual use of arsenic-safe water options

What is setting the stage for abdominal obesity reduction? A comparison between personality and health-related social cognitions

The present longitudinal study examines whether changes in abdominal obesity are best predicted by relatively stable and broad personality traits (dispositional optimism and pessimism), by modifiable and domain-specific social cognitions (health-related self-efficacy), or a combination of these. Altogether 385 participants (74% women; 50-65 years) attended the GOAL Implementation Trial, a lifestyle counseling intervention to improve diet and physical activity. Measurements were conducted prior to the intervention (T1), and 3 months (T2) and 12 months (T3) after T1. Three different models of the potential interplay between dispositional optimism and pessimism and health-related self-efficacy were tested. The analyses showed that the change in health-related self-efficacy during the intervention (T1-T2) was negatively related with waist circumference change between T1 and T3, indicating that increases in self-efficacy during the intervention resulted in reduction in waist circumference over 12 months. However, optimism and pessimism were unrelated to waist circumference change either directly or indirectly through changes in self-efficacy. Weight loss interventions enhancing participants positive health-related expectancies such as self-efficacy are likely to be effective even when participants dispositional expectancies are pessimistic

Predicting Automaticity in Exercise Behaviour: The Role of Perceived Behavioural Control, Affect, Intention, Action Planning, and Behaviour

Background Habit formation has been proposed as a way to maintain behaviour over time. Purpose Recent evidence suggests that constructs additional to repeated performance may predict physical automaticity, but no research has yet explored possible direct impacts of intention, planning, affect, and perceived behavioural control (PBC) on automaticity. Method In a prospective study over a 2-week period amongst 406 undergraduate students (M age=21.5 years [SD=2.59], 27.4 % males), we investigated main and interaction effects of past exercise behaviour, PBC, intention, planning, and affect on exercise automaticity. Results Results showed that — controlling for past behaviour — PBC, affect, and planning were significant and positive predictors of exercise automaticity. Decomposing a significant interaction between PBC and planning when to exercise re-vealed that planning became less predictive of exercise auto-maticity at higher levels of PBC. Conclusion Findings show that exercise automaticity is pre-dicted by repeated performance and social-cognitive constructs. Further, interactions between social-cognitive predictors may be different for behavioural automaticity than for behavioural frequency

An extended theory of planned behavior intervention for older adults with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease

A randomized controlled trial evaluated the effectiveness of a 4-wk extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) intervention to promote regular physical activity and healthy eating among older adults diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease (N = 183). Participants completed TPB measures of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and intention, as well as planning and behavior, at preintervention and 1 wk and 6 wk postintervention for each behavior. No significant time-by-condition effects emerged for healthy eating. For physical activity, significant time-by-condition effects were found for behavior, intention, planning, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norm. In particular, compared with control participants, the intervention group showed short-term improvements in physical activity and planning, with further analyses indicating that the effect of the intervention on behavior was mediated by planning. The results indicate that TPB-based interventions including planning strategies may encourage physical activity among older people with diabetes and cardiovascular disease