Rules of Engagement: Journalists’ attitudes to industry influence in health news reporting.

Health-related industries use a variety of methods to influence health news, including the formation and maintenance of direct relationships with journalists. These interactions have the potential to subvert news reporting such that it comes to serve the interests of industry in promoting their products, rather than the public interest in critical and accurate news and information. Here we report the findings of qualitative interviews conducted in Sydney, Australia, in which we examined journalists’ experiences of, and attitudes towards, their relationships with health-related industries. Participants’ belief in their ability to manage industry influence and their perceptions of what it means to be unduly influenced by industry raise important concerns relating to the psychology of influence and the realities of power relationships between industry and journalists. The analysis also indicates ways in which concerned academics and working journalists might establish more fruitful dialogue regarding the role of industry in health-related news and the extent to which increased regulation of journalist-industry relationships might be needed.NHMR

Liminality: a major category of the experience of cancer illness

Narrative analysis is well established as a means of examining the subjective experience of those who suffer chronic illness and cancer. In a study of perceptions of the outcomes of treatment of cancer of the colon, we have been struck by the consistency with which patients record three particular observations of their subjective experience: (1) the immediate impact of the cancer diagnosis and a persisting identification as a cancer patient, regardless of the time since treatment and of the presence or absence of persistent or recurrent disease; (2) a state of variable alienation from social familiars, expressed as an inability to communicate the nature of the experience of the illness, its diagnosis and treatment; and (3) a persistent sense of boundedness, an awareness of limits to space, empowerment and available time. These subjectivities were experienced in varying degree by all patients in our study. Individual responses to these experiences were complex and variable. The experiences are best understood under the rubric of a category we call "liminality". We believe that all cancer patients enter and experience liminality as a process which begins with the first manifestations of their malignancy. An initial acute phase of liminality is marked by disorientation, a sense of loss and of loss of control, and a sense of uncertainty. An adaptive, enduring phase of suspended liminality supervenes, in which each patient constructs and reconstructs meaning for their experience by means of narrative. This phase persists, probably for the rest of the cancer patient's life. The experience of liminality is firmly grounded in the changing and experiencing body that houses both the disease and the self. Insights into the nature of the experience can be gained from the Existentialist philosophers and from the history of attitudes to death. Understanding liminality helps us to understand what it is that patients with cancer (and other serious illnesses) seek from the system to which they turn for help. Its explication should therefore be important for those who provide health care, those who educate health care workers and those concerned to study and use outcomes as administrative and policy making instruments.

Corporate performance measures and stocks' prices returns : the case of Greece, 1992-2001

This study aims first at examining the value relevance of traditional accounting (EPS, ROI, and ROE) and value-based (SVA and EVA®) performance measures, in explaining stock returns’ variation in the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). Pooled time-series, cross sectional data on 163 Greek companies listed in the ASE over the period 1991-2001 have been employed to examine this question. Relative information content tests revealed EPS, followed by EVA®, to be more closely associated with stock returns than ROI, ROE or SVA. However, the incremental information content tests suggested that EVA® adds more explanatory power to EPS than ROI, ROE and SVA. The significant role or ROI was also revealed. Since the performance measures under examination could not explain more than 13 percent of the variation in stock returns, the second aim of this study was to examine the perceptions and the investment strategies of market participants investing in the ASE. An empirical survey conducted from December 2003 to June 2004 asking from all user groups (official Members of the ASE, Mutual Funds Management Companies, Portfolio Investment Companies, Listed Companies, brokers, and Individual Investors) participating in the ASE to determine their investing practices. Data from 435 returned questionnaires revealed that although the professional investors follow the international practices (use fundamental analysis mostly), the individual investors and the brokers were more short-term focussed. Additionally, individual investors showed that they rely more on their instinct/experience and information from rumours and from the newspapers/media. However, this empirical research revealed the dynamic that EVA® conveys and the increasing interest of market participants in Greece. Overall, the contribution of his study comes from the fact that introduces the shareholder value added approach in the Greek capital market, and moreover, from its two unique samples, the methodology, and the revealed findings. Finally, it serves as a market paradigm both for the Greek context and for the emerging markets with the same market characteristics as Greece.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo