A comparative analysis of men's reluctance to seek health care : performing masculinity and deflecting blame : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology at Massey University

Men have higher rates of premature mortality than women and may arguably have higher of rates of morbidity. An explanation frequently offered to account for these gendered health differences is that men are reluctant to seek health care. This research, within a social constructionist framework, explores the discursive construction of men's reluctance to seek help by investigating through a comparative analysis the ways in which two small groups of men from different socio-economic locations make sense of the reluctance to seek help notion, as well as the implications of this discursive and social positioning for the enactment of their lives. Individual unstructured interviews with nine, mid-aged New Zealand men were analysed using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Two dominant discourses were identified in the men's accounts. A discourse of masculinity, which constructs reluctance to seek health care as a form of idealised masculinity, was draw upon by both working-class and professional men. In a contradictory account, working class men also drew on an impediment discourse, which constructs reluctance to seek help as a product of restrictive contextual factors that limit the health practices that men can undertake. Utilisation of the masculinity discourse enabled both groups of men to present themselves as masculine men and perform gender as socially prescribed. The impediment discourse also allowed working-class men to present themselves as victims of circumstance and deflect blame for their unwillingness to seek help from themselves to socio-structural restraints. Presenting themselves as masculine men and victims of circumstance was problematic for the men, as each of these positions was fraught with ambivalence. Their accounts reflect a series of unresolved tensions and dilemmas as they worked through the conflicts between the preservation of their social identity, acknowledging the need to seek help, and deflecting blame. They render overt the interplay between gender, power, and social class. These men's accounts are consistent with previous research that indicates that men are reluctant to seek help, but ascribe this to social expectations and socio-structural constraints. rather than individual choice. Reluctance to seek health care is thus reframed as a social issue

The nonparticipation of year 10 female students in coeducational physical education in a metropolitan senior high school

The nonparticipation of girls in coeducational physical education and physical recreation is of continuing concern to physical educators. It is apparent through observation that numerous girls opt out of physical activity by providing a variety of excuses or simply by remaining unchanged for physical education classes. The purpose of this study was to explore the stated reasons for the nonparticipation by Year 10 girls in coeducational physical education at Lynwood Senior High School. The primary technique utilized in ascertaining information was the structured interview format. Each Year 10 girl who presented to physical educ3tion classes as a nonparticipant was interviewed individually to determine reasons for nonparticipation. The corresponding class teacher was also interviewed to provide additional information regarding participation patterns. In addition, an analysis of notes presented to the teacher allowed a comparison with excuses given in the student interview. Document analysis of the Student Handbook (1989), School policy and physical. Education class rolls served to determine student nonparticipant numbers and school nonparticipation policy. This enabled an examination of the extent of the problem at the selected school. On average, 24.15% of the girls in each Year 10 physical education class did not participate during the two week period of this study. There were three main stated reasons that were causing female nonparticipation at the school. The most predominant factor found to be causing nonparticipation was girls not bringing their physical education uniform. Secondly, it was evident that a dislike of a specific sport (touch football) was resulting in a number of girls opting out of physical education. The final factor identified was a variety of medical problems

Conceptualising Capabilities and Dimensions of Advantage as Needs

Amartya Sen’s critique of the concept of need and his case for the superiority of capability as a measure of advantage have been highly influential. However, Sen perpetuates a caricature. Needs are not necessarily mere instrumental resource requirements achieving ends; the valuable ends of people’s lives can themselves constitute needs, as can freedoms. Indeed, these ideas are already present in basic needs theory. Moreover, official disavowals notwithstanding, expansive notions of need are implicitly present in certain important theories of capabilities and other advantages. Objections to need can be undermined in part by showing how this is the case. Aversion to need is unfortunate, because the concept offers powerful theoretical resources that could be better exploited if negative preconceptions were overcome and need were explicitly embraced. However, this proposal is friendly. It is not that need should replace, but that it can augment, other concepts. Drawing on need may assist with: selecting important capabilities or dimensions of advantage; marking a distinction of seriousness between these and relatively trivial advantages (and buttressing claims to the ethical or political priority of the former); explaining the incommensurability/non-substitutability of certain capabilities and dimensions of advantage, and; defining notions of sufficiency

Non-Basic Needs: Making Space for Incommensurability in the Structure of Well-Being

The concept of need is commonly overlooked by philosophers and social scientists. Often considered exclusively instrumental and/or demarcating minimal attainments, needs are commonly allowed only a minor role in accounts of well-being and related moral and political theories. While this may be true of some conceptions of needs, this thesis defends the critical importance of a different kind of need. These ‘personal needs’ fulfil all necessary conditions for genuine needs, but instead mark out ultimate ends that are far from basic. Moreover, rather than representing preconditions for the lives of human beings in general, personal needs are specific to individuals. Yet also unlike subjective preferences and aims, personal needs are the requirements of things a person is objectively committed to and cannot give up. // Personal needs directly relate to a person’s private evaluation of their own life. Yet they also have wide relevance to other contexts of evaluation within and without philosophy. They play a structural role in a new framework for conceptualising well-being and its role in ethics and policy. In particular, personal needs introduce incommensurability into the fundamental structure of persons’ interests. Located in the same context of individual choice as utility theory, they represent a direct, fundamental challenge to formally monistic teleological conceptions of well-being prevailing in much of social science, policy, and philosophy. Among various potential connections, this framework promises to (a) make sense of some people’s claims that they cannot be compensated for certain losses, (b) help motivate the incommensurability claimed to exist between dimensions in multidimensional well-being measurement (including those drawing on the capabilities approach), and (c) inform approaches to interpersonal distribution that oppose aggregation. This thesis also touches on issues concerning the concept of well-being, the objectivity or subjectivity of well-being, axiology, and coherentist practical reason

The Structure of Well-Being: Incommensurability, Needs, and Sufficiency

As it is discussed in philosophy, economics, and some other social sciences, well-being is very commonly conceived of and treated in quantificational terms. However, it is difficult, if not impossible to make room in the quantificational conception of well-being for any notion of sufficiency––of having enough in a sense that it is especially ethically significant that people attain. This difficulty with sufficiency is encapsulated by the Threshold Problem: that of non-arbitrarily specifying a sufficiency level on a scale of well-being. This thesis takes this difficulty and this problem as an opportunity to investigate deeper problems with the quantifying approach. One line of inquiry pursued is whether a theory of needs could solve the Threshold Problem. To this end existing theories of needs are surveyed, but found wanting. The central element of the thesis, however, is a critique of the quantifying account of well-being emerging from a discussion of value incommensurability––which in turn provides resources for the development of an account of the structure of well-being. This account presents a new theory of needs, and analyses well-being in terms of needs. It avoids the Threshold Problem, because well-being is no longer a level at which a person is, nor an amount of anything they have. Rather, both having enough and being well are to have everything one needs

Measurement of the e ffective lifetime of the B0 s meson using the flavour speci fic decay Bs → D-s π + at the LHCb experiment.

This thesis presents a measurement of the effective B0s decay width, ΓFS, from a single exponential fit to the flavour-specific decay channel B0s → D-s π +. This measurement is based on an integrated luminosity of 340 pb-1 recorded by LHCb in 2011 at a center of mass energy of 7TeV. The dataset is divided into two exclusive selections. B0s → D-s (( ϕ →K-K+) π-)π + only has a significant background contribution arising from combinatorial background, and the modelling of this is determined entirely by the data. B0s → D-s ((K-K* (892)0 → K+ π-))π + has a larger contribution from combinatoric and mis-identified background and provides an alternative measurement. A simultaneous fit for the effective B0s decay width is performed to both the datasets leading to the result: ΓFS = 0:668 ± 0:017 ± 0:031 ps-1 The result is then combined with information from the LHCb B0s → J/ψØ analysis leading to an improved measurement of the average B0 s decay width: Γs = 0:666 ± 0:010 ± 0:031 ps-

Understanding the issues and factors of crowdsourcing tasks in a call centre environment

This research project aims to gain a deeper understanding of what it would take to meet the opportunity of converting the wasted time waiting to speak to call centre agents into a productive and worthwhile activity. The primary ambition is to understand the factors and issues that will firstly affect the task structure, such as instructions and length of play, and secondly the motivations and perceptions of the users taking part in such a task. The effect of context is also investigated to understand the difference in outputs of standalone audio-only tasks and tasks in the call centre environment. As a landline telephone is the lowest common denominator for contacting call centres it restricts the type of task to only audio or dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) input; a unique angle for investigation in both crowdsourcing and human computation fields where tasks are usually conducted online. The study conducts twelve semi-structured interviews under laboratory conditions to understand the issues and factors. These include use of a prototype audio-only task to stimulate reaction to factors that were believed would affect task success such as interruptions and content of instructions. The tasks created were music tagging games called Label the music and Tag it, both based around previous research of a similar online task by Turnball et al. (2007). In the interviews participants interact with the tagging games through placing three phone calls; removing any chance of visual stimuli in the game. They placed two calls to a theoretical call centre where they were invited to play the game instead of listening to hold music and a further third call to the game on its own to measure the differing task effects. It successfully concludes some principle factors that will affect audio-only tasks. The users’ background including preferences, health, propensity to learn and memory skills are key considerations for recruitment. It also finds a sense of task entrapment for a certain period of time can hinder the process, user perception of time compare with the actual length of time participating can vary greatly. Conversely to tasks which have both audio and visual input if these music tagging tasks were interrupted and instructions were not simple enough there was a negative effect on users’ memory and enjoyment. The research finds that this type of task has great potential, although there is much scope for future research into the viability of such a task before it could become an activity presented to general society for human computation or crowdsourcing purposes

Parent perceptions of their child’s and their own physical activity after treatment for childhood cancer

Purpose: Parents are important facilitators of physical activity for children, yet little is known about the perceptions of parents of childhood cancer survivors. We investigated parent perceptions of their own and their child’s physical activity levels after cancer treatment and examined associations with clinical, demographic, and psychosocial factors. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey among 125 parents and 125 survivors. Parents reported on the perceived importance of their child being physically active and concerns regarding exercising after cancer treatment. Results: Parents and survivors self-reported median (range) of 127.5 (0–1260) and 220 (0–1470) min/week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Most parents (n = 109, 98%) believed that physical activity was highly important for their child. Some parents (n = 19, 17%) reported concerns, most commonly regarding exercise safety (n = 7, 22%). Parents were more likely to perceive that their child should increase physical activity if their child was an adolescent and had high body fat percentage. Conclusions: Physical activity levels varied widely among survivors, reflecting factors including parents’ lifestyles, limited understanding of exercise benefits and perceptions of risk. Given survivors’ insufficient physical activity levels and sedentary behaviour among families, embedding physical activity promotion into health systems and follow-up support could benefit the entire family unit

Piloting a parent and patient decision aid to support clinical trial decision making in childhood cancer

Objective: Families of a child with cancer can find the decision to enrol in a clinical trial challenging and often misunderstand key concepts that underpin trials. We pilot tested “Delta,” an online and booklet decision aid for parents with a child with cancer, and adolescents with cancer, deciding whether or not to enrol in a clinical trial. Methods: We developed Delta in accordance with the International Patient Decision Aid Standards. We conducted a pre-post pilot with parents with a child, and adolescents, who had enrolled in a paediatric phase III clinical trial for newly diagnosed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Parents (n = 37) and adolescents (n = 3) completed a questionnaire before and after using Delta (either the website or booklet, based on their preference). Results: Twenty-three parents (62.2%) and three adolescents (100%) reviewed the Delta website. Parents rated Delta as highly acceptable in regard to being clearly presented, informative, easy to read, useful, visually appealing, and easy to use. All participants reported that they would recommend Delta to others and that it would have been useful when making their decision. Parents' subjective (Mdiff=10.8, SDdiff = 15.69, P <.001) and objective (OR = 2.25, 95% CI, 1.66-3.04; P <.001) clinical trial knowledge increased significantly after reviewing Delta. Conclusions: To our knowledge, Delta is the first reported decision aid, available online and as a booklet, for parents and adolescents deciding whether or not to enrol in a paediatric oncology clinical trial. Our study suggests that Delta is acceptable, feasible, and potentially useful