Barriers to obesity communication - Power, habitus and hidden assumptions

Communication on health issues often founders on the avoidance or denial of key messages by intended recipients. This paper explores the development and application of a research methodology combining elements of Pierre Bourdieu’s work on the unconscious nature of practice with Gerhard Maletzke’s psychological model of communication. This combination was designed to elicit deeper responses than those often found in health communication research. This alternative methodological approach was used to evaluate a year-long, city-wide anti-obesity campaign in Sheffield, UK, which targeted key gatekeepers in the message chain; their responses generate useful insights into resistance to uncomfortable communication. The paper concludes with suggestions for addressing communication about obesity and potentially other uncomfortable health and social topics

Pictorial display of materials and processes aids in fabricating complex assemblies

Method uses assembly consisting of single pictorial display showing cutaway view of assembly, subassemblies identified by name and materials, and processes identified by both specification and commercial design. Display is used in engineering, manufacturing, and personnel training

The evolution of public relations research –an overview

The field of public relations is often misunderstood, due to its hybridity, complexity and competing perspectives within the field of scholarship. This essay, which is based on extensive engagement with literature conducted over decades of teaching and researching the subject, outlines the main schools of thought within the field. These are summarised as a) Excellence; b) Advocacy; c) Dialogue; and d) Critical and Cultural approaches. Each perspective reflects variations in understanding of the role of public relations in theory and practice, ranging from an idealised conceptualisation of the practitioner to a demonised view of the practice. It refers throughout to different attitudes to ethics found within these schools, as approaches to ethics provide insight into understandings of the role of public relations within society. The piece concludes with reflections on the growing engagement with promotional culture and emerging research directions

Doubly Robust Kernel Statistics for Testing Distributional Treatment Effects Even Under One Sided Overlap

As causal inference becomes more widespread the importance of having good tools to test for causal effects increases. In this work we focus on the problem of testing for causal effects that manifest in a difference in distribution for treatment and control. We build on work applying kernel methods to causality, considering the previously introduced Counterfactual Mean Embedding framework (\textsc{CfME}). We improve on this by proposing the \emph{Doubly Robust Counterfactual Mean Embedding} (\textsc{DR-CfME}), which has better theoretical properties than its predecessor by leveraging semiparametric theory. This leads us to propose new kernel based test statistics for distributional effects which are based upon doubly robust estimators of treatment effects. We propose two test statistics, one which is a direct improvement on previous work and one which can be applied even when the support of the treatment arm is a subset of that of the control arm. We demonstrate the validity of our methods on simulated and real-world data, as well as giving an application in off-policy evaluation.Comment: 9 pages, Preprin

Between a rock and a hard place: publishing issues in public relations and communication management

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the pressures to publish facing European public relations (PR) and communication management scholars across career stages. Design/methodology/approach The Delphi method was used with PR and communication management scholars at associate professor level or higher across Europe. An online survey was then shared with the wider academic community to gather insights from scholars at different career stages. Findings The suitability and status of the journal and the language of the outputs are considered. Academics are caught between the rock of publishing inside the field to support its development and the hard place of being required to publish in high-ranking journals for funding and promotion. Scholars are evaluated regularly, with journal articles being the main unit of assessment. Academics, regardless of career stage, feel under pressure to publish. Research limitations/implications The wider survey enabled publishing insights to be gathered from academics across the career spectrum, but it was completed by a small sample. Nevertheless, similar concerns emerged from both methods of data gathering, suggesting a clear agenda for discussion and further research. Practical implications PR and communications management is an academic discipline without an accepted list of high-impact journals. This study provides an annotated journal list to aid institutional evaluations, aid scholarly journal publishing decisions and support early career researchers navigating the publishing process. Originality/value This adds to the somewhat limited discussion regarding how academics in PR and communication management decide where to publish and provides a resource that can be used by scholars, institutions and funders

The UK market for energy service contracts in 2014–2015

This paper provides an overview of the UK market for energy service contracts in 2014 and highlights the growing role of intermediaries. Using information from secondary literature and interviews, it identifies the businesses offering energy service contracts, the sectors and organisations that are purchasing those contracts, the types of contract that are available, the areas of market growth and the reasons for that growth. The paper finds that the UK market is relatively large, highly diverse, concentrated in particular sectors and types of site and overwhelmingly focused upon established technologies with high rates of return. A major driver is the emergence of procurement frameworks for energy service contracts in the public sector. These act as intermediaries between clients and contractors, thereby lowering transaction costs and facilitating learning. The market is struggling to become established in commercial offices, largely as a result of split incentives, and is unlikely to develop further in this sector without different business models, tenancy arrangements and policy initiatives. Overall, the paper concludes that energy service contracts can play an important role in the transition to a low-carbon economy, especially when supported by intermediaries, but their potential is still limited by high transaction costs

The co-evolutionary relationship between energy service companies and the UK energy system: Implications for a low-carbon transition

The Energy Service Company (ESCo) business model is designed to reward businesses by satisfying consumers' energy needs at less cost and with fewer carbon emissions via energy demand management and/or sustainable supply measures. In contrast, the revenue of the incumbent Energy Utility Company (EUCo) model is coupled with the sale of units of energy, which are predominantly sourced from fossil fuels. The latter is currently dominant in the UK. This paper addresses two questions. First, why has the ESCo model traditionally been confined to niche applications? Second, what role is the ESCo model likely to play in the transition to a low-carbon UK energy system? To answer these, the paper examines the core characteristics of the ESCo model, relative to the EUCo model. The paper then examines how ESCos have co-evolved with the various dimensions of the energy system (i.e. ecosystems, institutions, user practices, technologies and business models) to provide insight into how ESCos might help to shape the future UK energy system. We suggest that institutional and technological changes within the UK energy system could result in a more favourable selection environment for ESCos, consequently enabling the ESCo model to proliferate at the expense of the EUCo model. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd