An interactive course to enhance self-efficacy of family practitioners to treat obesity

BACKGROUND: Physicians' awareness of their important role in defusing the obesity epidemic has increased. However, the number of family practitioners who treat obesity problems continues to be low. Self-efficacy refers to the belief in one's ability to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments. Thus, practitioners who judge themselves incapable of managing obesity do not even try. We hypothesized that practitioners' self-efficacy and motivation would be enhanced as a result of participating in an interactive course designed to enrich their knowledge of obesity management. METHODS: Twenty-nine family practitioners participated in the course, which was accompanied by qualitative interviews. The difference between the physicians' pre-course and post-course appraisals was tested by paired t-test. The interviews were analyzed by qualitative methods. RESULTS: Post-course efficacy appraisals were significantly higher than pre-course appraisals (p < 0.0005). A deeper insight on the practitioners' self-efficacy processes was gained through reflection of the practitioners on their self-efficacy during the interviews. CONCLUSIONS: Up-to-date information and workshops where skills, attitudes and social support were addressed were important in making the program effective

Building Online Platforms for Peer Support Groups as a Persuasive Behavioural Change Technique

Online peer group approach is inherently a persuasive technique as it is centered on peer pressure and surveillance. They are persuasive social net- works equipped with tools and facilities that enable behaviour change. This paper presents the case for domain-specific persuasive social networks and provides insights on problematic and addictive behaviour change. A 4-month study was conducted in an addiction rehab centre in the UK, followed by 2-month study in an online peer group system. The study adopted qualitative methods to under- stand the broad parameters of peer groups including the sessions' environment, norms, interaction styles occurring between groups' members and how such in- teractions are governed. The qualitative techniques used were (1) observations, (2) form and document analysis, and (3) semi-structured interviews. The findings concern governing such groups in addition to the roles to be enabled and tasks to be performed. The Honeycomb framework was revisited to comment on its build- ing blocks with the purpose of highlighting points to consider when building do- main-specific social networks for such domain, i.e. online peer groups to combat addictive behaviour

Fourth Worlds and neo-Fordism: American Apparel and the cultural economy of consumer anxiety

This article examines the strategies of the 'sweatshop-free' clothing company American Apparel in the context of ongoing debates over the cultural turn and cultural economy. American Apparel's key selling point is that it does not outsource: it manufactures in Los Angeles, California, pays 'good' wages and provides health care, yet the workers are not unionized and the migrant labour it depends upon is often temporary. These same employees are used in promotional material to create its brand identity of an irreverent, hip and quasi-sexualized 'community' of consumers and workers. A design- and brand-led company that nonetheless does not see itself as a brand in any conventional sense, and markets itself as 'transparent', the company's ethos turns on consumer anxiety towards the socio-economic injustices of post-Fordism. Indeed, it marks a partial return to Fordist modes of production by aiming to manufacture everything under one roof, whilst deploying modes of informality (and technology) stereotypically associated with the post-Fordist creative industries. This paper considers the complex dynamics of American Apparel's emergence in a reflexive marketplace (in relation to what Callon has termed an 'economy of qualities') and discusses its problematic negotiations with 'fourth worlds', or the zones of exclusion Castells terms 'the black holes of informational capitalism'