The Applicability of Behaviour Change in Intervention Programmes Targeted at Ending Female Genital Mutilation in the EU:Integrating Social Cognitive and Community Level Approaches

With increased migration, female genital mutilation (FGM) also referred to as female circumcision or female genital cutting is no longer restricted to Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The European Parliament estimates that up to half a million women living in the EU have been subjected to FGM, with a further 180,000 at risk. Aware of the limited success of campaigns addressing FGM, the World Health Organization recommended a behavioural change approach be implemented in order to end FGM. To date, however, little progress has been made in adopting a behaviour change approach in strategies aimed at ending FGM. Based on research undertaken as part of the EU’s Daphne III programme, which researched FGM intervention programmes linked to African communities in the EU (REPLACE), this paper argues that behaviour change has not been implemented due to a lack of understanding relating to the application of the two broad categories of behaviour change approach: individualistic decision-theoretic and community-change game-theoretic approaches, and how they may be integrated to aid our understanding and the development of future intervention strategies. We therefore discuss how these can be integrated and implemented using community-based participatory action research methods with affected communities

A Case Study on Artefact-based RE Improvement in Practice

Most requirements engineering (RE) process improvement approaches are solution-driven and activity-based. They focus on the assessment of the RE of a company against an external norm of best practices. A consequence is that practitioners often have to rely on an improvement approach that skips a profound problem analysis and that results in an RE approach that might be alien to the organisational needs. In recent years, we have developed an RE improvement approach (called \emph{ArtREPI}) that guides a holistic RE improvement against individual goals of a company putting primary attention to the quality of the artefacts. In this paper, we aim at exploring ArtREPI's benefits and limitations. We contribute an industrial evaluation of ArtREPI by relying on a case study research. Our results suggest that ArtREPI is well-suited for the establishment of an RE that reflects a specific organisational culture but to some extent at the cost of efficiency resulting from intensive discussions on a terminology that suits all involved stakeholders. Our results reveal first benefits and limitations, but we can also conclude the need of longitudinal and independent investigations for which we herewith lay the foundation

The difficult task of predicting the costs of community-based mental health care. A comprehensive case register study.

Previous studies have attempted to forecast the costs of mental health care, using clinical and individual variables; the inclusion of ecological measures could improve the knowledge of predictors of psychiatric service utilisation and costs to support clinical and strategic decision-making

The role of water markets in climate change adaptation

Abstract Water markets were first introduced in Australia in the 1980s, and water entitlement and allocation trade have been increasingly adopted by both private individuals and government.Irrigators turned to water markets (particularly for allocation water) to manage water scarcity and Governments to acquire water for the environment (particularly water entitlements. It is expected that further adoption of water markets will be essential for coping with future climate change impacts. This report reviews the available literature related to the relationship between southern Murray-Darling Basin (sMDB) water markets and anticipated climate change effects; the economic, social and environmental impacts of water reallocation through markets; and future development requirements to enhance positive outcomes in these areas. The use of water markets by irrigators can involve both transformational (selling all water entitlements and relocating or switching to dryland) and incremental (e.g. buying water allocations/entitlements, using carry-over, changing water management techniques) adaptation to climate change. Barriers to both adaptations include: current and future climate uncertainty; poor (or non-existent) market signals; financial constraints; information barriers; mental processing limits; inherent attitudes toward or beliefs about climate change; institutional barriers and disincentives to adapt. A better understanding of trade behaviour, especially strategic trade issues that can lead to market failures, will improve the economic advantages of water trade. There remains community concerns about the impacts of transfers away from regional areas such as reduced community spending and reinvestment; population losses; loss of jobs; declining taxation base, loss of local services and businesses, regional production changes; and legacy issues for remaining farmers. However, it is hard to disentangle these impacts from those caused by ongoing structural change in agriculture. Rural communities that are most vulnerable to water scarcity under climate change and water trade adjustment include smaller irrigation-dependent towns. Communities less dependent on irrigation are better able to adapt. Further, where environmental managers use water markets to deal with water variability and to ensure ecological benefits, irrigators are concerned about its impact on their traditional use of markets to manage scarcity. Climate change and water scarcity management are intertwined, suggesting that policy, institutional and governance arrangements to deal with such issues should be similarly structured. Water users will adapt, either out of necessity or opportunity. The cost of that adaptation at individual, regional and national levels—particularly to future water supply variability—can be mitigated by the consideration of the existing advantages from future opportunities for water marketing in Australia

Using Bikeshare Datasets to Improve Urban Cycling Experience and Research Urban Cycling Behaviour

With access to public and shared transport systems becoming increasingly digitized, transaction datasets of unprecedented size as well as temporal and spatial precision are automatically generated (Blythe and Bryan 2007; Bagchi and White 2005; Pelletier et al. 2011). Data collected through smartcard payment methods are perhaps the largest and most obvious example. Although introduced for the purpose of improving payment processes, such data provide a detailed view of demand on a transport system, the potential for service improvements to be suggested (Ferrari et al. 2014) and an opportunity for studying individual traveller behaviour (Agard et al. 2006; Morency et al. 2006; Lathia et al. 2013). A substantial benefit of such data over more traditional data collection methods is that a complete and total record of usage for every smartcard customer is automatically generated (Bagchi and White 2005). Problems associated with sampling and recall bias, which make actively collected travel surveys somewhat difficult to administer, are avoided. The two most obvious disadvantages, at least for travel behaviour research, are that those individuals using smartcard technology may not be representative of the total population using that system or navigating a city more generally; and that variables such as individual trip purpose can only be inferred since they are not recorded directly

Discovery exhibition: using spatial treemaps in local authority decision making and reporting

At Leicestershire County Council we are using spatial treemaps to analyse labour markets and commuting behaviour. This novel visualization technique, presented at InfoVis 2008, has resulted in a number of insights and discoveries. Transport planners in our organization indicate that the graphics are effective and have advantages over alternatives. As researchers in the local authority we report upon using these graphics to inform decision makers and residents in the county’s evidence base for sustainable transport planning