3,548 research outputs found

    THE ORGANIC LABEL: HOW TO RECONCILE ITS MEANING WITH CONSUMER PREFERENCES

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    The USDA's National Organic Program (NOP), with its unified definition and labeling requirements, holds great promise for increasing commerce in and decreasing transaction costs associated with purchasing organic food. However, the label and its meaning must both be well understood and reflect the traits consumers want if this promise is to be realized. This paper reports the results of a survey and experimental auction on consumers' preferences for organic standards. On one hand, the USDA NOP's Final Rule broadly conforms to consumer preferences regarding what practices should or should not be permitted in organic production and processing. Consumers support a strict definition of organic in general, opposing the use of a variety of practices historically banned by organic certifiers. For example, both the survey and auction methods found that consumers support the banning of Genetically Modified Organisms in organic food and are willing to pay a premium to avoid them. Consumers are also in accord with the Final Rule's exclusion of irradiation, biosolids, growth regulators, etc. On the other hand, the survey and auction results reveal a lack of understanding of the label's meaning as well as a disconnect between the label's function (detailing acceptable production practices) and consumers' stated motivations for buying organic (e.g., support for a local sustainable food system). Implications of these findings for decision makers in policy and industry are discussed. Of particular focus will be the role of these agents in promoting products that allow consumers to purchase items that reflect and support these values.Consumer/Household Economics,

    What factors are most influential in increasing cervical cancer screening attendance? An online study of UK-based women1

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    Objective: Cervical cancer is the fourth most commonly occurring cancer in women worldwide. The UK has one of the highest cervical screening rates in Europe, yet attendance has been decreasing. This study aimed to identify barriers and facilitators to screening attendance and assess the perceived importance of these factors. Methods: 194 women living in the UK were recruited via an online research recruitment website to an online survey. Most participants (N = 128, 66.0%) were currently up-to-date with cervical screening, 66 participants (34.0%) had never been screened, or were overdue for screening. Participants identified barriers and facilitators to cervical screening attendance via free-text responses and were also asked to rate a list of factors as most to least influential over decision making. Results were analysed using thematic content analysis and ratings analysed using multivariable analyses. Results: The most commonly reported barriers were: Pain/discomfort; Embarrassment; and Time. These were also rated as most influential for decision making. The most commonly reported facilitators were: Ease of making appointments; Peace of mind; and Fear of cancer/preventing serious illness. While importance rating of barriers did not differ by previous screening behaviour, ratings of some facilitators significantly differed. Up-to-date women rated believing screening is potentially life-saving and part of personal responsibility as significantly more important than overdue/never screened women. Conclusion: This study confirmed that factors which encourage screening are key to the decision of whether to attend screening. Women suggested several improvements that might make attending easier and improve uptake, including flexibility of screening locations to fit around work hours and childcare arrangements. Psychological facilitators included the peace of mind that screening brings and the belief that cervical cancer screening is potentially life-saving. Public health interventions should target factors which facilitate screening and how these interplay with barriers in order to improve uptake

    Archiving Black Movements: Shifting Power and Exploring a Community-Centered Approach

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    With the move towards both critical information literacy and community-centered archives, cultural heritage and information professionals have been called to further interrogate our role as collectors and catalogers of materials. We know that the preservation and description of objects, records, and ephemera ascribe historical meaning, are culturally bound, and impact understanding beyond our lifetime. In this heightened time of social injustice, Black librarians, archivists, and curators are collaborating with community and organizing groups to select and preserve materials related to uprisings in real-time. However, there is a disconnect from the records and items selected for the archives and materials valued by the organizers themselves. There is also a lack of published texts centering the approaches and materials of Black people organizing for their own communities as a part of the archival record with few exceptions. Knowing there is power in the archives, there must be careful consideration to the prioritization and representation of Black communities in their own words. In the following conversations, we thought critically about the provenance and authority of records found on the internet and how archivists should consider materials created by organizers and those created by the community at large. We facilitated three interviews with activists and organizers whose work focuses on the liberation of Black lives globally to both frame and interrogate current archival practices. These interviews explored our archival approach, specifically centering the narratives of the people on the ground. Through these conversations, we discussed the state of organizing and creating digital content as well as how cultural heritage professionals should prioritize the histories of various movements for Black life globally. The interviewees included activists and organizers from the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party (1968-1970s), Black Nashville Assembly, and formerly of Black Lives Matter (2013-present), and End SARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad) movement (2020-present) in Nigeria. In shaping this conversation, we considered these key questions:  What objects speak to your “work”? What content do you think will help future generations understand past and present movements around Black life? How can cultural heritage professionals determine what is created by BLM, BPP, etc. versus what is contributed by the community-at-large? What does Black liberation look like to you? This article outlines and reimagines archival work as community-based, highly collaborative, and iterative for professionals outside of Black social and political movements. With a focus on intentionality around the communities impacted, individuals involved, and the movements at large, we framed what archival materials are important to Black organizers of our time. With their insight, cultural heritage and archival professionals can create deliberate processes to get direct feedback from the creators themselves for the archives. Overall, this article aims to introduce ways of thinking to decentralize power in archival collections and provide agency to organizers through their own historical record. Pre-print first published online 8/5/202

    The question-behaviour effect: a theoretical and methodological review and meta-analysis

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    Research has demonstrated that asking people questions about a behaviour can lead to behaviour change. Despite many, varied studies in different domains, it is only recently that this phenomenon has been studied under the umbrella term of the question-behaviour effect (QBE) and moderators of the effect have been investigated. With a particular focus on our own contributions, this article: (1) provides an overview of QBE research; (2) reviews and offers new evidence concerning three theoretical accounts of the QBE (behavioural simulation and processing fluency; attitude accessibility; cognitive dissonance); (3) reports a new meta-analysis of QBE studies (k = 66, reporting 94 tests) focusing on methodological moderators. The findings of this meta-analysis support a small significant effect of the QBE (g = 0.14, 95% CI = 0.11, 0.18, p < .001) with smaller effect sizes observed in more carefully controlled studies that exhibit less risk of bias and (4) also considers directions for future research on the QBE, especially studies that use designs with low risk of bias and consider desirable and undesirable behaviour separately

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    Growth and Characterization of Ce- Substituted Nd2Fe14B Single Crystals

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    Single crystals of (Nd1-xCex)2Fe14B are grown out of Fe-(Nd,Ce) flux. Chemical and structural analysis of the crystals indicates that (Nd1-xCex)2Fe14B forms a solid solution until at least x = 0.38 with a Vegard-like variation of the lattice constants with x. Refinements of single crystal neutron diffraction data indicate that Ce has a slight site preference (7:3) for the 4g rare earth site over the 4f site. Magnetization measurements show that for x = 0.38 the saturation magnetization at 400 K, a temperature important to applications, falls from 29.8 for the parent Nd2Fe14B to 27.6 (mu)B/f.u., the anisotropy field decreases from 5.5 T to 4.7 T, and the Curie temperature decreases from 586 to 543 K. First principles calculations carried out within density functional theory are used to explain the decrease in magnetic properties due to Ce substitution. Though the presence of the lower-cost and more abundant Ce slightly affects these important magnetic characteristics, this decrease is not large enough to affect a multitude of applications. Ce-substituted Nd2Fe14B is therefore a potential high-performance permanent magnet material with substantially reduced Nd content.Comment: 11 Pages, 8 figures, 5 table
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