Effects of Movement Behaviors on Overall Health and Appetite Control: Current Evidence and Perspectives in Children and Adolescents

Purpose of Review To present the definitions and recommendations for movement behaviors in children and adolescents, including physical activity (PA), sedentary behaviors (SB), and sleep, and to provide an overview regarding their impact on health and obesity outcomes from childhood to adulthood, as well as interactions with appetite control. Recent Findings PA represents a variable proportion of daily energy expenditure and one can be active with high SB or vice versa. Studies have described movements across the whole day on a continuum from sleep to SB to varying intensities of PA. More PA, less SB (e.g., less screen time) and longer sleep are positively associated with indicators of physical health (e.g., lower BMI, adiposity, cardiometabolic risk) and cognitive development (e.g., motor skills, academic achievement). However, less than 10% of children currently meet recommendations for all three movement behaviors. Movement behaviors, adiposity, and related cardiometabolic diseases in childhood track into adolescence and adulthood. Furthermore, low PA/high SB profiles are associated with increased energy intake. Recent studies investigating energy balance regulation showed that desirable movement behavior profiles are associated with better appetite control and improved eating habits. Summary Early identification of behavioral phenotypes and a comprehensive approach addressing all key behaviors that directly affect energy balance will allow for individual strategies to prevent or treat obesity and its comorbidities. Investigating exercise as a potential “corrector” of impaired appetite control offers a promising weight management approach.

Do religious identity and media messages join forces? Young Dutch Muslims’ identification management strategies in the Netherlands

This study investigates, using an experimental study, the consequences of negative and positive media messages on young Muslims by gaining insight into who, and under which circumstances, engages in certain collective or individual identity-management strategies. Based on Social Identity Theory (SIT) and previous literature, we expect that negative and more positive media messages moderate the relationship between the degree of identification with the religious group and the application of identity-management strategies. Factor analyses illustrate the presence of at least three types of strategies: collective-fight strategies (meaning one is willing to fight for the group), collective flight-strategies (that entail no change of the status quo) and individual strategies (strategies that solely benefit the individual). Contributions are made empirically and theoretically. Empirically, we measure and group all proposed identity-management strategies based on our findings among the same research population. Theoretically, we hypothesise about how both negative and positive media messages condition the role of religious saliency for Muslims’ identity-management strategies. Results from a survey-embedded experiment among Dutch Moroccan and Turkish Muslims show that high identifiers are more likely to apply fight strategies, and less likely to apply individual strategies (in line with SIT). Regardless of tone, exposure to messages mentioning Muslims make the application of fight strategies more likely among high identifiers. Meanwhile lower identifiers feel a reduced need for change when exposed to more positive messages. These insights in the (mutual) role of religious identification and media messages shed new light on how media messages can bring about group distances, intergroup conflicts and intragroup cohesion and provide a stepping-stone for future research to further insight in the systemic and long-term implications thereof.

Doing and undoing gender: women professionals' persistence in technology occupations

PurposeThis study aims to identify women professionals' strategies to persist in the male-dominated technology industry situated in the Bangladeshi socio-cultural context.Design/methodology/approachIn-depth interviews with women tech professionals were conducted to identify and explore the strategies. Thematic coding was used for data analysis.FindingsThe findings suggest that the complex interplay of macro-, meso- and micro-factors pushes women to defy societal and gender norms in their choice and persistence, yet they simultaneously conform to these norms. By simultaneous expressions of doing and undoing gender, these women dealt with hierarchies and inequalities, navigated masculinized industry and empowered themselves within a patriarchal culture. The strategies effectively allowed them to demonstrate agency and persist in tech occupations.Research limitations/implicationsThe study participants were women and recruited using snowball sampling. Future research could benefit from recruiting a larger, more varied sample using random sampling.Practical implicationsThe study can inform teaching and policy initiatives to increase women's representation in tech sectors through awareness campaigns, policy interventions and counseling.Originality/valueThe research extends the doing and undoing framework by integrating the relational perspective to explain women's agency and resilience situated in a patriarchal context. The paper focuses on women's micro-individual strategies to navigate macro- and meso-level forces. Moreover, Bangladesh is an under-researched context, and findings from the study can help design potential intervention strategies to increase women's participation.

The effect of different COVID-19 public health restrictions on mobility: A systematic review

Background In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, most countries have introduced non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as stay-at-home orders, to reduce person-to-person contact and break trains of transmission. The aim of this systematic review was to assess the effect of different public health restrictions on mobility across different countries and cultures. The University of Bern COVID-19 Living Evidence database of COVID-19 and SARS-COV-2 publications was searched for retrospective or prospective studies evaluating the impact of COVID-19 public health restrictions on Google Mobility. Titles and abstracts were independently screened by two authors. Information from included studies was extracted by one researcher and double checked by another. Risk of bias of included articles was assessed using the Newcastle Ottowa Scale. Given the heterogeneous nature of the designs used, a narrative synthesis was undertaken. From the search, 1672 references were identified, of which 14 were included in the narrative synthesis. All studies reported data from the first wave of the pandemic, with Google Mobility Scores included from January to August 2020, with most studies analysing data during the first two months of the pandemic. Seven studies were assessed as having a moderate risk of bias and seven as a low risk of bias. Countries that introduced more stringent public health restrictions experienced greater reductions in mobility, through increased time at home and reductions in visits to shops, workplaces and use of public transport. Stay-at-home orders were the most effective of the individual strategies, whereas mask mandates had little effect of mobility. Conclusions Public health restrictions, particularly stay-at-home orders have significantly impacted on transmission prevention behaviours. Further research is required to understand how to effectively address pandemic fatigue and to support the safe return back to normal day-to-day behaviours.

Work-life balance programs as personnel social and psychological support in organizations

Introduction. Today work environment becomes stressful, with many tasks and problems to solve. It is overloaded, imbalanced, complicated and often full of conflicts. In this climate, managing the boundary and balance between home and work is becoming more challenging. There is a need for organizations and personnel alike to find flexible and innovative solutions that maximize productivity without damaging personnel’ well-being, their personal life, family relationships. Aim. To analyse the main categories, resources and limitations of work-life balance, results of empirical study, main organizational and individual strategies for creating balance. Results. Work-life balance is a category defined by researchers as a person’s subjective general assessment of the interrelation between work and other life areas, family, as well as the ability to combine these spheres in a proper way. The empirical study has shown, that the work-life balance has been generally assessed as average. It should be noted that they have scored the load balance lower than other components: professional tasks complexity, work and content planning, and social intercourse. According to the results of the empirical study and to the theoretical approaches, the basic strategies in professional productivity increase programs in organizations may be the following: focus strategies, “resource/refusal” strategies, adaptive strategies, every of which is manifested in a certain kind of an individual strategy. The use of the adaptive individual strategies with the resource increase strategy perfectly contributes to the work-life balance achievement. Conclusion. Based on the results of theoretical and empirical research, we have identified organizational conditions and individual strategies for achieving the work-life balance, and also the main personal skills and traits contributing to the work-life balance achievement include the following ones: personal flexibility, a high level of self-discipline; trust-based relations; dynamic and independent work. These skills should be mature, and the work-life balance achievement psychological teaching programs for personnel can increase their level.

The rise of contract cheating during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study through the eyes of academics in Kuwait

Contract cheating has gone rampant in higher education recently. When institutions switched to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage of contract cheating students climbed to unprecedented levels. Essay mills saw the lack of face-to-face interaction and proctoring on campus as an opportunity and used aggressive marketing methods to attract students. This study asked the opinions of 20 faculty members working in the English departments of private higher education institutions in Kuwait regarding contract cheating through interviews. The data was analyzed with MAXQDA 2020. The findings show that all faculty members can recognize contract cheating easily. Most of them see contract cheating as a serious problem in the higher education system, a threat to the reliability of language assessment, triggered by laziness, the social pressure to graduate with a high GPA, and exacerbated by the cheating opportunities in online education. Academics have developed certain individual strategies in their courses to curb the number of contract cheating students; however, institutional measures differ, and in some, there are no measures or sanctions on contract cheating students.

Ethology: The Narrative Turn

Distinguishing their work from the causalist approaches of objectivist ethology, sociobiology, or cognitive ethology, a growing number of ethologists lay claim to the possibility of describing what animals do through more or less complex narratives. Narration becomes a methodological tool in its own right. Animals thus become characters as in novels. This is an epistemological choice. Our capacity to perceive the complexity of animal lives is tied to our capacity to tell ourselves stories in which animals are the heroes. These animals are not robots. They are subjects, individuals, and even persons. From this results a new and transpecific form of third-person narration. This approach still relies, however, on a set of very carefully collected field data and requires a great familiarity with observed animals. It then becomes possible to concern oneself with the individual strategies of particular animals rather than solely with behaviors that would be common to all members of a given species. The recourse to narrative as a means of understanding animal intelligence is especially pertinent as we become increasingly aware that animals themselves tell stories and that our concepts of narrative must expand beyond the human. Knowing whether animals have narrative structures is a philosophical question before it is a biological one. The desire to extend narrativity to the animal necessarily modifies what narrativity signifies. We perceive in animals a processual narrativity, a behavioral narrativity, and a fictional narrativity. The study of animals forces to rethink what a fiction is and compels one to consider its phylogensis in a rigorous manner without locating its origins in Homo sapiens.

Autonomy and Performance: Proactive Vitality Management and Work Engagement as Sequential Mediators of the Relationship

A current trend in organizational job design is to provide employees increased autonomy to enhance their performance. Using the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory as a working framework, the present study proposes proactive vitality management and work engagement as sequential mediators of this relationship. Thus, we test a parsimonious model that encompasses both individual strategies (i.e., proactive vitality management) and affective-cognitive (i.e., work engagement) factors as explanatory mechanisms in the link between autonomy and performance. Data from 256 Romanian employees were gathered and analyzed via structural equation modeling. The results provided support to our model. Specifically, we found proactive vitality management and work engagement to fully mediate the relationship between autonomy and performance. As such, our model validates the theoretical assumption of the JD-R theory that employees who engage in individual strategies (i.e., proactive vitality management) can capitalize on existing job resources (i.e., autonomy) to increase their well-being (i.e., work engagement) and performance. Furthermore, by identifying proactive vitality management as a mediator in the relationship between autonomy and performance, we provide practitioners with a set of proactive behaviors that can complement resource-replenishing activities (e.g., coffee break) in securing and sustaining high energy levels at work.

Navigating the tensions of flexible work: An exploration of the individual strategies employed by flexibly working parents

<p>The demand for workplace flexibility is growing in New Zealand. The increasing and fragmented employment participation of women has given rise to growing complexity within family lives and higher demand for flexible work. Flexible work arrangements (FWAs) are intended to assist parents in managing care responsibilities, while discouraging unemployment among women in particular. Evidence linking FWA usage with positive work outcomes and reduced work-family conflict has grown in recent years. However, research also suggests a darker side to FWAs. For some, research shows that FWAs may exacerbate work-life balance (WLB) issues and negatively affect career advancement, with indications that attempts to promote WLB can come at the expense of positive work outcomes, and vice versa. As a result, less is known about the factors that shape outcomes for flexibly working parents, or indeed, the individual strategies that parents employ to promote positive outcomes while working flexibly. The complex way in which FWAs can either promote or hinder positive employee outcomes necessitates concurrent examination of the tensions between WLB and career outlooks for users of FWAs. Drawing on the experiences of 21 professional, flexibly working parents across public service organisations, this thesis finds parents navigate the tensions of flexible work using a variety of WLB, work organisation, and career-promoting strategies, with varying effects. Work intensification and efficiency strategies are shown to be commonly used by flexibly working parents for promoting positive work outcomes. However, while work efficiency appears to also promote WLB, work intensification is seen to negatively impact WLB. This research provides valuable insight into flexibly working employee strategies, hitherto largely neglected within the literature, and highlights the need for applying the life course perspective to FWA research.</p>