Dress for fit: An exploration of female activewear consumption

While the female activewear market is growing rapidly, research on activewear consumption and female consumers is lagging. Existing researchers have failed to produce an in-depth understanding of female consumers’ perceptions of activewear, thereby providing limited insights for the activewear industry. Drawing upon brand association theory and the functional, expressive, and aesthetic model, the authors identify important attributes of activewear brands and how attributes lead to benefits pursued by female activewear consumers. Focus groups were conducted with 72 female activewear consumers in Australia. Findings reveal three product-related attributes (functional design, colour, and size and fit) and two non-product-related attributes (price and model imagery) influence the fulfillment of four benefits (mood enhancement, exercise facilitation, healthy and active lifestyle, and physical fit body image). This research contributes theoretical and empirical knowledge about activewear consumption and the vertical structure of brand associations. Findings of this research can help activewear brands deliver benefits to female consumers through improved product designs and marketing strategies.     

Youth at work: Adolescent employment and sexual harassment

ObjectiveAn examination of the frequency and impact of workplace sexual harassment on work, health, and school outcomes on high school girls is presented in two parts. The first compares the frequency of harassment in this sample (52%) to published research on adult women that used the same measure of sexual harassment. The second part compares outcomes for girls who experienced harassment versus those who did not.MethodsStudents in a small, suburban high school for girls completed a paper and pencil survey during class. A modified version of the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ: Fitzgerald et al., 1988) was used to identify sexually harassed working teenagers. Work attitudes, assessments of physical health and mental health, and school-related outcomes were measured using standardized scales. Data were analyzed using difference of proportions tests, t-tests, and regression.ResultsThe percentage of harassed girls was significantly higher than the figures reported in most studies of working women. Girls who were sexually harassed were less satisfied with their jobs and supervisors, had higher levels of academic withdrawal, and were more apt to miss school than their non-harassed peers.ConclusionsSexual harassment significantly impacts employed high school girls’ connections to work and school. It not only taints their attitudes toward work but it also threatens to undermine their commitment to school. Educators, practitioners and community leaders should be aware of the negative impact this work experience may have on adolescents and explore these issues carefully with students who are employed outside of school.Practice implicationsTeenage students, stressed by sexual harassment experienced at work may find their career development or career potential impeded or threatened due to school absence and poor academic performance. In addition, the physical safety of working students may be at risk, creating a need for teenagers to receive training to deal with sexual assault and other types of workplace violence. Educators, practitioners, and community leaders should be aware of the negative impact this work experience may have on adolescents and their overall school experience and explore the issue of sexual harassment carefully with students who are employed outside of school.     

FROM PISA TO EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS: THE IMPACT OF LARGE-SCALE ASSESSMENTS ON SCIENCE EDUCATION IN GERMANY

The German education system does not traditionally rely on standardized testing. However, when the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study revealed an average performance of German students compared to other participating countries, a particular proportion of low-performing students, and remarkable disparities between the federal states, German policy makers decided for a major reform of the education system. A core piece of this reform was the introduction of National Education Standards. For science education, these standards were heavily influenced by the PISA results and its underlying framework. That is, with the standards, a paradigm shift took place from the German notion of Bildung towards the Anglo-American notion of literacy. With the introduction of these standards, a new field of empirical educational research was created: research on models of scientific literacy or competency models as a basis of benchmarking the standards. This article describes the German education system before PISA, summarizes the major findings from PISA, and describes how these findings informed the formulation of the performance standards for science education. It also details the measures undertaken to benchmark these standards. Finally, it provides insight into the issues with developing and benchmarking performance standards and points out future areas of research on evidence-based decision making in educational policy.     

Longitudinal relations between perceived autonomy support and basic need satisfaction in two student cohorts

The relation between autonomy support and basic need satisfaction was investigated by applying a longitudinal design at a time interval of two years, and by comparing two different grade level cohorts of students. Participants comprised 1.225 Norwegian students divided by two subsamples (6th and 8th grade level/8th and 10th grade level). The results showed stationary effects of autonomy support and basic need satisfaction, respectively, from Time 1 to Time 2. There was also evidence of a causal effect from T1 to T2 between autonomy support and basic need satisfaction, and reciprocal causation from basic need satisfaction T1 to autonomy support T2. These effects were grade level and gender specific. The present study provided support for longitudinal relations between autonomy support and basic need satisfaction. Autonomy support and basic need satisfaction are both antecedents to and consequences of themselves, also when measured at long term intervals.     

Policy and evidence: a critical analysis of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check in England

“This paper aims to present a critical analysis of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check (PSC), with special focus on the relationship between the UK Department for Education's policy‐making and the evidence considered in the process of developing and evaluating the PSC. The reports from the in‐house Standards and Testing Agency and from commissioned external organisations with limited remits have been analysed, with emphasis on how the screening check findings have been used in DfE decision‐making. My conclusion is that the department has overestimated both the validity and the reliability of the check: partly because important sources of measurement error have not been explored, and partly because the available evidence has not been analysed in sufficient depth — or perhaps simply been ignored by the department. The whole phonics screening check seems to be the product of policy‐based evidence, rather than evidence‐based policy‐making. This has, in my view, seriously undermined the value of the PSC as a screening instrument, and one must wonder whether it is ‘fit for purpose’.     

Effect of Including Parents in a School-Based Exercise and Nutrition Program for Children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of parental involvement in a school-based program about exercise and nutrition. One fifth grade and one sixth grade class were randomly assigned to each of the three different treatment conditions, a school-and-home condition (n = 45), a school-only condition (n = 43), and a control condition (n = 44). In the school-and-home condition, the children's parents were also asked to participate in nutritional and exercise activities at home as a family “home team.” A multivariate analysis of variance on change scores was completed on the following variables: height, weight, skinfold, sit-and-reach, sit-ups, mile run, exercise knowledge, saturated fat, cholesterol, percent calories from fat, percent calories from carbohydrates, and nutrition knowledge. There was a significant difference among groups. The school-and-home and school-only groups showed significantly greater improvement than the control group but were not significantly different from each other. Univariate analyses on posttest scores indicated that the school-and-home children scored significantly higher than the control group on sit-and-reach flexibility and nutrition knowledge. The results indicate that including the family was primarily effective in facilitating children's improvements in flexibility and nutrition knowledge rather than in diet and exercise behaviors.     

Parallel assessment of nutrition and activity in athletes: Validation against doubly labelled water, 24-h urea excretion,and indirect calorimetry

Abstract

The assessment of nutrition and activity in athletes requires accurate and precise methods. The aim of this study was to validate a protocol for parallel assessment of diet and exercise against doubly labelled water, 24-h urea excretion, and respiratory gas exchange. The participants were 14 male triathletes under normal training conditions. Energy intake and doubly labelled water were weakly associated with each other (r = 0.69, standard error of estimate [SEE] = 304 kcal · day^?1). Protein intake was strongly correlated with 24-h urea (r = 0.89) but showed considerable individual variation (SEE = 0.34 g · kg^?1 · day^?1). Total energy expenditure based on recorded activities was highly correlated with doubly labelled water (r = 0.95, SEE = 195 kcal · day^?1) but was proportionally biased. During running and cycling, estimated exercise energy expenditure was highly correlated with gas exchange (running: r = 0.89, SEE = 1.6 kcal · min^?1; cycling: r = 0.95, SEE = 1.4 kcal · min^?1). High exercise energy expenditure was slightly underestimated during running. For nutrition data, variations appear too large for precise measurements in individual athletes, which is a common problem of dietary assessment methods. Despite the high correlations of total energy expenditure and exercise energy expenditure with reference methods, a correction for systematic errors is necessary for the valid estimation of energetic requirements in individual athletes.     

Tocqueville in Cyberspace: Using the Internet for Citizen Associations

Political theorists like Alexis de Tocqueville have long recognized the importance of citizen associations for the practice of democracy. Through participation in associations, citizens both receive an education in public affairs and create centers of political power independent of the state. Essential to participation in an association is participation in a forum, a communication space that allows for many-to-many communication in which citizens can "treat of public affairs in public" (Tocqueville, 1945, p. 109). Participation in forums suffers from numerous barriers, however, such as the need to meet in one common place, the need to meet at one common time, and the potentially high costs of participation. Online forums on the Internet avoid many of these barriers, and thus they hold the promise of facilitating the formation and operation of citizen associations. This was confirmed in 1995 by the experiences of a Boston-based citizen association, the Telecommunication Policy Roundtable-Northeast (TPR-NE). TPR-NE's uses of the Internet suggest that online forums may allow associations to be more responsive, more robust, and able to unite more members.