We should know better – high rates of sedentary behaviours in a University workplace
- Authors: Bird, Marie-Louise , Shing, Cecilia , Cooley, Dean , Mainsbridge, Casey , Pedersen, Scott
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Australian Physiotherapy Association Conference, 17-20 October 2013, Melbourne, Australia
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Working with paraprofessionals: Perspectives of physical educationalists about their experiences with paraprofessional support
- Authors: Cooley, Dean , Pedersen, Scott , Rottier, Clint
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: 2014 Hawaii International Conference on Education, 5 - 8 January 2014, Honolulu, Hawaii p. 1-25
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A pilot study of increasing nonpurposeful movement breaks at work as a means of reducing prolonged sitting
- Authors: Cooley, Dean , Pedersen, Scott
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Environmental and Public Health Vol. 2013, no. (2013), p. 1-8
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- Description: There is a plethora of workplace physical activity interventions designed to increase purposeful movement, yet few are designed to alleviate prolonged occupational sitting time. A pilot study was conducted to test the feasibility of a workplace e-health intervention based on a passive approach to increase nonpurposeful movement as a means of reducing sitting time. The study was trialled in a professional workplace with forty-six participants (33 females and 13 males) for a period of twenty-six weeks. Participants in the first thirteen weeks received a passive prompt every 45 minutes on their computer screen reminding them to stand and engage in nonpurposeful activity throughout their workday. After thirteen weeks, the prompt was disabled, and participants were then free to voluntary engage the software. Results demonstrated that when employees were exposed to a passive prompt, as opposed to an active prompt, they were five times more likely to fully adhere to completing a movement break every hour of the workday. Based on this pilot study, we suggest that the notion that people are willing to participate in a coercive workplace e-health intervention is promising, and there is a need for further investigation. © 2013 Dean Cooley and Scott Pedersen.
Improving the odds of compliance: using a brief telephone call to decrease pre-treatment attrition in cardiac rehabilitation
- Authors: Cooley, Dean , Kubitz, Karia , Pedersen, Scott , Williams, Andrew
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Universal Journal of Public Health Vol. 1, no. 2 (2013), p. 20-25
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- Description: The purpose of this study was to test the effect of a brief telephone intervention based on the principles of motivational interviewing to reduce pre-treatment attrition in an Australian cardiac rehabilitation centre. The study was an intact comparison randomly trial. Twenty-eight adult patients diagnosed with symptoms associated with cardio-vascular disease, who were noncompliant to an initial appointment, were randomized to receive either a standard cue call or a motivational interview-based recruitment call. Compliance was measured as attendance at a booked session at the cardiac rehabilitation center. Results showed that patients who received a motivational based telephone call had 6 times the odds as those who received a standard cue telephone call for attending a booked appointment. Reducing pre-treatment attrition from cardio-vascular rehabilitation centers can be accomplished with a brief telephone intervention, which incorporates the spirit of motivational interviewing.
Intentions and behaviours: Record-Keeping practices of pre-service teachers during professional experience
- Authors: Shaw, Simon , Pedersen, Scott , Cooley, Dean , Callingham, Rosemary
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: The Australian Journal of Teacher Education Vol. 38, no. 6 (2013), p. 71-87
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- Description: The current expectation of teachers in Australia is that they are able to collect, interpret, and use data related to teaching and learning. Digital technologies in schools, such as electronic methods of record-keeping, offer enhanced opportunities for teachers to perform this skill, and its application has been growing steadily in education. The aim of this exploratory study was to examine fourth-year pre-service teachers’ behaviour in record-keeping whilst on their final professional experience placement. Using Ajzen’s (1992) theory of planned behavior, this study found that most pre-service teachers exhibited positive attitudes toward the behaviour of recording, using, and analysing classroom data. Despite this positive attitude, many pre-service teachers were unable to maintain any system of record-keeping whilst on placement. For many, this was due to a number of external influences or perceived external influences, which acted as a constraint to their behaviour.
Changing workplace health culture
- Authors: Pedersen, Scott , Mainsbridge, Casey , Cooley, Dean
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Engaging Wellness : Corporate wellness programs that work, Chapter 10: Interventions and Best Practices, p. 298-308
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- Description: Prolonged occupational sitting time (POST) is a silent killer for even the healthiest of working adults. Currently, an office-based worker spends an average of 80,000 hours sitting during the course of their working life. Recent data suggests that POST of four hours or more is a health risk for all desk-based employees. Exposure to this hazard increases the risk of suffering from diseases related to increased morbidity and mortality. Moreover, a worker's increased level of fitness may only ameliorate some of the risk. That is, even workers with high levels of physical fitness may still be at risk if they sit for more than four hours per day. Research from the Baker IDI institute showed an association between POST and increases in waist girth, weight, body mass index and negative blood lipid profiles (i.e., blood glucose, lipoprotein lipase [LPL]), irrespective of current fitness level.
Young peoples' use of self-handicapping when faced with evaluative threat on a physical skill test
- Authors: Cooley, Dean
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Hawaii International Conference on Education, 5th-8th January 2012, Honolulu, Hawaii p. 1293-1320
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- Description: Self-handicapping refers to the process whereby people engage in self-defeating behaviours to proactively obfuscate the link between actor and outcome. Evaluative threat from either non-contingent success or failure is proposed to elicit episodes of self-handicapping. Furthermore each evaluative threat condition is associated with a specific form of self-handicap (effort withdrawal & self-reports of disruption to performance, respectively). This experiment used a stratified random sample of young people aged between 10 and 16 (N= 250), to explore differences in young peoples' use of different self-handicaps in response to different evaluative threats associated with a test of athletic skill. The study used an AXB design, with participants' exposed to a two test scenario with the opportunity to self-handicap after receiving bogus performance scores on the first test. Results showed there were significant differences between type of self-handicap and evaluative threat condition. After being exposed to one of three evaluative conditions (non-contingent success, non-contingent failure, & non-evaluative) after the first test, only young people aged over 13 who were exposed to non-contingent failure, reported experiencing significantly more performance impediments such as illness and sports injuries than participants in either the non-contingent success or non-evaluative conditions. Participants in the non-contingent failure condition reported that the impediments would have a significantly greater debilitative effect on their second test performance than participants in either the non-contingent success or non-evaluative conditions. This same pattern of results was not evident for the use of effort withdrawal as a self-handicap in any evaluative condition. The implications of these findings on how teachers and coaches use performance feedback are discussed.
The effect of a computer-based workplace health and wellbeing program on workplace health culture
- Authors: Mainsbridge, Casey , Cooley, Dean , Pedersen, Scott , Fraser, Sharon , Cosgrove, Michael
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: 2011 Australian Association for Research in Education Conference, 27 November - 1 December 2011, Hobart, Tasmania, pp. 1-14.
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- Description: Increasingly workplaces have become the primary site for health and wellbeing education for adults. The current zeitgeist for this education is the workplace health and wellbeing program (WHWP). Advocates of WHWP list a plethora of outcomes associated with their implementation. Nonetheless, evaluation of WHWP tend to focus on objective measures such as cardiovascular fitness and participation levels at the expense of less tangible measures such as organisational culture and climate. Common oversights like this often lead to organisations and participants losing interest and disengaging with various WHWPs (McKay et al., 2001). In turn, this leads to false positive results and low sustainability with such programs. We propose that effective evaluation of WHWPs, should incorporate employee perspectives about any changes in workplace health culture.