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Promoting mental health and meeting the needs of the large numbers of the general public with problems of anxiety and depression is a big challenge. Particular difficulties are the low capacity of the therapy services and the reluctance of the general public to seek help. The aim of this study was to compare the attendance, effectiveness and characteristics of participants self‐referring to six different psycho‐educational workshops, each using non‐diagnostic titles: self‐confidence; stress; sleep; relationships; happiness; and anger. The series of day‐long workshops ran for one year and were offered to members of the general public in south east London. Over a quarter had not previously sought help from their GP. The take‐up rates for the self‐confidence, sleep and anger workshops were highest and one month after attending these workshops, participants reported significantly lower depression and distress. It was concluded that a self‐referral route to some day‐long workshops can attract quite large numbers of the general public and provide access to effective psychological treatment. These workshops can be used as an effective way of promoting mental health and improving the provision of evidence‐based mental health treatment in the community, possibly within the Improving Access to Psychological Treatments (IAPT) programme in the UK.

This chapter investigates the current trend toward both creative and experiential tourism in cities in terms of the development and marketing of local attractions.

Creative tourism in cities is profiled through a literature review and further investigated by means of a case study at a local attraction in Toronto, Canada. The choice of a site was one of a creative city and the re-purposing of a formerly industrial site for visitation.

The study of Evergreens Brickworks demonstrated the use of marketing techniques to identify markets and match visitors with experiences. The visitor segmentation method determined that pre-scheduled and bookable activities offered for locals need to be offered on a different basis for tourists, who may be one time visitors to the site. The product-market match process suggested areas in which products could be modified or indeed created.

This practical study offers lessons for other local visitor attractions and their managers desiring to identify market segments and match them with appropriate activities creating experiential tourism at the site level within the creative city context.

While many studies of the creative tourism concept and cities have been undertaken within the context of destinations this research offers a site-specific perspective as well as marketing perspective that will be of practical value to attraction managers.

This mixed-methods study reports on an outreach clinics program designed to deliver genetic services to medically underserved communities in Wisconsin.

We show the geographic distribution, funding patterns, and utilization trends for outreach clinics over a 20-year period. Interviews with program planners and outreach clinic staff show how external and internal constraints limited the program’s capacity. We compare clinic operations to the conceptual models guiding program design.

Our findings show that state health officials had to scale back financial support for outreach clinic activities while healthcare providers faced increasing pressure from administrators to reduce investments in charity care. These external and internal constraints led to a decline in the overall number of patients served. We also find that redistribution of clinics to the Milwaukee area increased utilization among Hispanics but not among African-Americans. Our interviews suggest that these patterns may be a function of shortcomings embedded in the planning models.

Planning models have three shortcomings. First, they do not identify the mitigation of health disparities as a specific goal. Second, they fail to acknowledge that partners face escalating profit-seeking mandates that may limit their capacity to provide charity services. Finally, they underemphasize the importance of seeking trusted partners, especially in working with communities that have been historically marginalized.

There has been little discussion about equitably leveraging genetic advances that improve healthcare quality and efficacy. The role of State Health Agencies in mitigating disparities in access to genetic services has been largely ignored in the sociological literature.

Employee learning is imperative in the dynamic service environment; yet, much is still unknown about its strategic importance. The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of learning by focusing on the strategic importance of learning goal orientation (LGO) in customer-contact employees in service industries characterized with high customer contact.

This paper adopts the multi-method approach by conducting two studies in the high-contact service sector. Study 1 is a large-scale, multiple-respondent survey that investigates the associations between LGO and its antecedents and performance outcomes. To supplement study 1, study 2 embraces case studies that identify the managerial supportive practices and outcomes of customer-contact employees’ learning behaviors.

The results of study 1 demonstrate that employees’ affective organizational commitment does not yield higher-quality services unless the service employees are learning oriented. The findings of study 1 also indicate that management commitment to service quality has positive effects on both LGO and affective organizational commitment. In study 2, the results reveal the practical methods that managers can employ to effectively promote such activities.

This research offers novel insights into research on learning by showing the strategic importance of LGO to enhancing high-contact service firms’ performance and the practical means of fostering LGO in customer-contact employees.

Medical uncertainty is recognized as a critical issue in the sociology of diagnosis and medical sociology more generally, but a neglected focus of this concern is the question of patient decision making. Using a mixed methods approach that draws upon autoethnographic accounts and third-party interviews, we aim to illuminate the dilemmas of patient decision making in the face of uncertainty. How do patients and supportive caregivers go about navigating this state of affairs? What types of patient–doctor/healthcare professional relationships hinder or enhance effective patient decision making? These are the themes we explore in this study by following patients through the sequence of experiencing symptoms, seeking a diagnosis, evaluating treatment protocols, and receiving treatments. In general, three genres of culturally available narratives are revealed in the data: strategic, technoluxe, and unbearable health narratives.

This paper aims to test whether a structured application of persuasion principles might help improve advertising decisions. Evidence-based principles are currently used to improve decisions in other complex situations, such as those faced in engineering and medicine.

Scores were calculated from the ratings of 17 self-trained novices who rated 96 matched pairs of print advertisements for adherence to evidence-based persuasion principles. Predictions from traditional methods – 10,809 unaided judgments from novices and 2,764 judgments from people with some expertise in advertising and 288 copy-testing predictions – provided benchmarks.

A higher adherence-to-principles-score correctly predicted the more effective advertisement for 75 per cent of the pairs. Copy testing was correct for 59 per cent, and expert judgment was correct for 55 per cent. Guessing would provide 50 per cent accurate predictions. Combining judgmental predictions led to substantial improvements in accuracy.

Advertisements for high-involvement utilitarian products were tested on the assumption that persuasion principles would be more effective for such products. The measure of effectiveness that was available –day-after-recall – is a proxy for persuasion or behavioral measures.

Pretesting advertisements by assessing adherence to evidence-based persuasion principles in a structured way helps in deciding which advertisements would be best to run. That procedure also identifies how to make an advertisement more effective.

This is the first study in marketing, and in advertising specifically, to test the predictive validity of evidence-based principles. In addition, the study provides the first test of the predictive validity of the index method for a marketing problem.

Deception detection is instrumental in business management but professionals differ widely in terms of deception detection performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the genetic basis of deception detection performance using the classic twin study design and address the research question: how much variance in individual differences in deception detection performance can be accounted for by the variance in genetics vs environmental influences?

In total, 192 twins, with 65 pairs of monozygotic (identical) twins and 31 pairs of dizygotic (fraternal) twins participated in an experiment. A series of behavioral genetic analyses were performed.

The variability in deception detection performance was largely determined by differences in shared and non-shared environments.

The subjects were solicited during the Twins Days Festival so the sample selection and data collection were limited to the natural settings in the field. In addition, the risks and rewards associated with deception detection performance in the study are pale in comparison with those in practice.

Deception detection performance may be improved through training programs. Corporations should continue funding training programs for deception detection.

This is the first empirical study that examines the complementary influences of genetics and environment on people’s ability to detect deception.