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Poor eating habits established during adolescence are likely to lead to negative long-term health consequences. The childhood obesity epidemic is a growing public health concern, largely attributed to obesogenic environments. This study aims to explore the multiple factors contributing positively or negatively to young consumers’ attitudes towards their food consumption.

In total, 42 11- to 13-years-old (24 men and 18 women) from three secondary schools in Wales participated in five focus group discussions. The process of thematic analysis resulted in several identified themes that influenced young consumers’ eating habits.

Extrapersonal factors compromised: education, peer pressure, parenting, availability and social media; and intrapersonal factors included: health consciousness, taste preferences, convenience and price consciousness. Contrary to previous research, the adolescent participants perceived their parents as more influential than their peer group, even during decision-making in the school canteen.

These research findings are beneficial for policy-makers working to develop an age-appropriate multi-factorial approach to promote healthful dietary practices amongst young consumers. For instance, increasing easily accessible food-to-go choices that are not only convenient to purchase and consume but also healthful could improve dietary intake.

A novel connection between peer pressure and convenience was discovered. Multiple factors contribute to young consumers’ attitudes towards food and their dietary habits.

The current and widespread view in option trading is that early exercise of call options is suboptimal unless there are large dividend payments on the underlying stock (e.g., Finucane, 1997; Hull, J. C. (2008). Options, futures and other derivatives (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall; Poteshman & Serbin (2003)). Our study substantially refines this view by demonstrating that U.S. tax rules governing capital gain holding periods can create incentives for early exercise under certain conditions. Hence, this study adds to the factors that investors likely consider when making option exercise decisions. We further note that recent research documents early exercises in the absence of large dividends, and refers to these option exercises as “clearly irrational.” Predictions of early exercise from our tax-based model are consistent with the observed patterns of early exercise, suggesting that the criteria for denoting an option exercise as “irrational” should be refined to incorporate capital gain holding periods.

A decline in participation in research studies as people age is inevitable as health declines. This paper aims to address this by collecting data from a group of participants to examine their reasons for declining attendance and suggestions for maintaining attendance as participants age.

This research used a postal self-completed questionnaire including open and closed questions. The questionnaire was sent to those participants who have declined to attend further clinic visits. Results were analysed using thematic content analysis.

The study had a 51% response rate. Participants reported difficulty with travelling to the clinic, and health as the main issues in addition to family demands and a lack of understanding regarding the continuing participation of a singleton twin.

This study could only include data from responding participants, answers to open question also included comments from participants regarding their twin.

An anonymous questionnaire was sent to all individuals in the Keeping Together project. It was therefore not possible to identify if responses were from both members of a twin pair.

Maintaining participation in longitudinal studies is of crucial importance to enhance the value of data. Retention of participants in studies may change as people age and health becomes impaired. Suggestions for maintaining and improving the retention of older participants have been identified and are generalisable to other longitudinal studies of ageing.

This chapter presents a seven-part case developed for use in a graduate-level tax planning class. The case is organized in a taxpayer/business “life-cycle” approach. Over the semester the case follows a married couple as they consider a number of investments, start a business, and expand the business. As the case progresses, the couple faces increasingly complex tax and business issues. The couple eventually winds down their involvement in the business and begins to plan for their retirement years. This chapter also provides a review of behavioral tax research published in the top accounting journals over the period 2004–2013. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the case could be adapted by behavioral tax researchers in their research programs and perhaps by accounting firms in their training programs.

The internet driven information revolution is frequently cited as one of the key drivers (re‐)shaping contemporary consumption. In particular, the internet has been seen as disrupting established conventions in professional services. Popularly, it has been viewed as a liberating medium, a mechanism by which consumers and citizens have been able to challenge the authority of the professional establishment. Yet for consumers, the internet can equally be viewed as generating new uncertainties and challenges in terms of negotiating a new settlement with professionals and reconfiguring the service encounter. The purpose of this paper is to explore experiences of consumers with the use of internet derived information in respect of complex professional services and the impact of such information utilisation on the format of the service encounter.

Empirical data is generated through interviews with professionals (n=24) and consumer focus groups (n=10/53).

The paper argues that the multi‐faceted nature of the internet creates informational “spaces” which present both opportunities and threats to consumers in renegotiating the service encounter. Balancing the paradoxes created by these informational spaces is at the core of the challenge confronting contemporary service consumers. Irrespective of the nature of that space, the effect is to create a driver for change, challenging the established practices of both consumer and professional to reshape the service encounter.

Focus group research does not enable a judgement about the prevalence or distribution of behaviours among consumers. Nevertheless, this paper advances understanding of contemporary consumption practices and provides a new perspective on nature of consumer utilisation of information within the consumption process.

It is inevitable that professionals and service organisations will be required to respond to a complex and rapidly evolving set of consumer behaviours and rethink approaches to the delivery of professional services.

The paper addresses an emergent phenomenon and provides unique insights into the changing dynamics of consumption practices in the contemporary knowledge economy.

This article is the first of two which examine the difficulties experienced by the unqualified researcher or student who may be called upon to act as consultant in conventional or action‐research project work. The first article addresses the problems of entry; the second looks at the production of a credible and acceptable report. The thesis of both papers is that conceptual frameworks currently offered as an aid to understanding the consultancy process have concentrated on psychological and processual aspects of consultancy at the expense of the cultural. A social anthropological perspective, it is argued, can offer richer interpretations in areas where current theory is infertile. This first article addresses some of the problems of the student consultant in gaining entry and establishing a contractual basis for his activities. It begins with an examination of the cultural clashes between social scientists and managers, using current published research as examples, emphasising the effect of each on the other and the potential risk or threat involved for each. The consequences of attempts to control this work in an imbalanced situation are raised by the examination of a part of a consultancy project completed by the author, presented as a case example. The subsequent discussion of the case uses the concept of the consultant as sorcerer, allied to the dimension of apprenticeship, to analyse the case as a form of initiation rite. The conclusions drawn suggest that the content of consultancy, and even the dimensions of individual processes, may well be subordinate to the importance of “public opinion” in sustaining it as an activity. The second article will further examine this suggestion through the case example of the production of a consultancy report.