Nearly 40% of mortality in the United States is linked to social and behavioral factors such as smoking, diet and sedentary lifestyle. Autonomous self-regulation of health-related behaviors is thus an important aspect of human behavior to assess. In 1997, the Behavior Change Consortium (BCC) was formed. Within the BCC, seven health behaviors, 18 theoretical models, five intervention settings and 26 mediating variables were studied across diverse populations. One of the measures included across settings and health behaviors was the Treatment Self-Regulation Questionnaire (TSRQ). The purpose of the present study was to examine the validity of the TSRQ across settings and health behaviors (tobacco, diet and exercise). The TSRQ is composed of subscales assessing different forms of motivation: amotivation, external, introjection, identification and integration. Data were obtained from four different sites and a total of 2731 participants completed the TSRQ. Invariance analyses support the validity of the TSRQ across all four sites and all three health behaviors. Overall, the internal consistency of each subscale was acceptable (most alpha values >0.73). The present study provides further evidence of the validity of the TSRQ and its usefulness as an assessment tool across various settings and for different health behaviors.

Both a team-centered and individual-oriented intervention promoted healthy behaviors. The scripted team curriculum is innovative, exportable, and may enlist influences not accessed with individual formats.

Nostalgia has been viewed as the conceptual opposite of progress, against which it is negatively viewed as reactionary, sentimental or melancholic. It has been seen as a defeatist retreat from the present, and evidence of loss of faith in the future. Nostalgia is certainly a response to the experience of loss endemic in modernity and late modernity, but the authors argue that it has numerous manifestations and cannot be reduced to a singular or absolute definition. Its meaning and significance are multiple, and so should be seen as accommodating progressive, even utopian impulses as well as regressive stances and melancholic attitudes. Its contrarieties are evident in both vernacular and media forms of remembering and historical reconstruction. The authors argue that these contrarieties should be viewed as mutually constitutive, for it is in their interrelations that there arises the potential for sociological critique.

Two sociological views of death in modernity are currently dominant. They are that death is not acknowledged in public, and that a public discourse does exist, the discourse of medicine. The article criticises both these views in the light of how news media portray the extraordinary deaths of otherwise ordinary UK citizens. The news media focus in particular on the emotions of survivors - of considerable interest to British people unsure of proper grieving behaviour. When it comes to death, journalists and photographers are in the forefront of psychological `instruction' - something students of both death and the media have failed to notice, let alone research.

Citation: LOCKYER, S. and PICKERING, M., 2008 This is the pre-peer-reviewed version of the following article: LOCKYER, S. and PICKERING, M., 2008. You must be joking: the sociological critique of humour and comic media. Sociology Compass, 2 (3), pp. 808-820, which has been published in final form at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120185463/abstract 2 You Must Be Joking: The Sociological Critique of Humour and Comic Media AbstractRecent work in the sociological critique of humour and comic media has challenged the notion that humour is an absolute good. In this article we review some of the most interesting work that takes humour seriously and addresses the difficult topic of whether there are ethical limits to humour and media comedy. We outline three main reasons for taking humour seriously and review some of the ways in which humour has been studied sociologically through a consideration of how British 'alternative' comedy directed the work of those interested in the limits of humour in relation to gender, race and ethnicity. We also summarise some of the most controversial examples of contemporary media comedy -the comedic performances and personae of Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G and Borat) and the Danish cartoons of the Holy Prophet Muhammad -in order to illustrate the importance of the critical analysis of humour and how the ethics of humour can be applied to comic media.

Cognitive skills training has been linked to greater skills, self-efficacy, and performance. Although research in a variety of organizational settings has demonstrated training efficacy, few studies have assessed cognitive skills training using rigorous, longitudinal, randomized trials with active controls. The present study examined cognitive skills training in a high-risk occupation by randomizing 48 platoons (N = 2,432 soldiers) in basic combat training to either (a) mental skills training or (b) an active comparison condition (military history). Surveys were conducted at baseline and 3 times across the 10-week course. Multilevel mixed-effects models revealed that soldiers in the mental skills training condition reported greater use of a range of cognitive skills and increased confidence relative to those in the control condition. Soldiers in the mental skills training condition also performed better on obstacle course events, rappelling, physical fitness, and initial weapons qualification scores, although effects were generally moderated by gender and previous experience. Overall, effects were small; however, given the rigor of the design, the findings clearly contribute to the broader literature by providing supporting evidence that cognitive training skills can enhance performance in occupational and sports settings. Future research should address gender and experience to determine the need for targeting such training appropriately.

Context: The Disablement in the Physically Active (DPA) scale is a patient-reported outcome instrument recommended for use in clinical practice and research. Analysis of the scale has indicated a need for further psychometric testing.Objective: To assess the model fit of the original DPA scale using a larger and more diverse sample and explore the potential for a short-form (SF) version.Design: Observational study.Setting: Twenty-four clinical settings. Patients or Other Participants: Responses were randomly split into 2 samples: sample 1 (n ¼ 690: 353 males, 330 females, and 7 not reported; mean age ¼ 23.1 6 9.3 years, age range ¼ 11-75 years) and sample 2 (n ¼ 690: 351 males, 337 females, and 2 not reported; mean age ¼ 22.9 6 9.3 years, age range ¼ 8-74 years). Participants were physically active individuals who were healthy or experiencing acute, subacute, or persistent musculoskeletal injury.Main Outcome Measure(s): Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the factor structure of the original DPA scale. Exploratory factor, internal consistency, covariance modeling, correlational, and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to assess potential DPA scale SFs.Results: The subdimensions of the disablement construct were highly correlated (!0.89). The fit indices for the DPA scale approached recommended levels, but the first-order correlational values and second-order path coefficients provided evidence for multicollinearity, suggesting that clear distinctions between the disablement subdimensions cannot be made. An 8-item, 2dimensional solution and a 10-item, 3-dimensional solution were extracted to produce SF versions. The DPA SF-8 was highly correlated (r ¼ 0.94, P .001, R 2 ¼ 0.88) with the DPA scale, and the fit indices exceeded all of the strictest recommendations. The DPA SF-10 was highly correlated (r ¼ 0.97, P .001, R 2 ¼ 0.94) with the DPA scale, and its fit indices values also exceeded the strictest recommendations.Conclusions: The DPA SF-8 and SF-10 are psychometrically sound alternatives to the DPA scale.

This article demonstrates the need always to consider change against continuity and continuity against change in the analysis of mnemonic technologies. It does so by exploring what has happened in the move from analogue to digital photography, looking in particular at how this has affected the meanings of personal photographs and the practices of remembering associated with them. In contrast with technologically determinist perspectives which have been, however latently, manifest in writing on new media, the value of exploring vernacular photography as a specifically mnemonic practice is that it turns our attention to the ways in which photographic practices are bound up with longerterm social uses and cultural values. Our analysis focuses on changes in four key categories of photographic practice that relate to the analogue/digital shift: photo-taking; photostoring; photo-viewing; photo-sharing -all of which have consequences for the uses of photography as a mnemonic resource. They have all been altered in varying degrees by the advent of digital technologies, but with people continually making comparative evaluations of old and new, drawing on the former as a key aspect of learning how to use the latter.