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Background: Most people in developed countries are not physically active enough to reap optimal health benefits so effective promotion strategies are warranted. Theories of behaviour change are essential to understand physical activity and provide an organizing framework for effective intervention. The purpose of this paper was to provide a narrative historical overview of four key theoretical frameworks (social cognitive, humanistic, dual process, socioecological) that have been applied to understand and change physical activity over the last three decades. Methods: Our synthesis of research included the brief history, basic efficacy, strengths, and potential weaknesses of these approaches when applied to physical activity. Results: The dominant framework for understanding physical activity has been in the social cognitive tradition, and it has provided valuable information on key constructs linked to physical activity. The humanistic framework for understanding physical activity has seen a surge in research in the last decade and has demonstrated initial effectiveness in both explaining and intervening on behaviour. The most recent and understudied framework for understanding physical activity is dual process models, which may have promise to provide a broader perspective of motivation by considering non-conscious and hedonic determinants of physical activity. Finally, the individual-level focus of all three of these approaches is contrasted by the socioecological framework, which has seen considerable research attention in the last 15 years and has been instrumental in understanding the role of the built environment in physical activity behaviour and critical to shaping public health policy in government. Conclusions: Despite the strengths of all four frameworks, we noted several weaknesses of each approach at present and highlight several newer applications of integrated models and dynamic models that may serve to improve our understanding and promotion of physical activity over the next decade.

Background: Maximising the happiness and life satisfaction [i.e. subjective well-being (SWB)] of citizens is a fundamental goal of international governmental organizations' policies. In order to decide what policies should be pursued in order to improve SWB there is a need to identify what the key drivers of SWB are. However, to date most studies have been conducted in unrepresentative samples of largely 'developed' nations. Methods: Data from the latest World Value Survey (2010–14) and gathered 85 070 respondents from 59 countries (Age 1–99 years, Mean = 42, SD = 16.54; 52.29% females) were pooled for the analysis. A cross-sectional multilevel random effects model was performed where respondents were nested by country. Results: The average levels of SWB varied across countries and geographical regions. Among the lowest 10 SWB countries are nations from: Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union and Middle East and North Africa. Factors driving SWB include state of health, financial satisfaction, freedom of choice, GDP per capita, income scale, importance of friends, leisure, being females, weekly religious attendance, unemployment and income inequality. Nevertheless, according to Cohen's rules of thumb, most of these factors have 'small' effect sizes. Thus, the main factors that possibly will improve the SWB of people across the globe are: state of health, household's financial satisfaction and freedom of choice. Conclusions: To maximize the well-being of the population, policy makers may focus on health status, household's financial satisfaction and emancipative values. The levels of prosperity and political stability appear to positively improve the SWB of people.

This article presents the findings of a quantitative intersectional analysis of child welfare interventions within small area ethnic populations in England. Recent research has highlighted that White British children, on average, have higher rates of intervention than children from other ethnic groups in poorer neighbourhoods and lower rates in more affluent neighbourhoods. This raises the question of whether structural associations between poverty and child welfare interventions apply equally to children from all backgrounds, or whether recent research into socioeconomic child welfare inequalities is largely capturing differences between ethnic groups. We investigate this question using multilevel negative binomial regression models predicting rates of children in need, children on child protection plans, and children in State care in ethnic group populations within geographical areas with average populations of 7200 children and adults. We find significant differences in ethnic group intervention rates, depending on levels of deprivation. Available data have significant limitations, but intersectional analysis identifies that a social gradient does not apply to, or is much smaller for, many ethnic populations and is strongest for White and Mixed Heritage populations. Socioeconomic inequalities in child protection are highly contingent on the ethnicity of the population, reflecting broader sociological literature related to race and class. This limits the generalisability of non-intersectional child welfare inequalities and introduces new avenues and imperatives for research seeking to better understand both ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in children's social services. We consider that, beyond institutional racism, social work may need to grapple with complex forms of 'institutionalised intersectional injustice'.

The features and determinants of human decision making, especially under competitive environments, have been a central theme of research in economics and psychology alike. This special issue centers on applying sports data to understand behavior and decision making in competitive environments. In particular, we assemble original research with sports data that provides us with insights into hitherto unanswered questions relating to various strategic and psychological aspects of decision making.

Centrality measures are based upon the structural position an actor has within the network. Induced centrality, sometimes called vitality measures, take graph invariants as an overall measure and derive vertex level measures by deleting individual nodes or edges and examining the overall change. By taking the sum of standard centrality measures as the graph invariant we can obtain measures which examine how much centrality an individual node contributes to the centrality of the other nodes in the network, we call this exogenous centrality. We look at exogenous measures of degree, closeness and betweenness. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.

The nature of our moral judgments-and the extent to which we treat others with care-depend in part on the distinctions we make between entities deemed worthy or unworthy of moral consideration- our moral boundaries. Philosophers, historians, and social scientists have noted that people's moral boundaries have expanded over the last few centuries, but the notion of moral expansiveness has received limited empirical attention in psychology. This research explores variations in the size of individuals' moral boundaries using the psychological construct of moral expansiveness and introduces the Moral Expansiveness Scale (MES), designed to capture this variation. Across 6 studies, we established the reliability, convergent validity, and predictive validity of the MES. Moral expansiveness was related (but not reducible) to existing moral constructs (moral foundations, moral identity, "moral" universalism values), predictors of moral standing (moral patiency and warmth), and other constructs associated with concern for others (empathy, identification with humanity, connectedness to nature, and social responsibility). Importantly, the MES uniquely predicted willingness to engage in prosocial intentions and behaviors at personal cost independently of these established constructs. Specifically, the MES uniquely predicted willingness to prioritize humanitarian and environmental concerns over personal and national self-interest, willingness to sacrifice one's life to save others (ranging from human out-groups to animals and plants), and volunteering behavior. Results demonstrate that moral expansiveness is a distinct and important factor in understanding moral judgments and their consequences.

The present study investigates how attendees at national celebratory crowd events-specifically St. Patrick's Day parades-understand the role of such events in representing and uniting the national community. We conducted semi-structured interviews with people who attended St. Patrick's Day parades in either Dublin or Belfast. In year 1, full-length interviews were conducted before and after the events (N=17), and in years 1 and 2, shorter interviews were conducted during the events (year 1 N=170; year 2 N=142). Interview data were analysed using thematic analysis, allowing the identification of three broad themes. Participants reported that (i) the events extend the boundary of the national group, using participation to define who counts as Irish; (ii) the events strategically represent the nature of the national group, maximising positive images and managing stereotypical representations; and (iii) symbolism serves to unify the group but can also disrupt already fragile unity and so must be managed. Overall, this points to a strategic identity dimension to these crowd events. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research in terms of the role of large-scale celebratory events in the strategic representation of everyday social identities.

'Public concern', a ubiquitous notion used in descriptive and explanatory modes by policy makers, academics and the media, is often presented as axiomatic. However, the variability with which it is deployed in different contexts, for example, as justification for policy attention or having equivalence with what is considered 'newsworthy', belies this status. This article presents an empirical analysis of emails and phone calls from the UK public to UK government agencies, reporting suspected cases of ash dieback disease – a tree health issue which attracted intense media and policy attention in the United Kingdom in 2012. We challenge the view that public attentiveness is necessarily indicative of public concern, or that media attention can be taken as its proxy. Examination of concern at macro and micro levels reveals heterogeneous processes with multiple dimensions. Understanding the nature of public concern is crucial in enabling more effective policy development and operational responses to risk-related issues.

Moral injury accounts for the complexity of symptoms evident in military personnel which go beyond the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis. This study sought to investigate the relationship between guilt and shame proneness and exposure to morally injurious events in a sample of British military veterans (n = 104). Participants were recruited through a social media site and completed an online battery of self-report measures. Participants were male (n = 99) and female (n = 5) with a mean age of 47 years. Fifty-one percent of participants achieved scores on a measure of PTSD that would indicate a probable PTSD diagnosis. Results yielded no significant relationship between guilt and shame proneness and exposure to morally injurious events. There was however a significant relationship between PTSD and morally injurious events, accounting for 43% of the variance, with a medium effect size. When working with veterans with PTSD, clinicians need to be assessing for exposure to morally injurious events to tailor interventions successfully. Future research should look to establish an evidence base for psychological interventions for those that have experienced morally injurious events. Closer consideration of contributing factors, such as type of trauma and historical trauma is also needed to develop the construct further.

There is a growing body of literature on children's wellbeing. However, historically, focus has been on adults' perspectives, leading to adult-centric views of wellbeing. Although recent years have witnessed an increase in researchers eliciting children's perspectives, it is not clear whether children's perceptions of wellbeing are universal, or whether they are culturally distinct. This study sought to explore children's perceptions of wellbeing across Wales and the Czech Republic. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 53 children aged 9–12 years and analysed via thematic analysis. The results revealed similarities in the perceptions of children in Wales and Czech Republic, with children in both cultures drawing on risk and protective factors that children believe impacts on their wellbeing. Risk factors include disrupted family relationships, peer difficulties, and anxiety, while protective factors include positive parent-child relationships, meaningful friendships, and effective coping strategies. This paper suggests that warm parent-child and child-peer interactions contribute to children's positive socioemotional functioning.

Influenced by Sachs' (2001) 'activist identity' I propose that pre-service teacher education or initial teacher education (ITE), as I will refer to it, could, and indeed should, encourage a new form of teacher: the 'teacher-agent.' This teacher-agent would be aware of the pressures and dictates of the neo-liberal educational culture and its ensuing performative discourse, and choose to resist it, in favour of a more holistic view of education. This view of education encourages inclusive, creative and democratic forms of education concerned with encouraging a social conscience in children and young people, as well as seeing education as concerned with the whole child. These more holistic approaches to education could include pedagogical approaches such as Philosophy for Children (P4C), Rights Respecting Education and Slow Pedagogy, which can not only provide a more balanced understanding and deeper experience of education for both teachers and pupils, but can also help teachers to resist the debilitating impact of the neo-liberal performative discourse, potentially also thus impacting on their wellbeing and ability to retain their integrity as professionals. This may also have the potential to halt the rapid exodus of new teachers from the profession. It is my contention, that engaging with pedagogies such as P4C in this new iteration of ITE could help not only to encourage the Student Teacher-Agent, but also, as a consequence, develop the Citizen-Agent in the children they are teaching. In this paper I consider four key areas where I propose P4C could play a role in this alternative model of Initial Teacher Education: democracy in action, the teacher as Teacher-Facilitator, a space for co-construction of knowledge, and encouraging Social Justice.

Northern Ireland is in the early stages of transition from conflict, but progress is regularly affected by political and public discontent. A divided landscape, segregated and under-resourced communities are enduring legacies of 'the Conflict'. Yet the political will to tackle social and community division, consult with and support communities has been lacking. Grounded in six communities most affected by poverty and the Conflict this paper illustrates the difficulties, tensions and contradictions experienced during transition and how, in the process of 'change', children and young people have been silenced, marginalised and demonised.

Policy development and implementation should be fundamental for community psychologists in their endeavors to create social change. Policy necessarily is engaged at broad social and political levels, but it is mediated through communities and individuals, and thus appealing for our discipline. We argue that there are increasing opportunities for social input in liberal democracies with the growing awareness of the need to consider social factors in policy. Public participation is one aspect of policy development, but it can be problematic and can disempowered communities, especially disadvantaged communities. Using the framework of the 'third position', a case study of attempts to ameliorate institutional oppression of Australian Aboriginal people through policy change is described. Structural reform to community engagement is described in terms of empowerment and capacity building. Power relationships are deconstructed to allow understandings of the dynamics of policy change, and the broader implications for community psychological praxis are discussed. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

In a paper examining informal networks and organizational crisis, Krackhardt and Stern (1988) proposed a measure assessing the extent to which relations in a network were internal to a group as opposed to external. They called their measure the E-I index. The measure is now in wide use and is implemented in standard network packages such as UCINET (Borgatti et al., 2002). The measure is based on a partition-based degree centrality measure and as such can be extended to other centrality measures and group level data. We explore extensions to closeness, betweenness and eigenvector centrality, and show how to apply the technique to sets of subgroups that do not form a partition. In addition, the extension to betweenness suggests a linkage to the Gould and Fernandez brokerage measures, which we explore. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

This paper formulates and empirically tests a number of hypotheses regarding the impact of covertness upon network structure. Specifically, hypotheses are deduced from theoretical arguments regarding a 'secrecy-efficiency trade off' which is said to shape covert networks. The paper draws upon data concerning the UK suffragettes. It is taken from a publicly archived UK Home Office document listing 1992 court appearances (for suffrage related activities), involving 1214 individuals and 394 court sessions, between 1906 and 1914. Network structure at earlier phases of suffragette activism, when the movement was less covert, is compared with that during the final phase, when it was more covert and meets the definitional criteria of what we call a 'covert social movement network' (CSMN). Support for the various hypotheses tested is variable but the key claims derived from the idea of the secrecy-efficiency trade off are supported. Specifically, the suffragettes' network becomes less dense and less degree centralised as it becomes more covert. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.