I'll Have Fries with That: Increasing Choice Complexity Promotes Indulgent Food Choices

Three studies showed that the way that options are presented in a choice set—as combinations of intersecting attributes or in a more sequential “a la carte” choice format—affects the degree to which consumers adhere to their goals in the consumption setting. Specifically, using the context of food consumption and healthy eating, results showed that consumers were more likely to make double indulgent choices, the choice of both an indulgent entrée and an indulgent side item, when choosing from a menu consisting of predetermined “combination meals” than when selecting among the same entrée and side options in an a la carte fashion. Studies 2 and 3 implicated a goal distraction mechanism in driving the effect; the combination format, with its cross‐cutting of product choices into various combinations, reduces the salience of goal‐related constructs on implicit measures. In showing that different product presentation formats can affect the degree to which consumers make goal‐consistent choices, the current work adds to work on the effects of environmental influences on goal progress and goal achievement. Implications for encouraging goal‐consistent behavior in the context of healthy eating as well as other important consumer goal contexts are discussed.     

Children aged 9-14 living in disadvantaged areas in England: Opportunities and barriers for cycling

The aim of this paper is to take a holistic perspective to explore levels of cycling and opportunities and barriers to increase children’s safer cycling in disadvantaged areas in England. The study was one part of a larger study which explored the factors underlying the high level of road traffic casualties especially among children in the most disadvantaged areas of England and to explore how this impacts on mobility and quality of life. The methods involved a cross sectional survey comprising school based questionnaire surveys with children aged 9-14 and focus groups with parents who had children within this age range. The surveys were conducted in 2007 and the focus groups during 2008. 4286 children completed the survey and eight focus groups were held. Bike ownership (77%) was high, use in previous week moderate (39%) but only 2% cycled to school. Ownership was significantly lower in minority ethnic groups. Despite young children’s strong preference to travel by cycle (30%) than walk or go by car, most parents felt it was too hazardous. It is unlikely that these findings would be any different from the rest of England, however the combination of environmental and social factors may elevate the risks for young cyclists in these areas. This paper concludes that a number of barriers exist to increasing levels of cycling among children living in disadvantaged areas particularly amongst ethnic groups. These barriers could be addressed by environmental modifications to reduce speeds and by reducing the levels of antisocial driving and riding in residential areas and around destinations where children travel, by providing cycle training to improve children’s skills and parent’s confidence, and by providing secure storage facilities for bikes. Until these barriers are addressed it is unlikely that cycling will increase despite the strong preferences children have to travel by bike. Such preferences to cycle provide an opportunity for local authorities to act on.     

“Top 10” reasons: When adding persuasive arguments reduces persuasion

Across four studies, we show that experts’ efforts to strengthen the persuasiveness of health and civic duty-related appeals actually weakened them. When designing “Top 10” reasons lists to get people to quit smoking, encourage young people to vote, and persuade individuals to engage in fitness, governmental (studies 1–2) and non-profit (study 3) agencies chose to include mildly strong reasons alongside strong ones in their effort to be as persuasive as possible. However, from the target audience’s perspective, those mildly favorable reasons actually decreased the persuasiveness of the message compared to a condition in which fewer but only highly persuasive reasons were used. Building upon the Presenter’s Paradox by Weaver, Garcia & Schwarz (Journal of Consumer Research 39 (3):445–460, 2012), these results demonstrate that averaging in impression formation occurs not only in targets commonly thought of as unified entities such as consumer products and people but also occurs in persuasion contexts where the individual arguments comprising a message are independent of each other.     

A systematic literature review identifying associations between outcomes and quality of life (QoL) or healthcare resource utilization (HCRU) in schizophrenia

Aims: There have been no systematic literature reviews (SLRs) evaluating the identified association between outcomes (e.g. clinical, functional, adherence, societal burden) and Quality-of-Life (QoL) or Healthcare Resource Utilization (HCRU) in schizophrenia. The objective of this study was to conduct a SLR of published data on the relationship between outcomes and QoL or HCRU.

Materials and methods: Electronic searches were conducted in Embase and Medline, for articles which reported on the association between outcomes and QoL or HCRU. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to identify the most relevant articles and studies and extract their data. A summary table was developed to illustrate the strength of associations, based on p-values and correlations.

Results: One thousand and two abstracts were retrieved; five duplicates were excluded; 997 abstracts were screened and 95 references were retained for full-text screening. Thrirty-one references were included in the review. The most commonly used questionnaire, which also demonstrated the strongest associations (defined as a p?Limitations: This study included data from an 11-year period, and other instruments less frequently used may be further investigated.

Conclusions: The evidence suggests that the PANSS is the clinical outcome that currently provides the most frequent and systematic associations with HCRU and QoL endpoints in schizophrenia.     

The relative efficiency of schizophrenia health care systems: an international comparison using data envelopment analysis

Abstract

Aim

To compare the health economic efficiency of health care systems across nations, within the area of schizophrenia, using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach.     

PATENT ENFORCEMENT: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Without the confidence that patent rights can be enforced quickly and efficiently, when needed, the patent system will not stimulate innovation. For this reason, governments, academics, international institutions and the private sector have poured significant resources into gathering and analysing statistics on patent enforcement over the last two decades. This paper reviews these studies and finds that while infringement is relatively common, much enforcement occurs informally and less than 1–2% of patents incur litigation. New strategic uses of the enforcement system, especially by nonpracticing entities, are the major emerging enforcement issue, especially in the United States. While the old problem of litigation costs attracts the lion's share of empirical attention, it has produced remarkably few solutions to date.     

Insulin degludec versus insulin glargine U100 for patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes in the US: a budget impact analysis with rebate tables

Background and aims: Drug rebates are almost universally negotiated privately between the manufacturer and the payer in the US. The aim of the present study was to illustrate the use of a “rebate table” to improve the transparency and utility of published budget impact analyses in the US by modeling ranges of hypothetical rebates for two comparators. Worked examples were conducted to illustrate the budgetary implications of using insulin degludec (IDeg) relative to insulin glargine (IGlar) U100 in patients with type 1 or 2 diabetes.

Methods: A short-term (1-year) budget impact model was developed to evaluate the costs of switching to IDeg from IGlar in patients with type 1 or 2 diabetes on basal-bolus and basal-only insulin, respectively. The analysis used insulin dose and hypoglycemia data from recent randomized trials, data on the prevalence of diabetes, and estimates of the proportion of patients using each insulin regimen. The model was configured to run multiple rebate scenarios to generate a rebate table in a hypothetical 1 million member commercial plan.

Results: Relative to IGlar, IDeg resulted in reductions in non-severe and severe hypoglycemia incidence and costs both in patients with type 1 and patients with type 2 diabetes. Insulin acquisition costs were higher, and respective rebates of 7.3% and 10.6% were required for IDeg to break-even with IGlar at the full list price. Incremental per member per month IDeg costs without a rebate were USD 0.04 in type 1 diabetes and USD 0.80 in type 2 diabetes.

Conclusions: Using IDeg instead of IGlar at list price could result in a modest increase in costs when considering insulin and hypoglycemia costs alone, but modest incremental rebates with IDeg would result in cost neutrality relative to IGlar. In addition, IDeg would result in reduced incidence of severe and non-severe hypoglycemia.     

Accelerating the transition to employment at benefit exhaustion: still possible after four years of unemployment?

This paper provides evidence of how the long-term unemployed react to the threat of running out of unemployment insurance (UI) after receiving it for nearly 4 years. To identify the effect of UI exhaustion, we make use of a 1999 Danish legislative change that progressively reduced potential benefit duration from 5 to 4 years. We find that shortening UI duration hastens the transition to employment throughout the unemployment spell up to benefit exhaustion even if it occurs as long as 4 years later. However, although the proportional effect is large, it is small in absolute value.