Prevalence of night sleep duration, sleep quality and sleep hygiene practices among children attending childcare services in New South Wales, Australia.

Aim: To describe parent-reported child: (i) sleep duration; (ii) sleep quality; (iii) sleep hygiene practices; and (iv) the proportion of children meeting sleep duration recommendations.

Methods: A convenience sample of parents of Australian pre-school-aged children (3-5 years) were surveyed from the Hunter New England region of New South Wales. The cross-sectional survey was conducted via computer-assisted telephone interview.

A longitudinal study assessing childcare services' adoption of obesity prevention policies and practices.

Aim: Despite ongoing investments to improve the obesogenic environments of childcare settings, little is known regarding how these services have changed their physical activity and nutrition-promoting practices. This study aims to describe changes in the proportion of Australian childcare services that have adopted best-practice healthy eating and physical activity practices between 2006 and 2013 and to assess whether adoption varied by socio-economic status and locality.

Methods: A randomly selected sample of nominated supervisors (n = 358) from childcare services located in New South Wales, Australia, participated in a telephone survey in 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2013.

Online canteens: awareness, use, barriers to use, and the acceptability of potential online strategies to improve public health nutrition in primary schools.

Issue addressed This study of primary school principals assessed the awareness, use, barriers to use and acceptability of online canteens. Methods A telephone survey of 123 primary school principals within the Hunter New England Region of New South Wales, Australia was conducted from September 2014 to November 2014. Results Fifty-six percent of principals were aware of the existence of online canteens, with 8% having implemented such a system, and 38% likely to do so in the future.

Effectiveness of an intervention to facilitate the implementation of healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices in childcare services: a randomised controlled trial.

Background: The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention to increase the implementation of healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices by centre-based childcare services. The study also sought to determine if the intervention was effective in improving child dietary intake and increasing child physical activity levels while attending childcare.

Methods: A parallel group, randomised controlled trial was conducted in a sample of 128 childcare services.

Factors associated with early childhood education and care service implementation of healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices in Australia: a cross-sectional study.

Many early childhood education and care (ECEC) services fail to implement recommended policies and practices supportive of healthy eating and physical activity. The purpose of this study was to assess whether certain theoretically-based factors are associated with implementation of healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices in a sample of ECEC services. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with Service Managers of ECEC services.

Tackling risky alcohol consumption in sport: a cluster randomised controlled trial of an alcohol management intervention with community football clubs.

Background: An increased prevalence of risky alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm has been reported for members of sporting groups and at sporting venues compared with non-sporting populations. While sports clubs and venues represent opportune settings to implement strategies to reduce such risks, no controlled trials have been reported. The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of an alcohol management intervention in reducing risky alcohol consumption and the risk of alcohol-related harm among community football club members.

Childcare service centers' preferences and intentions to use a web-based program to implement healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Overweight and obesity is a significant public health problem that impacts a large number of children globally. Supporting childcare centers to deliver healthy eating and physical activity-promoting policies and practices is a recommended strategy for obesity prevention, given that such services provide access to a substantial proportion of children during a key developmental period. Electronic Web-based interventions represent a novel way to support childcare service providers to implement such policies and practices.

Improving availability, promotion and purchase of fruit and vegetable and non sugar-sweetened drink products at community sporting clubs: a randomised trial.

Background: Amateur sporting clubs represent an attractive setting for health promotion. This study assesses the impact of a multi-component intervention on the availability, promotion and purchase of fruit and vegetable and non sugar -sweetened drink products from community sporting club canteens. We also assessed the impact the intervention on sporting club revenue from the sale of food and beverages.

The impact of a hypothetical designated driver program on intended alcohol-related behavior: an RCT.

Unlabelled: This study was aimed to assess, using vignettes, the impact of a hypothetical 'designated driver' (DD) initiative on level of intended alcohol consumption. A secondary aim was to assess whether using any form of transport where someone else drove was associated with level of intended consumption. A total of 390 individual sports club members from 72 clubs in New South Wales, Australia, completed a telephone survey.

Validity of a measure to assess healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices in Australian childcare services.

Background: Childcare services represent a valuable obesity prevention opportunity, providing access to a large portion of children at a vital point in their development. Few rigorously validated measures exist to measure healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices in this setting, and no such measures exist that are specific to the childcare setting in Australia.

Methods: This was a cross sectional study, comparing two measures (pen and paper survey and observation) of healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices in childcare services.

A randomised controlled trial of an intervention to facilitate the implementation of healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices in childcare services.

Introduction: Childhood overweight and obesity tracks into adulthood, increasing the risk of developing future chronic disease. Implementing initiatives promoting healthy eating and physical activity in childcare settings has been identified as a priority to prevent excessive child weight gain. Despite this, few trials have been conducted to assess the effectiveness of interventions to support population-wide implementation of such initiatives.

The effect of energy and traffic light labelling on parent and child fast food selection: a randomised controlled trial.

Objectives: Labelling of food from fast food restaurants at point-of-purchase has been suggested as one strategy to reduce population energy consumption and contribute to reductions in obesity prevalence. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of energy and single traffic light labelling systems on the energy content of child and adult intended food purchases.

Participants And Methods: The study employed a randomised controlled trial design.

A randomised controlled trial of an active telephone-based recruitment strategy to increase childcare-service staff attendance at a physical activity and nutrition training workshop.

Issue Addressed: Centre-based childcare services represent a promising setting to target the prevention of excessive weight gain in preschool-aged children. Staff training is a key component of multi-strategy interventions to improve implementation of effective physical activity and nutrition promoting practices for obesity prevention in childcare services. This randomised controlled trial aimed to examine whether an active telephone-based strategy to invite childcare-service staff to attend a training workshop was effective in increasing the proportion of services with staff attending training, compared with a passive strategy.

Perhaps unidimensional is not unidimensional.

Miller (1956) identified his famous limit of 7 ± 2 items based in part on absolute identification-the ability to identify stimuli that differ on a single physical dimension, such as lines of different length. An important aspect of this limit is its independence from perceptual effects and its application across all stimulus types. Recent research, however, has identified several exceptions.

Stimulus-specific learning: disrupting the bow effect in absolute identification.

The bow effect is ubiquitous in standard absolute identification experiments; stimuli at the center of the stimulus-set range elicit slower and less accurate responses than do others. This effect has motivated various theoretical accounts of performance, often involving the idea that end-of-range stimuli have privileged roles. Two other phenomena (practice effects and improved performance for frequently-presented stimuli) have an important but less explored consequence for the bow effect: Standard within-subjects manipulations of set size could disrupt the bow effect.

Increasing capacity: practice effects in absolute identification.

In most of the long history of the study of absolute identification--since Miller's (1956) seminal article--a severe limit on performance has been observed, and this limit has resisted improvement even by extensive practice. In a startling result, Rouder, Morey, Cowan, and Pfaltz (2004) found substantially improved performance with practice in the absolute identification of line lengths, albeit for only 3 participants and in a somewhat atypical paradigm. We investigated the limits of this effect and found that it also occurs in more typical paradigms, is not limited to a few virtuoso participants or due to relative judgment strategies, and generalizes to some (e.

Purely relative models cannot provide a general account of absolute identification.

Unidimensional absolute identification-identifying a presented stimulus from an ordered set-is a common component of everyday tasks. Laboratory investigations have mostly used equally spaced stimuli, and the theoretical debate has focused on the merits of purely relative versus purely absolute models. Absolute models incorporate substantial knowledge of the complete set of stimuli, whereas relative models allow only partial knowledge and assume that each stimulus is compared with recently observed stimuli.