The Relationship Between Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions, Schwartz's Cultural Values, and Obesity

Obesity and Nutrigenetics Testing: New Insights

BACKGROUND

Obesity results from interactions between environmental factors, lifestyle, and genetics. In this scenario, nutritional genomics and nutrigenetic tests stand out, with the promise of helping patients avoid or treat obesity. This narrative review investigates whether nutrigenetic tests may help to prevent or treat obesity. Scientific studies in PubMed Science Direct were reviewed, focusing on using nutrigenetic tests in obesity. The work showed that few studies address the use of tools in obesity. However, most of the studies listed reported their beneficial effects in weight loss. Ethical conflicts were also discussed, as in most countries, there are no regulations to standardize these tools, and there needs to be more scientific knowledge for health professionals who interpret them. International Societies, such as the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the Brazilian Association for the Study of Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome, do not recommend nutrigenetic tests to prevent or treat obesity, especially in isolation. Advancing nutrigenetics depends on strengthening three pillars: regulation between countries, scientific evidence with clinical validity, and professional training.

Pillars of the Global Innovation Index by income level of economies: longitudinal data (2011-2022) for researchers' use

It is widely known that the Global Innovation Index reports are of unique value for research purposes. The aim of this work is to provide a panel data file with all pillars of the Global Innovation Index from 2011 until 2022, covering all available economies (149 in total) by income level. After the secondary data was gathered, it was reshaped in an exhaustive process that involved directly importing it from databases or manual insertion. Based on successive Global Innovation Index reports and World Bank data, this work attempts to provide a whole set of data on the incomes of world economies by using Gross Domestic Product per capita based on purchasing power parity (constant 2017 international $ and current international $) and Gross National Income per capita in current U.S. dollars (Atlas method). A descriptive analysis is also provided of data and inferences drawn based on the income differences between economies. The data compilation shared here has a singular relevance as it makes a large amount of structured information easier to access. Moreover, data from subsequent years or even from new entries of economies in the Global Innovation Index reports could be added to the data file. As a practical implication, this work should be considered a reliable tool for quantitative research directly or indirectly related with innovation topics (policies, ecosystems, technologies, programmes, among others), as it reduces the time-consuming process of gathering data.

Turkish validity and reliability of the individual cultural values scale on nurses

Background

Nurses need to understand their own cultures in order to care for patients in ways that are based on the cultural structure of the patient, which means to the patient's cultural values and beliefs.

Aim

This study was conducted in Turkey, and the aim of the study was to test the Turkish validity and reliability of the Individual Cultural Values Scale (CVSCALE) for nurses.

Methods

This research was a methodological study. The sample of the research was composed of 256 nurses. The reliability and validity analyses were performed such as additivity, Cronbach's alpha, response bias, language, content, and construct validity. Ethical approval was obtained for the research.

Results

The content validity index of the scale was .91. As a result of confirmatory factor analysis, it was determined that the model had a good fit, and five dimensions of the scale were confirmed. The internal consistencies of subscales, except those for power distance and masculinity, were very reliable. The test-retest correlations were found to be very high for the CVSCALE.

Conclusion

The Turkish form of the Individual Cultural Values Scale that was conducted on nurses had acceptable levels of validity and reliability. Measuring culture at the individual level is important for transcultural nursing, and it will contribute to the creation of nursing policies in Turkey.

Diversity of COVID-19 News Media Coverage across 17 Countries: The Influence of Cultural Values, Government Stringency and Pandemic Severity

The current media studies of COVID-19 devote asymmetrical attention to social media; in contrast, newspapers have received comparatively less attention. Newspapers are an integral source of current information that are syndicated and amplified by social media to a wide global audience. This is one of the first known studies to operationalize news media diversity and examine its association with cultural values during the pandemic. We tracked the global diversity of COVID-19 coverage in a news media database of 12 billion words, collated from 28 million articles over 7000 news websites, across 8 months. Media diversity was measured weekly by the number of unique descriptors of 10 target terms of the pandemic (e.g., COVID-19, coronavirus) and normalized by the corpus size for the respective countries per week. Government Stringency was taken from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker and cultural scores were taken from Hofstede's Cultural Values global database. Results showed that Media Diversity Rate increased 6.7 times over 8 months, from the baseline period (October-December 2019) to during the pandemic (January-May 2020). Mixed effects modelling revealed that higher COVID-19 prevalence rates and governmental stringency predicted this increase. Interestingly, collectivist cultures are linked to more diverse media coverage during COVID-19. It is possible that news outlets in collectivist societies are motivated to present a diverse array of topics given the impact of COVID-19 on every segment of society. Of broader significance, we provided a framework to design targeted public health communications that are culturally nuanced.

The obesity transition: stages of the global epidemic

The global prevalence of obesity has increased substantially over the past 40 years, from less than 1% in 1975, to 6-8% in 2016, among girls and boys, and from 3% to 11% among men and from 6% to 15% among women over the same time period. Our aim was to consolidate the evidence on the epidemiology of obesity into a conceptual model of the so-called obesity transition. We used illustrative examples from the 30 most populous countries, representing 77·5% of the world's population to propose a four stage model. Stage 1 of the obesity transition is characterised by a higher prevalence of obesity in women than in men, in those with higher socioeconomic status than in those with lower socioeconomic status, and in adults than in children. Many countries in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are presently in this stage. In countries in stage 2 of the transition, there has been a large increase in the prevalence among adults, a smaller increase among children, and a narrowing of the gap between sexes and in socioeconomic differences among women. Many Latin American and Middle Eastern countries are presently at this stage. High-income east Asian countries are also at this stage, albeit with a much lower prevalence of obesity. In stage 3 of the transition, the prevalence of obesity among those with lower socioeconomic status surpasses that of those with higher socioeconomic status, and plateaus in prevalence can be observed in women with high socioeconomic status and in children. Most European countries are presently at this stage. There are too few signs of countries entering into the proposed fourth stage of the transition, during which obesity prevalence declines, to establish demographic patterns. This conceptual model is intended to provide guidance to researchers and policy makers in identifying the current stage of the obesity transition in a population, anticipating subpopulations that will develop obesity in the future, and enacting proactive measures to attenuate the transition, taking into consideration local contextual factors.