The Effectiveness of Behavior Change Techniques Underpinning Psychological Interventions to Improve Glycemic Levels for Adults With Type 2 Diabetes: A Meta-Analysis

An existing systematic review and meta-analysis found a significant reduction in glycemic levels for adults with type 2 diabetes who received a psychological intervention over control conditions. To help develop effective interventions in the future, there is a need to understand the active ingredients which underpin these psychological interventions. We conducted a secondary meta-analysis including 67 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) reported in English. We reviewed the psychological intervention descriptions of the included studies of the existing review and extracted the behavior change techniques (BCTs) according to the BCT taxonomy (BCTTv1). We also extracted information on primary behavioral target versus primary outcome, and presence of fidelity assessment. The most frequent BCTs across RCTs were ‘social support (unspecified)’ (n=50), ‘problem solving’ (n=38) and ‘goal setting (behavior’) (n=30). These BCTs were independently associated with a significant reduction in glycemic levels (HbA1c) compared to control conditions, but not significantly different from studies that did not include these BCTs. Meta-regressions revealed no significant associations between HbA1c, and psychological intervention category (counselling versus cognitive behavioral therapy interventions) (p=0.84), frequency of BCTs per psychological intervention (p=0.29), primary behavioral target versus primary outcome (p=0.48), or presence of fidelity assessment (p=0.15). Social support (unspecified), problem solving, and goal setting (behavior) could be useful BCTs to develop psychological interventions for people with type 2 diabetes to improve glycemic levels. However, more research is required to understand which combination of individual BCTs are most effective for this population.Systematic Review RegistrationRegistered with the international prospective register of systematic reviews registration (PROSPERO) CRD42016033619.

ANALYSIS OF MARKETING PRICE STRATEGIES OF ENTERPRISES

Pricing strategy acts as an intermediary between the consumer and the producer. Therefore, its formation is of great importance and belongs to the key section of marketing. Businesses do not always have a broad enough theoretical knowledge to comprehensively formulate their pricing strategy, but there is already a great variety of them. There is a need to group pricing strategies by key features for easy formation of the company's own pricing strategy based on the analysis of these features. The choice of pricing strategy depends on many factors. Pricing strategy should be an effective tool of competition, so it must be optimally combined with other strategies. It is proposed to analyze the most optimal pricing strategy, using their grouping into four groups: commodity, behavioral, target and price. Forming a pricing strategy for a particular company, it is advisable to select tools based on a step-by-step analysis of each of the proposed four groups: product analysis; goal analysis; analysis of the behavior of the business entity; analysis of price characteristics. At the first stage it is necessary to study in detail the product itself (new, modernized, traditional) and its quality (high, medium, low). Some recommendations for the choice of tools are offered, taking into account the possible consequences. In the second stage, it is advisable to compare their own strategic development goals with the existing and desired level of demand. The management of the entity should conduct a comprehensive market research. The third stage involves the analysis of the behavior of the entity: both existing and desired (market positioning). The fourth stage involves the analysis of the price by type, volume, dynamics, cost recovery. Some tools in this group of strategies are relatively unfair to the consumer. Before the final implementation of the formed pricing strategy it is necessary to consider the influence of environmental factors. The directions of optimization of the price strategy are outlined: interaction of pricing with other strategies, constant adjustment of the strategy under the influence of competition and demand, modeling, focus on foreign practice and the correct choice of methods of price regulation.

Theory and Simulation in Neuroscience

Modeling work in neuroscience can be classified using two different criteria. The first one is the complexity of the model, ranging from simplified conceptual models that are amenable to mathematical analysis to detailed models that require simulations in order to understand their properties. The second criterion is that of direction of workflow, which can be from microscopic to macroscopic scales (bottom-up) or from behavioral target functions to properties of components (top-down). We review the interaction of theory and simulation using examples of top-down and bottom-up studies and point to some current developments in the fields of computational and theoretical neuroscience.

Influence of Expectation of Different Rewards on Behavior-Related Neuronal Activity in the Striatum

This study investigated how different expected rewards influence behavior-related neuronal activity in the anterior striatum. In a spatial delayed-response task, monkeys reached for a left or right target and obtained a small quantity of one of two juices (apple, grenadine, orange, lemon, black currant, or raspberry). In each trial, an initial instruction picture indicated the behavioral target and predicted the reward. Nonmovement trials served as controls for movement relationships. Consistent preferences in special reward choice trials and differences in anticipatory licks, performance errors, and reaction times indicated that animals differentially expected the rewards predicted by the instructions. About 600 of >2,500 neurons in anterior parts of caudate nucleus, putamen, and ventral striatum showed five forms of task-related activations, comprising responses to instructions, spatial or nonspatial activations during the preparation or execution of the movement, and activations preceding or following the rewards. About one-third of the neurons showed different levels of task-related activity depending on which liquid reward was predicted at trial end. Activations were either higher or lower for rewards that were preferred by the animals as compared with nonpreferred rewards. These data suggest that the expectation of an upcoming liquid reward may influence a fraction of task-related neurons in the anterior striatum. Apparently the information about the expected reward is incorporated into the neuronal activity related to the behavioral reaction leading to the reward. The results of this study are in general agreement with an account of goal-directed behavior according to which the outcome should be represented already at the time at which the behavior toward the outcome is performed.

The Behavioral Target Complaints Form: A Nonreactive Measure of Psychotherapeutic Outcome

To determine whether or not goal setting could be a sensitive measure of outcome clients set specific behavioral goals on the Behavioral Target Complaints Form and then evaluated their progress after seven 1-hr. sessions of psychotherapy. The sample consisted of 20 university and community clients treated with brief therapy by seven advanced graduate students and one faculty member. The 10 clients who set goals did not show greater improvement than the 10 who did not set goals on either of two other measures of outcome, the Personal Satisfaction Form (Nichols, 1975) and the Adult State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, 1970). However, the Behavioral Target Complaints Form was significantly correlated with the other outcome measures. The findings were interpreted as demonstrating that this goal-attainment measure is a sensitive measure of outcome but that administering it does not affect outcome of therapy.