Jürgen Deuschle

A normative-functional concept of sustainability and its indicators

Often concepts of sustainability have been criticised for being theoretically ill-founded and lacking practical impact. This paper provides a new theoretical foundation of sustainable development, which is based on a coherent set of three normative and functional categories: systems integrity, justice and quality of life. From these three categories indicators for sustainability are deduced that allow to measure progress in sustainable development. Based on the set of criteria and its indicators, interdependencies between the different aspects of sustainability are analysed with the help of expert judgements and cross impact analysis. This paper concludes with sketching a deliberative approach to generate future strategies for sustainability.

Familial and societal causes of juvenile obesity—a qualitative model on obesity development and prevention in socially disadvantaged children and adolescents

AimThe issue of excess weight and obesity among our young people is currently under discussion as one of the most serious problems in public health. Extensive work has been done to analyse the problem, to indicate the drivers, and to create prevention programmes. Much research remains to be done in the field of modelling the complex impact network of familial and societal influences on juvenile obesity. To achieve this, the forecasts and results issued by the various disciplines must be integrated. The aim of our work has been to create a causal-loop model of obesity in socially disadvantaged children and adolescents that allows qualitative simulation, group-specific risk assessment, as well as the identification of key factors for prevention.Subjects and MethodsThe model was created in cooperation with 18 experts from the field of obesity research. The participants were drawn from eight different disciplines including medicine, sociology, and prevention. Four expert workshops pinpointed 43 main obesity drivers at the individual, familial, and societal level; these were rated according to their causal interdependence and impact. The computer-based method of cross-impact balance analysis was used to evaluate the model and to produce risk profiles for different societal and individual context situations.ResultsThe model analysis reveals that there is no one single key factor that can be expected to act as an effective prevention factor for every scenario. Instead, both the risks and the effectiveness of prevention measures depend strongly on the specific characteristics of an individual’s own environment.ConclusionConsequently, it would appear sensible to approach the design of prevention programmes from a group-specific, multi-factor and multi-level perspective.

Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der Durchführung lebensstilbezogener Fokusgruppen Das Beispiel eines Projekts zum Thema Rebound-Effekte

Der vorliegende Beitrag beschreibt das Vorgehen bei der Rekrutierung und Auswertung lebensstilbezogener Fokusgruppen. Als Praxisbeispiel dient ein Forschungsprojekt zum Thema Rebound-Effekte, im Rahmen dessen zehn Fokusgruppen besetzt mit Vertretern verschiedener Lebensstile durchgefuhrt wurden. Der Beitrag stellt die Vor- und Nachteile dieser Vorgehensweise dar und berichtet praktische Erfahrungen bei der Verwendung von Lebensstilkonzepten im Rahmen von Fokusgruppen.

Zum Stereotypus des übergewichtigen Kindes

„Jede Verneinung ist ein Problem; die doppelte Verneinung ist eine Katastrophe.“ (Schneider 1999: 143) Als Wolf Schneider, der Kommunikationsfachmann und ehemalige Leiter der Hamburger Journalistenschule, diese Feststellung zu Papier brachte, wird ihm wohl kaum folgendes Axiom der Kommunikationstheorie in den Sinn gekommen sein: „Man kann nicht nicht kommunizieren“ (Watzlawick et al. 2000: 53). Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin und Don Jackson formulierten so 1967 pragnant einen Grundsatz menschlicher Kommunikation. Im gleichen Zeitraum begrundeten Stephen Richardson und Kollegen ein anderes Forschungsparadigma, das ebenfalls prominent wurde.