Economic and Social Research Council

New research published today by the Economic and Social Research Council shows that positive, informative strategies which help people set specific health and environmental goals are far more effective when it comes to encouraging behaviour change than negatives strategies which employ messages of fear, guilt or regret.

Recent years have seen increasing efforts to encourage people to do more for their health and for the environment, for example by recycling more, using cars less and taking more exercise. But what messages have been successful, and why?

Theories have long suggested that by changing attitude, social rules and peoples own ability to reach their goals, people's intentions or decisions to act in a particular fashion will be changed, which in turn determines the extent of change in behaviour. But the supporting evidence for these widely accepted ideas was weak; there was a need to take a closer look at experiments that changed attitudes, norms and self-efficacy in order to measure the true extent of any changes in subsequent intentions and behaviour.

The research project, 'Does changing attitudes, norms or self-efficacy change intentions and behaviour?', led by Professor Paschal Sheeran of Sheffield University, provides the crucial missing evidence about the role of these three factors in behaviour change by reviewing all the successful experiments in the past 25 years and quantifying their effects on decisions and actions.

The team identified 33 distinct strategies for changing intentions and behaviour across the 129 different studies. The most frequently used strategies provided general information, details of consequences and opportunities for comparison. Yet the most effective strategies were to prompt practice, set specific goals, generate self-talk, agree a behavioural contract and prompt review of behavioural goals. The two least effective strategies involved arousing fear and causing people to regret if they acted in a particular fashion.

They also examined whether the characteristics of a particular study influenced how well changes in attitude, social norm and self-efficacy influenced intentions and behaviour. There was little evidence that the way factors were measured influenced the findings, though studies that used students or had short follow-up had stronger effect on intentions.

The team's findings show that changing attitude, social norms and behaviour succeeds in making a statistically noticeable difference in people's intentions and behaviour about 60 per cent of the time. The team found the amount of change in intentions and behaviour to be 'meaningful' and of 'medium' size according to standard procedures for describing effect sizes.

[CLB: You also can't scare people into buying security or in using good security tools or practices. You can't scare people into complying. Good governance is a choise, and needs to be enabled with useful tools and procedures.]

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WBI Governance & Anti-Corruption

This page presents the updated aggregate governance research indicators for 213 countries for 1996–2005, for six dimensions of governance:

• Voice and Accountability
• Political Stability and Absence of Violence
• Government Effectiveness
• Regulatory Quality
• Rule of Law
• Control of Corruption

The data and methodology used to construct the indicators are described in 'Governance Matters V: Governance Indicators for 1996–2005.' The aggregate indicators as well as for the first time virtually all of the underlying data can be accessed interactively through the following links:

Quick Access
1. Interactive governance indicators: charts & tables
2. Excel-based comparative graphs
3. Governance world map navigation & country stats
4. Download data in Excel format
5. Methodological papers on Governance
6. FAQ on indicators
The Worldwide Governance Indicators are based on a longstanding research program of the World Bank Institute and the Research Department of the World Bank, initiated in the late 1990s by Daniel Kaufmann and Aart Kraay, with the assistance of Pablo Zoido-Lobatón and Massimo Mastruzzi.

Canada:

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Wire services: Ponemon Institute Study

New Study Links Inadequate Resources and Leadership to Increased Insider Threats

Privacy and information management research firm the Ponemon Institute andArcSight, Inc., a global leader in Enterprise Security Management (ESM) software, today released a new study showing that IT security professionals believe poor leadership at the executive level, coupled with a lack of accountability, is a major contributor to the breakdown in corporate data integrity. The study, National Survey on Managing the Insider Threats, is drawn from the responses of more than 450 U.S.-based IT security professionals, and points to resource and leadership failures as a primary cause of employee complacency, negligence and malicious behaviour resulting in both intentional and inadvertent compromise of business and personal information.

The study, sponsored by ArcSight, examines experienced IT security professionals' opinions related to the causes, responses and solutions to the insider threat to data integrity. For the purposes of the study, "insider threat" is defined as the misuse or destruction of sensitive or confidential information, as well as IT infrastructure that houses this data, by employees, contractors and others with access to sensitive or confidential information. The National Survey on Managing the Insider Threats found that:

• More than 78% of respondents reported one or more unreported insider-related security breaches within their company.
• 93% of respondents attributed lack of resources and 81% of respondents cited lack of accountability as two primary contributing factors to poor data security.
• Respondents ranked the top three threats to data integrity as:
• Missed or failed security patches on critical applications
• Accidental or malicious insider misuse of sensitive or confidential data
• Virus, malware, and spyware infections
• 89% view insider threats as serious, yet only 49% think CEOs have the same perception.

Copies of Survey on Managing the Insider Threat are available through the Ponemon Institute and through ArcSight.

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SC Magazine

Most large corporations are not sure whether they're in line with federal regulations and some are not taking adequate steps to address compliance regulations, according to a survey released this week.

Seventy-two percent of large corporations are not confident that they are complying with applicable regulations, according to a survey released by ControlPath.

Compliance is also affecting corporate bottom lines, according to the poll. When asked the most challenging aspect of compliance, the cost of managing governance was chosen by 51 percent of respondents.

The survey polled 132 senior executives earlier this month.

The vast majority of corporations are under numerous federal regulations, with about 70 percent of all respondents using a compartmentalized compliance strategy, according to the survey.

According to the survey's findings, many corporations may be unaware of technological advantages for compliance issues. Forty-five percent of respondents said they want better technology to deal with regulatory issues, but only 27 percent are using some form of compliance management tools.

Forty-eight percent of companies reached said their processes for compliance regulations were entirely automated, while 23 percent said they use manual processes.

Jim Hitela, director of product marketing for ControlPath, said today that compliance only becomes easier for corporations once they automate the process.

"Most companies are still not automated in how they (ensure compliance). They are still treating compliance as kind of individual silos," he said. "We do expect that to change. The initial shock of Sarbanes-Oxley has passed. So some that have to (comply with multiple regulations) are realizing there is some affiance to automating the process."

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