Search results
1 – 10 of 100Stephanie E. Perrett, Christie Craddock, Gareth Dunseath, Giri Shankar, Stephen Luzio and Benjamin J. Gray
Smoking rates are known to be higher amongst those committed to prison than the general population. Those in prison suffer from high rates of comorbidities that are likely to…
Abstract
Purpose
Smoking rates are known to be higher amongst those committed to prison than the general population. Those in prison suffer from high rates of comorbidities that are likely to increase their risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), making it more difficult to manage. In 2016, a tobacco ban began to be implemented across prisons in England and Wales, UK. This study aims to measure the effect of the tobacco ban on predicted cardiovascular risk for those quitting smoking on admission to prison.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data from a prevalence study of CVD in prisons, the authors have assessed the effect of the tobacco ban on cardiovascular risk, using predicted age to CVD event, ten-year CVD risk and heart age, for those who previously smoked and gave up on admission to prison.
Findings
The results demonstrate measurable health gains across all age groups with the greatest gains found in those aged 50 years and older and who had been heavy smokers. Quitting smoking on admission to prison led to a reduced heart age of between two and seven years for all participants.
Originality/value
The data supports tobacco bans in prisons as a public health measure to reduce risk of CVD. Interventions are needed to encourage maintenance of smoking cessation on release from prison for the full health benefits to be realised.
Details
Keywords
Benjamin Thomas Gray and Matthew Sisto
The purpose of this study is to describe peer support work in a men’s mental health unit from a lived experience and service user’s perspective. The intertwining of process (a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to describe peer support work in a men’s mental health unit from a lived experience and service user’s perspective. The intertwining of process (a lived experience perspective) and subject (the therapeutic value of peer support) leads to greater knowledge and insight into peer support for people with mental health problems.
Design/methodology/approach
This service user narrative draws on the extracts from a reflective journal of interactions and conversations with people with mental health problems as well as feedback from service users and staff about the value of peer support. These methods allow a first-person, service user’s, reflective and narrative account of peer support work.
Findings
Peer support work, particularly hearing voices sessions, are found to be highly therapeutic and worthwhile. They promote insight and create feelings of safety and hope in what can sometimes be a frightening and hostile ward environment. Peer support provides emotional and practical support. Sharing stories and experiences of mental illness with people leads to trust, feelings of being valued, heard and accepted as well as better experiences of care and being seen as a person first. Due to their shared experiences, peer support workers are able to befriend people with mental health problems on the ward. Peer support work bridges the gap and vacuum of care between people with mental health problems and staff. It compensates for understaffing to provide more holistic and person-centred care and support.
Originality/value
Lived experience/ service user perspectives and narratives on peer support are rare, particularly in a hospital setting. This article provides a rich, perhaps overlooked and hidden narrative on the nature of peer support work. People with mental health problems, like Ben, are often excluded from society, health and social care, education, employment and research. This narrative opens up a pathway to understanding peer support from a service user perspective.
Details
Keywords
Benjamin Ajibade and Catherine Hayes
The aim of the study is to explore perceptions of the impact of assessment feedback by international undergraduate nursing students. Research to date indicates that summative…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of the study is to explore perceptions of the impact of assessment feedback by international undergraduate nursing students. Research to date indicates that summative assessment feedback may impact significantly on student achievement but if it is undertaken sub optimally or does not provide students with the opportunity to engage with the process and reflexively respond, it can also be exceptionally damaging to the learning experience.
Design/methodology/approach
A scoping exercise of overall student feedback experience was initially collated via the adoption of an Interpretive Phenomenological Approach (IPA). Participants were recruited via purposive sampling and the LEGO® Serious Play® method was used to collect data. Analysis with Quirkos software was used to examine the salience as well as commonality of findings as an integral part of a recognised five-step thematic analytical approach.
Findings
Feedback was perceived, by students, as significantly impacting factor in relation to their overall progression, attainment and retention rates. Themes generated from the findings evidenced student perceptions that summative feedback is a positive driver and source of motivation for academic success and progression. It was perceived that levels of attainment were related to the clarity, quality and individualised nature of feedback that students received and that this was perceived to be evident in their final grades. These were accompanied by perceptions that feedback clarity also determined the potential of breaking down perceived student barriers to learning, their perceived capacity for effective assignment planning and preparation and the likelihood of them having any positive collective or individual interpersonal relationships with their tutors. Summarised, students perceived that feedback ought to lead to student empowerment in managing their studies and as such it ought to be clear, straightforward and non-ambiguous.
Research limitations/implications
The methodological design of the study means that generalisability from its findings was never intended or possible. However, there may be the potential transferability of findings to similar institutions and contexts of nurse education with students who have similar demographic profiling. The study was also a means of providing an insight into the lived experience of students which could be used in the prospective adaptation of feedback mechanisms for staff at a local level within Higher Education.
Practical implications
The study reveals the perceived impact of gamification as a mechanism of summative assessment as conveyed by a designated group of students. Whilst specific recommendations for change can only be made within the context specificity of the research, there may be aspects of the findings which are potentially transferable to other similar contexts of Higher Education delivery whose pedagogical approaches mirror those in operation at the institution where the research was undertaken. It became apparent that the standardisation of feedback approaches offered many opportunities to improve existing systems. The issue of monitoring workloads is also of significance in terms of the level and degree of summative assessment and feedback that academic staff can undertake.
Originality/value
The study revealed the perceived magnitude of assessment feedback on progression, attainment and retention rates, alongside the perceived need for a universal feedback template and the opportunity to provide audio-video feedback. This study adds to existing knowledge in the field of pedagogic practice about both the execution of LEGO® Serious Play® as a research methodology and why the perceptions of feedback as articulated and illuminated by a group of contemporary nursing students ought to matter in the context of Higher Education.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to center the experiences of three cohorts (n = 40) of Black high school students who participated in a critical race technology course that exposed anti-blackness…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to center the experiences of three cohorts (n = 40) of Black high school students who participated in a critical race technology course that exposed anti-blackness as the organizing logic and default setting of digital and artificially intelligent technology. This paper centers the voices, experiences and technological innovations of the students, and in doing so, introduces a new type of digital literacy: critical race algorithmic literacy.
Design/methodology/approach
Data for this study include student interviews (called “talk backs”), journal reflections and final technology presentations.
Findings
Broadly, the data suggests that critical race algorithmic literacies prepare Black students to critically read the algorithmic word (e.g. data, code, machine learning models, etc.) so that they can not only resist and survive, but also rebuild and reimagine the algorithmic world.
Originality/value
While critical race media literacy draws upon critical race theory in education – a theorization of race, and a critique of white supremacy and multiculturalism in schools – critical race algorithmic literacy is rooted in critical race technology theory, which is a theorization of blackness as a technology and a critique of algorithmic anti-blackness as the organizing logic of schools and AI systems.
Details
Keywords
Samuel Jebaraj Benjamin, Pallab Kumar Biswas, Nirosha Hewa Wellalage and Yimei Man
This paper aims to examine the association between environmental disclosure and waste performance.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the association between environmental disclosure and waste performance.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on a sample of S&P 500 firms over a nine-year period from 2010 to 2018. The pooled ordinary least squares (OLS), logistic, propensity score matching (PSM) and instrumental variable-generalized method of moments regressions analyses have been used to examine the data.
Findings
The findings show a significant positive relationship between waste performance and environmental disclosure, suggesting that firms with superior waste performance tend to disclose more environmental information. Further, the authors distinguish between “hard” and “soft” environmental disclosures and find that the effect of waste performance is consistently positive and significant for each type. The observed positive and significant association of waste performance with environmental disclosure remains unchanged, regardless of the industry affiliation of firms, although firms from industries that are less environmentally sensitive provide a slightly higher level of environmental disclosure. The authors also explore possible channels that may explain the association between waste performance and environmental disclosure and find that litigation risk and cash holdings positively moderate the association. The finding remains robust to a number of alternative estimation approaches.
Originality/value
Overall, the authors present important evidence that waste performance is an important indicator of environmental disclosure. The findings are useful for corporations and stakeholders and have important implications around the globe as the authors continue to grapple with the ongoing issue of waste.
Details
Keywords
Mohammad Azharuddin's arrival in professional cricket served, to quote Karl Marx, as a reform of consciousness that awakened the sport ‘from its dream about itself’. His expertise…
Abstract
Mohammad Azharuddin's arrival in professional cricket served, to quote Karl Marx, as a reform of consciousness that awakened the sport ‘from its dream about itself’. His expertise with the bat invoked the wide expanse of human sensorium, provoking reactions of shock and admiration among observers. In this chapter, I examine Azharuddin's life in cricket and public through a dialectical probing of the relationship between shock and aesthetics. Azhar and cricket appear as a productive terrain to carry out the analysis, as it pushes the possibility of what or who can be considered as a valid subject for theoretical scrutiny. Taking cues from Walter Benjamin and CLR James, I theorise the shock effects created by a cricketer most unusual. From his wristy wizardry with the bat to his appointment as captain of the Indian men's cricket team during the rise of Hindu nationalism in the country, Azharuddin's presence and popularity extended beyond the boundaries that are often imposed on a sportsperson. Through his involvement in the match-fixing scandal that was exposed at the turn of the 21st century, Azhar (the name by which he was popularly known) challenged the mores of a game that had emphasised Victorian notions of purity on and off the field. For the purposes of this chapter, I discuss how Azhar constructed a bodily discourse that pushes us to reassess our very notions of art and aesthetics.
Details
Keywords
Six million Iraqis were displaced during the Iraq-Daesh War, and although many have returned to their communities, there remain approximately 1.3 million internally displaced…
Abstract
Six million Iraqis were displaced during the Iraq-Daesh War, and although many have returned to their communities, there remain approximately 1.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) across the country. Today, approximately 25% of IDP children in Iraq are out of school (REACH, 2020). This study foregrounds the voices and family histories of IDPs when navigating educational access and makes a methodological argument for the need for increased qualitative research in post-conflict settings. Using the conceptual framework of navigation, the author presents displaced persons as agentic, dynamic people with lived histories, present realities, and imagined futures which inform their journey through the education system. Semi-structured interviews with 16 IDPs who identified as parents or caregivers were conducted virtually. Displaced Iraqis value education for different reasons, ranging from basic literacy to employment to societal improvement. In doing so, the author challenges the barrier-dominant framework through which IDP educational access is often understood and nuanced with a temporal lens which requires us to identify IDPs as (1) persons capable of making choices for themselves, (2) givers as well as receivers, and (3) persons who aspire to goals beyond basic survival.
Details
Keywords
Pratyush N. Sharma, Benjamin D. Liengaard, Joseph F. Hair, Marko Sarstedt and Christian M. Ringle
Researchers often stress the predictive goals of their partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analyses. However, the method has long lacked a statistical…
Abstract
Purpose
Researchers often stress the predictive goals of their partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analyses. However, the method has long lacked a statistical test to compare different models in terms of their predictive accuracy and to establish whether a proposed model offers a significantly better out-of-sample predictive accuracy than a naïve benchmark. This paper aims to address this methodological research gap in predictive model assessment and selection in composite-based modeling.
Design/methodology/approach
Recent research has proposed the cross-validated predictive ability test (CVPAT) to compare theoretically established models. This paper proposes several extensions that broaden the scope of CVPAT and explains the key choices researchers must make when using them. A popular marketing model is used to illustrate the CVPAT extensions’ use and to make recommendations for the interpretation and benchmarking of the results.
Findings
This research asserts that prediction-oriented model assessments and comparisons are essential for theory development and validation. It recommends that researchers routinely consider the application of CVPAT and its extensions when analyzing their theoretical models.
Research limitations/implications
The findings offer several avenues for future research to extend and strengthen prediction-oriented model assessment and comparison in PLS-SEM.
Practical implications
Guidelines are provided for applying CVPAT extensions and reporting the results to help researchers substantiate their models’ predictive capabilities.
Originality/value
This research contributes to strengthening the predictive model validation practice in PLS-SEM, which is essential to derive managerial implications that are typically predictive in nature.
Details
Keywords
By reconsidering the concept of the historic environment, the aim of this study is to better understand how heritage is expressed by examining the networks within which the…
Abstract
Purpose
By reconsidering the concept of the historic environment, the aim of this study is to better understand how heritage is expressed by examining the networks within which the cultural performances of the historic environment take place. The goal is to move beyond a purely material expression and seek the expansion of the cultural dimension of the historic environment.
Design/methodology/approach
Conceptually, the historic environment is considered a valuable resource for heritage expression and exploration. The databases and records that house historic environment data are venerated and frequented entities for archeologists, but arguably less so for non-specialist users. In inventorying the historic environment, databases fulfill a major role in the planning process and asset management that is often considered to be more than just perfunctory. This paper approaches historic environment records (HERs) from an actor network perspective, particularizing the social foundation and relationships within the networks governing the historic environment and the environment's associated records.
Findings
The paper concludes that the performance of HERs from an actor-network perspective is a hegemonic process that is biased toward the supply and input to and from professional users. Furthermore, the paper provides a schematic for how many of the flaws in heritage transmission have come about.
Originality/value
The relevance here is largely belied by the fact that HERs as both public digital resources and as heritage networks were awaiting to be addressed in depth from a theoretical point of view.
Details