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This study aims to explore how care staff working with people with learning disabilities experienced psychologist-facilitated team formulation sessions in a cognitive analytic style (contextual reformulation).

Eleven participants attended at least one contextual reformulation session regarding a client their team referred because of challenging behaviour. Post-intervention semi-structured interviews were analysed using qualitative inductive thematic analysis.

Five themes were developed: multiple roles and functions of sessions and clinicians; challenging behaviour in relationship; making links – understanding can be enlightening, containing and practical; the process of developing a shared understanding and approach; and caught between two perspectives. Findings suggested contextual reformulation helped staff see challenging behaviour as relational, provided them with the space to reflect on their emotions and relate compassionately to themselves and others, and ultimately helped them to focus their interventions on understanding and relationally managing rather than acting to reduce behaviour.

Qualitative methodology allows no causal inferences to be made. Ten of 11 participants were female.

This qualitative study adds to the limited research base on team formulation in learning disabilities settings and specifically that using a cognitive analytic approach.

This paper is a commentary on “The effectiveness of psychodynamic interventions for people with learning disabilities: a systematic review” by Chris James and James Stacey. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the thesis that standardised ways of evaluating health care interventions may have the inadvertent effect of undermining the case that people with intellectual disabilities should be offered the same opportunities to address their emotional and mental health difficulties as other citizens.

The commentary argues that while the evidence base focuses on the outcomes of orthodox one-to-one interventions, sometimes broader “contextual reformulation” and systemic interventions are called for. However, family- or service-based interventions tend not to feature in studies.

The commentary illustrates these issues by discussing two case studies, which demonstrate how relational issues tend to be unhelpfully focused on the person with intellectual disabilities to the detriment of family members or direct care staff, who may be struggling to make sense of the person's behaviour or distress.

The commentary supports the argument put forward in the longer paper and also argues for mental health services to be offered on a non-discriminatory basis to people with intellectual disabilities and to their family members. But it also suggests that one of the additional impacts of service level psychotherapeutic interventions is to re-establish respect for the work of direct care staff whose work is often presented as if it is little more than domestic drudgery when in fact it involves negotiating and responding to people and their issues with great sensitivity and balance.

The field of natural language processing (NLP) demonstrates rapid changes in the design of information retrieval systems and human‐computer interaction. While natural language is being looked on as the most effective tool for information retrieval in a contemporary information environment, the systems using it are only beginning to emerge. This study attempts to evaluate the current state of NLP IR systems from the user’s point of view: what techniques are used by these systems to guide their users through the search process? The analysis focused on the structure and components of the systems’ help mechanisms. Results of the study demonstrated that systems which claimed to be using natural language searching in fact used a wide range of information retrieval techniques from real natural language processing to Boolean searching. As a result, the user assistance mechanisms of these systems also varied. While pseudo‐NLP systems would suit a more traditional method of instruction, real NLP systems primarily utilised the methods of explanation and user‐system “dialogue”.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate pre- and post-formulation findings with multi-disciplinary staff within two secure children’s homes (SCHs) in the North East of England.

Multi-disciplinary staff teams involved in formulation across two SCHs were administered pre- and post-formulation questionnaires. The pre- and post-formulation questionnaires focused on five domains: knowledge; confidence; motivation; understanding; and satisfaction with treatment plan.

A total of 338 pre- and post-formulation questionnaires were administered across 43 formulation meetings. The highest proportion of formulation attendees were: residential staff (44%); mental health staff (17%); case managers (12%); and education staff (9%). Paired samples t-tests showed significant post-formulation improvements across all domains including: knowledge [t(337) = 22.65, p < 0.001]; confidence [t(337) = 15.12, p < 0.001]; motivation [t(337) = 8.27, p < 0.001]; understanding [t(337) = 19.13, p < 0.001]; and satisfaction [t(337) = 18.81, p < 0.001].

The SECURE STAIRS framework has supported formulation developments across the Children and Young People’s Secure Estate. Preliminary findings within two SCHs suggest multi-disciplinary staff teams find psychologically informed formulation beneficial. Future directions are considered including future evaluation of young person involvement in formulation meetings.

There is a notable lack of existing research within the child and young people secure estate evaluating the impact of SECURE STAIRS trauma-informed care developments including the impact of team formulation. This paper adds to the evidence base.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) informed reciprocal-role procedures could better inform relapse prevention planning for offenders in treatment programmes.

The paper will explore the literature in relation to the efficacy of traditional victim empathy modules within accredited interventions as an intervention to reduce recidivism. Specifically, the paper will argue that current methods of victim empathy can pose a risk of increasing risk factors associated with recidivism and may be ineffective at reducing recidivism for certain clients.

Offender treatment using victim empathy could be more effectively utilised from a CAT informed perspective. The paper will introduce “No more Victims” which is a newly designed module using a CAT informed relapse prevention approach to assist offenders to consider the reciprocal roles which take them closer to offending and how to exit these.

This paper argues that standard victim empathy modules may be difficult to access for some offenders and the validity of this approach in reducing recidivism is questionable. However, considering the role of the victim within offending behaviour interventions can be of value and this can be particularly helpful in terms of risk management and risk reduction. CAT informed approaches such as the “No more Victims” module provide a method of exploring victim issues in a way that is responsive to the needs of the offender and the module can be used as an adjunct to cognitive behavioural therapy interventions. This approach can also enhance victim safety planning and better inform risk management plans for the offender and those supervising them. It is suggested that this approach should be more widely used in other forensic interventions to enable clients to have valuable insight into the role they assume when offending and how the risk of this being re-enacted in the future can be revised.

The paper will describe how consideration of reciprocal roles between the offender and victim could better inform relapse prevention in offender treatment programmes. An example of a session from the “No more Victims” module is provided.

Users' search logs are implicit feedbacks on how searchers interact with online information retrieval (IR) systems. The purpose of this paper is to analyze search query reformulation (SQR) patterns of University of Dar es Salaam remote OPAC users.

Qualitative and quantitative analysis of transaction logs were employed to ascertain the characteristics of search queries and the patterns in which remote OPAC users reformulate their search queries. The study covered a period of six months, commencing from January to June 2019.

A total of 30,474 search hits were submitted by remote OPAC users during the period under study. Individuals from academic and research institutions, computing consortia, and telecommunication companies are the main users of the system. Most of the searches originated from North America and Europe, with few searches coming from China and India. Besides improving search results, SQRs are linked with the existence of multiple information demands as manifested by the use of heterogeneous headwords within individual search episodes.

Data collected covered only six months. Similarly, it was however not possible to analyze users' search query formulation within specific contexts such as task-based information searching.

A query recommendation system should be integrated into the OPAC functionalities to improve users' search experiences. Alternatively, there should be a migration to a new system that offers more advanced search features and functionalities.

The study has contributed new insights in SQR studies particularly on how non-institutional affiliated users translate their information needs into search queries during information searching processes.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-09-2020-0389

The second half of a ‘before and after’ study to evaluate the impact of an online catalogue on subject searching behaviour is reported. A holistic approach is adopted encompassing both catalogue use and browsing at the shelves for catalogue users and non‐users. Verbal and non‐verbal data were elicited from searchers using a combined methodology including talk‐aloud technique, observation and a screen logging facility. An extensive qualitative analysis was carried out correlating expressed topics, search formulation strategies and documents retrieved at the shelves. The online catalogue environment does not appear to have increased the extent of subject searching nor the use of the bibliographic tool. The manual precis index supported a contextual approach for broad and more interactive search formulations whereas the opac encouraged a matching approach and narrow formulations with fewer but user generated formulations. The success rate of the online catalogue was slightly better than that of the manual tools but fewer items were retrieved at the shelves. Non‐users of the bibliographic tools seemed to be just as successful. To improve retrieval effectiveness it is suggested that online catalogues should cater for both matching and contextual approaches to searching. Recent research indicates that a more interactive process could be promoted by providing query expansion through a combination of searching aids for matching, for search formulation assistance and for structured contextual retrieval.

Collaborative information search (CIS) is a growing and significant research area. Query formulation and reformulation is an important search strategy in information search. However, limited research has investigated query behavior during CIS. The purpose of this paper is to characterize collaborative query reformulation (CQR) by exploring the sources of collaborative query (CQ) terms and the types and patterns of CQR in the context of tourism information search.

An empirical study was designed to investigate search query reformulation as tourists performed CIS on a devised interface. A total of 36 participants (in 18 pairs) took part in the study; data were documented in pre- and post-search questionnaires, search logs and chat logs.

The findings show that participants intermixed individual search and collaborative search during CIS. Participants constructed CQ terms mainly by selecting terms from individual search queries and discussion chat logs. Eight types of CQR were identified, with specialization (82 percent) accounting for the most used search tactics. At most times, participants were found to add terms to the previous query. Findings demonstrated 27 specific CQR patterns; in excess of two-third participants (69 percent) took only one move to reformulate CQ by adding terms, or replacing/using new words.

The results of this research can be used to inform the design of search systems supporting collaborative querying in CIS.

This study is highlighting an important research direction of CQ reformulation in collaborative search while previous studies of the topic are limited, comparing to the vast body of work on query reformulation in individual information search using regular search systems.

To investigate and identify the patterns of interaction between searchers and search engine during web searching.

The authors examined 2,465,145 interactions from 534,507 users of Dogpile.com submitted on May 6, 2005, and compared query reformulation patterns. They investigated the type of query modifications and query modification transitions within sessions.

The paper identifies three strong query reformulation transition patterns: between specialization and generalization; between video and audio, and between content change and system assistance. In addition, the findings show that web and images content were the most popular media collections.

This research sheds light on the more complex aspects of web searching involving query modifications.

The semantic and structural heterogeneity of large Extensible Markup Language (XML) digital libraries emphasizes the need of supporting approximate queries, i.e. queries where the matching conditions are relaxed so as to retrieve results that possibly partially satisfy the user's requests. The paper aims to propose a flexible query answering framework which efficiently supports complex approximate queries on XML data.

To reduce the number of relaxations applicable to a query, the paper relies on the specification of user preferences about the types of approximations allowed. A specifically devised index structure which efficiently supports both semantic and structural approximations, according to the specified user preferences, is proposed. Also, a ranking model to quantify approximations in the results is presented.

Personalized queries, on one hand, effectively narrow the space of query reformulations, on the other hand, enhance the user query capabilities with a great deal of flexibility and control over requests. As to the quality of results, the retrieval process considerably benefits because of the presence of user preferences in the queries. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposal, as well as its scalability.

Future developments concern the evaluation of the effectiveness of personalization on queries through additional examinations of the effects of the variability of parameters expressing user preferences.

The paper is intended for the research community and proposes a novel query model which incorporates user preferences about query relaxations on large heterogeneous XML data collections.