Search results

This study aims to understand whether psychotropic prescribing practices for people with intellectual disabilities are in keeping with best practice guidelines.

This service evaluation project was a retrospective analysis of routinely collected data from the care records of all 36 people with intellectual disability discharged from an intellectual disability assessment and treatment unit during the first five years of the Stop Over medicating People with Intellectual Disabilities and/or autistic people (STOMP) initiative. Data were gathered at four time points (pre-admission, discharge, 6- and 12-month follow-up) before being analysed to understand whether psychotropic prescribing differed among people with different clinical characteristics/traits/diagnoses. Changes over time were also explored to ascertain whether and how prescribing altered from admission to discharge, and over the subsequent year of community living.

Most people with intellectual disabilities left the assessment and treatment unit on fewer regular psychotropic medications and at lower doses than at admission. These optimised regimes were still apparent 12 months post-discharge, suggesting effective discharge planning and community care packages. Inpatients with severe intellectual disabilities generally received more anxiolytics and hypnotics, at higher doses. Autistic people tended to receive more psychotropics in total and at higher cumulative doses, a pattern that persisted post discharge. A third of the sample were admitted on regular anti-psychotic medications despite having no corresponding psychotic diagnosis, a proportion that remained relatively stable through discharge and into the community.

This study highlights subsets of the intellectual disability population at particular risk of receiving high doses of psychotropics and a feasible template for providers intending to undertake STOMP-focused evaluations.

The challenges of digitalisation on news organisations, future of newspapers and other traditional media present an ongoing struggle. Although there is a general decline in news consumption in all cohorts, youth in specific seems to be ‘tuning out’ of news globally (Mindich, 2005). The Digital News Report (2016) published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism reported that news accessed via social media sites was increasing in Europe (average 46%) where Greece and Turkey were high adoption countries with 74% and 73% usage rates, respectively. These numbers dropped in the 2018 report to 66% in Turkey and 71% in Greece. This research offers a qualitative analysis of the factors that influence youth's news consumption behaviour in Greece and in Turkey. The data collection took place in 2017 and 2018 in Athens and in Istanbul with voluntary participation of 40 college students who study in public and private universities.

The student revolt of 1967 to 1974, which finally expired about 1978, retains its fascination and much of its significance in the twenty‐first century. But the seven or so years which preceded it are often passed over as simply a precursor, the incubation of a subsequent explosion; they deserve a higher status. The concentration of interest on the late 1960s and early 1970s arises from the driving role of students in the cultural revolution whose traumatic impact still echoes with us. As late as 2005 some commentators saw federal legislation introducing Voluntary Student Unionism as the culmination of struggles in the 1970s when Deputy Prime Minister Costello and Health Minister Abbott battled their radical enemies. Interest in these turbulent years at a popular, non‐academic level has produced a succession of nostalgic reminiscences. In the Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Good Weekend’ for 13 December 2003 Mark Dapin pondered whether the Melbourne Maoists had changed their world views (‘Living by the Little Red book’.) In the Sydney University Gazette of October 1995 Andrew West asserted that the campus radicals of the 1960s and ‘70s had remained true to their basic beliefs (‘Not finished fighting’.) Some years later, in April 2003, the editor of that journal invited me to discuss ‘Where have all the rebels gone?’ My answer treated this as a twofold question: What has happened to the former rebels? Why have the students of today abandoned radicalism?

Describes the experiences of an organization which made the decision to establish a new production facility and empower its workforce using self‐managed work teams. Elaborates on some of the selection issues surrounding this site and includes the reasoning used to select employees for this facility. Finally, relates recommendations for making selection decisions in this type of situation. Fully expects that SMWT and other flexible/adaptive structures will become more and more popular in the future, and that managers need to know how to select employees to maximize the effectiveness of this structure.

Following the implementation of key actions resulting from Valuing People (DoH, 2001), people with learning disabilities resident in hospital will be relocated into the community. This paper examines psychological, social and quality of life indicators applied to a group of 50 service users, 36 of whom are soon to be relocated into community housing. The methodology employs a range of psychometric measures in order to describe intellectual and social functioning, mental health, levels of challenging behaviour and quality of life and choice opportunities. The aim was to compile a profile of the individuals as a group in order to inform service planning and provision. Results illustrate that the group contains a range of individuals with complex and enduring needs. A discussion of the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for these individuals and the services that support them is presented. The study presents an opportunity to re‐apply this methodology in future years in order to evaluate whether community living has brought tangible benefits to the group.

Many academic departments in the social sciences today are being called upon to justify the utility of their courses and tangibly demonstrate their contributions to the general college curriculum. Because it has traditionally lacked a clearly defined career path, has no consensual, conceptual core, and has few easily quantifiable pedagogical outcomes, sociology is particularly susceptible to such scrutiny. In this paper I outline several strategies and techniques sociology instructors can use to maximize the relevance of their courses and, by extension, the discipline.

Smash and grab is decidedly unsophisticated when opportunities for computer crime are so great. It's also very popular, costing British industry and commerce anything between £500m and £2,500m a year. But there are ways it can be fought. John Vann reports.

This chapter describes a case study of a social change project in medical education (primary care), in which the critical interpretive evaluation methodology I sought to use came up against the “positivist” approach preferred by senior figures in the medical school who commissioned the evaluation.

I describe the background to the study and justify the evaluation approach and methods employed in the case study – drawing on interviews, document analysis, survey research, participant observation, literature reviews, and critical incidents – one of which was the decision by the medical school hierarchy to restrict my contact with the lay community in my official evaluation duties. The use of critical ethnography also embraced wider questions about circuits of power and the social and political contexts within which the “social change” effort occurred.

Central to my analysis is John Gaventa’s theory of power as “the internalization of values that inhibit consciousness and participation while encouraging powerlessness and dependency.” Gaventa argued, essentially, that the evocation of power has as much to do with preventing decisions as with bringing them about. My chosen case illustrated all three dimensions of power that Gaventa originally uncovered in his portrait of self-interested Appalachian coal mine owners: (1) communities were largely excluded from decision making power; (2) issues were avoided or suppressed; and (3) the interests of the oppressed went largely unrecognized.

The account is auto-ethnographic, hence the study is limited by my abilities, biases, and subject positions. I reflect on these in the chapter.

The study not only illustrates the unique contribution of case study as a research methodology but also its low status in the positivist paradigm adhered to by many doctors. Indeed, the tension between the potential of case study to illuminate the complexities of community engagement through thick description and the rejection of this very method as inherently “flawed” suggests that medical education may be doomed to its neoliberal fate for some time to come.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how Bangladeshi farmers interact with mobile telephony and how they negotiate the resulting difficulties. In doing so, the paper seeks to identify how farmers integrate mobile telephony into their daily lives, and what factors facilitate and limit their use of mobile telephony.

The research was based on ethnographic observation, interviews and focus group discussions, collected through four months of fieldwork, conducted in two remote areas of Bangladesh.

It was found that Bangladeshi farmers' use of mobile telephony is inhibited due to language barriers, a lack of literacy, unfamiliar English terminologies, inappropriate translation to local language (Bengali) and financial constraints. However, the social, occupational and psychological benefits from mobile telephony motivate them to use and appropriate it through inventive use and adaptation.

The findings suggest that current understanding of usability needs to be interwoven with that about the appropriation of technology in order to develop a better understanding of the use and consequent integration of a technology in daily lives.

The paper adds to the argument for a bottom‐up approach for ICT‐enabled intervention in development activities and for the mobile telephony manufacturers and network providers it contributes to understanding of the rural consumer market of a developing country.

The paper presents an original conceptual diagram that combines the concept of usability and appropriation.