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If NHS hospitals wish to influence patients to choose them and, as the literature review suggests, cleanliness will be a key‐influencing factor in making that choice, it would seem important for hospitals to understand what factors lead people to decide whether a hospital is clean or dirty. The research aims to identify what the key factors are that influence patients' perceptions of cleanliness and to rank these factors in order of importance.

The project utilised a mixed methodology to collect the data. The hospital staff and people who had been recent patients took part in focus groups in order to gather their views. The current hospital in‐patients were surveyed through the use of a paper questionnaire.

The main themes that influence the perceptions of cleanliness emerging from the analysis can be summarised under three broad headings – appearance of the environment, physical cleanliness and staff behaviour. The findings suggest that this subject is much more complex than the production of a list. The appearance of the environment is a complex set of perceptions based on what individuals believe to be important, what they observe and what they expect. The research suggests that the appearance of the environment is the most important factor.

The paper starts to explore the factors that influence patient perception of cleanliness and provides practical information to NHS estates and facilities managers.

The purpose of this study is to explore the psychological well-being of people living around landfills, which constitutes a preliminary case study localized in Samarinda city, Indonesia.

This current study used a descriptive, participatory case study design. For data collection, interviews and participatory observation were used. Specifically, this case study took place in Samarinda City, Indonesia.

The psychological well-being of the people living around landfills was indicated very low in the light of psychological well-being such as personal growth, life’s goals and self-acceptance dimensions.

Psychological well-being is part of an attitude of gratitude, thus making individuals happy and satisfied in life. The results of this study point to the fact that people who live around landfills have low psychological well-being due to lack of support from the community and government. In addition, with this research, people who live near landfills are very happy because they feel cared for and care about their condition. People who live near landfills expect the government and surrounding communities to know about their situation so that they become prosperous and well-being. In addition, providing medical team services, sending clean water and providing good solutions can help people who live near landfills. The limitation of this preliminary study was that researchers could deeply explore the lives of people in the next research. Besides, the next research can provide a camera or voice recorder in the state of only observation. In addition, the researcher can analyze more deeply in the next research. The final limitation was that participants could not have enough time to interact with, thus, the researcher could not collect the data to explore further.

Base on the result in this study, the government needs to have the policy to take care of those people who stay near landfills, for example, improving drinking water, establish the health management and giving a right to people to stay near landfills.

By improving the growing environment, the people live near landfills can have some changes in their life. In addition, the negative stereotype and prejudice can be decreased and establish a more friendly society and increasing their well-being.

The participants were found to be problematic, primarily in managing their environment and influencing their personal growth. On top of that, the participants appeared to possess a lack exposure of to social interaction with other communities, which might cause them social gap and lack of caring perceived toward the surrounding environment, lack of better life’s goals, the disappointment of current conditions due to low educational and skill backgrounds. Nonetheless, the participants were still of gratefulness upon the situation for they were still granted health for studies to support their families. Besides, the participants did not show any positive attitudes toward themselves because of the disappointment of their condition and personal qualities.

Prisons are uniquely challenging working environments. Staff are often exposed to direct and indirect trauma, impacting negatively on their mental well-being. Due to the limited research into prison staff experience, this paper aims to explore what staff find most challenging, how they cope, what support they would like and rewarding aspects of their work.

This service development project was facilitated through a staff well-being event. A qualitative approach was used and 74 staff members provided anonymised responses. An inductive and data-driven approach was used to analyse the data, and the trustworthiness of the analysis was considered using criteria established by Lincoln and Guba (1985).

Thematic analysis identified six themes, namely, the challenging nature of the work, interactions with prisoners, staff interactions, inadequate resources, staff support and development and coping strategies. Key findings include managing distress, self-harm and violence and limited resources presenting challenges. Role variety and opportunities to support prisoners were reported as positive. A variety of coping strategies were identified. Wider availability of supervision and reflective practice was suggested by staff.

Recommendations for increased staff support are made. Suggestions for future research investigating methods to increase rewarding aspects of work within prisons are given.

This analysis adds to the limited body of qualitative research investigating prison staff experiences; in particular, aspects of the work that they find rewarding such as the role variety and opportunities to make positive changes to prisoners’ lives. Novel coping strategies were identified, including cognitive reframing and behavioural strategies for managing stress, which could be encouraged to increase resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to explore dirty work sites within an academic context. Working with particular “unloved” groups (Fielding, 1993) can present a number of challenges to researchers, and if professional boundaries are not carefully maintained, researchers can be seen as “dirty workers” within an academic context.

The paper draws a qualitative research project that explores women's involvement with nationalist movements in the UK.

Researching “unloved” groups, and in particular racist organizations, presents a number of potential emotional and professional, and can render researchers “dirty workers” if clear professional boundaries are not maintained.

Examining academia and some academic research as a dirty work site adds to existing literature (Kreiner et al., 2006) that suggests any occupation can have a “dirty work” element that must be negotiated. This paper presents new challenges for managing spoiled “dirty” identities, and suggests that identity management is context-specific.

The purpose of this paper is to detail how the ethnographic approach can be usefully adopted in the context of researching dirty or undesirable work. Drawing on a study of refuse collectors, it shows how ethnography can enable a fuller social articulation of the experiences and meanings of a social group where conventional narrative disclosure and linguistic expression may be insufficient.

Viewing ethnography as no one particular method, but rather a style of research that is distinguished by its objectives to understand the social meanings and activities of people in a given “field” or setting, this paper highlights aspects of reproductive and “dirty” work which may be hidden or difficult to reveal. Combining the methods of participant observation, photographic representation and interviews, we add to an understanding of dirty work and how it is encountered. We draw on Willis and Trondman's (2002) three distinguishing characteristics namely, recognition of theory, centrality of culture and critical focus to highlight some meanings men give to their work.

By incorporating these issues of theory, culture and reflexivity throughout the research process, this paper highlights how Willis and Trondman's (2002) approach aids the ethnographic objective and is crucial to the understanding of representation and experience.

As such, the value of this paper can be understood in terms of developing a further understanding of dirty work, which incorporates an ethnographic process and interpretation, to achieve “rich data” on the dirty work experience.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the consequences of experiencing social isolation in a context of dirty work. Relying on an integration of the job demands-resources model (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004) with the social identity approach (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999), the paper posits that perceived social isolation prevents the development of defense mechanisms that could counter the occupational stigma, and thus tends to increase perceptions of stigmatization, and to decrease perceptions of the prosocial impact of their work. Through these two perceptions, perceived social isolation indirectly affects emotional exhaustion and work engagement.

Research hypotheses are tested among a sample of 195 workers in the commercial cleaning industry who execute physically tainted tasks.

Results support the research model. Perceived prosocial impact mediates the negative relationship between perceived social isolation and work engagement, and perceived stigmatization mediates the positive relationship between perceived social isolation and emotional exhaustion.

This research contributes to the dirty work literature by empirically examining one of its implicit assumptions, namely, that social isolation prevents the development of coping strategies. It also contributes to the literature on well-being and work engagement by demonstrating how they are affected by the social context of work.

The present paper is the first to study the specific challenges of social isolation in dirty work occupations and its consequences.

This study aims to explore the role of community health workers (promotoras) as a vehicle to identify and involve stakeholders in cleaning the environment in two community-based social marketing (CBSM) interventions.

This paper evaluates two CBSM interventions that used a promotora model to address city cleaning efforts; one in Puebla, Mexico and the other in San Luis, Arizona, USA. The qualitative methods included as follows: 25 in-depth and short interviews with managers, residents and promotoras and observational data on the sites with the cleanliness issues which were the focus of the interventions. Open-ended qualitative responses were analyzed for recurring themes.

This research advances in the area of CBSM by presenting the figure of the “promotora” as a key element that helped to involve diverse groups of stakeholders as active members in two CBSM interventions, and who also facilitated socialization, penetration and co-responsibility in the community in two cleaning interventions. Promotoras have the knowledge of community conditions and the skills necessary to engage community stakeholders in the objectives of a program with community level benefits.

This comparative analysis identifies that CBSM interventions that include promotoras can engage a diverse group of stakeholders achieving participation and co-responsibility in cleaning their environment.

The purpose of this paper is to review the current state of research on the various biological agents that could cause deterioration of paper materials and possible intervention strategies against these biotic agents in the tropics.

Recent literature in the tropics is reviewed to gain insight into the problems that confront libraries in the tropics as regards the biological deterioration of library materials.

The paper identifies moulds as the most important biodeteriorating agents of library materials. In addition to destroying, disfiguring and staining books, the moulds have been linked to numerous adverse human health effects that fall into three categories: allergic, toxic and infectious. The other biological agents include bacteria, insects and rodents. The important insects in tropical environment are cockroaches and termites. The warm humid tropical conditions and dirty environment trigger/promote biodeterioration processes and make book deterioration to be more pronounced in the tropics than in the temperate regions.

Physical visits to the libraries were not carried out and the conclusions reached were based on evidence from scientific literature on the subject in the tropics.

A very useful source of information on how to curb the menace of biological agents against the destruction of library materials in the tropics. These include training programmes for library staff on conservation and preservation of library collections, the creation of awareness on the issue among library users, the adoption of good house keeping practices and modification of storage environment to make them unsuitable for the biodeteriogens. It is recommended that libraries and archives in tropical countries should have preservation guidelines and integrated pest management teams and should also cooperate with scientists in relevant disciplines to be able to find lasting solutions to the problem of biodeterioration of library materials.

This paper looks into the neglected area of biological deterioration of papers which is the main information carrier in libraries. It provides very useful and practical suggestions that libraries in the tropics could adopt to tackle the menace of biological agents.