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Previous research has highlighted women’s unequal status in relation to management within a range of service sector industries. Leisure services, however, has remained an under‐researched sector in spite of its growing significance to the economy and its increasing importance as an employer of women. This paper reports selected results from recent research examining gender equity in leisure management. The research, examined gender equity in leisure management and within the professional institute itself. The results demonstrate that women experience both structural and cultural constraints in attempting to secure management careers in leisure but that they remain optimistic about the future. Analysis of the results indicates that this optimism may be misplaced in an industry where women are encouraged to accept large amounts of senior management responsibility for middle management salaries, where routes to promotion remain unclear, and where organisational culture is informed by the dominant “locker room culture” of male sport.

The purpose of this paper is to describe what it is like to be a midwife in the professionally isolated and marginalised arena of home birth in Ireland and to explore whether the organisation of home birth services and professional discourse might be undermining the autonomy of home birth midwives.

This paper is drawn from auto-ethnographic field work, with 18 of the 21 self-employed community midwives (SECMs) offering home birth support to women in Ireland from 2006 to 2009. The data presented are derived from field notes of participant observations and from interviews digitally recorded in the field.

Home birth midwives must navigate isolated professional practice and negotiate when and how to interface with mainstream hospital services. The midwives talk of the dilemma of competing discourses about birth. Decisions to transfer to hospital in labour is fraught with concerns about the woman's and the midwife's autonomy. Hospital transfers crystallise midwives’ sense of professional vulnerability.

Maternity services organisation in Ireland commits virtually no resources to community midwifery. Home birth is almost entirely dependent upon a small number of SECMs. Although there is a “national home birth service”, it is not universally and equitably available, even to those deemed eligible. Furthermore, restrictions to the professional indemnification of home birth midwives, effectively criminalises midwives who would attend certain women. Home birth, already a marginal practice, is at real risk of becoming regulated out of existence.

This paper brings new insight into the experiences of midwives practicing at the contested boundaries of contemporary maternity services. It reveals the inappropriateness of a narrowly professional paradigm for midwifery. Disciplinary control of individuals by professions may countermand claimed “service” ideologies.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role played by digital channel integration in the town-centre shopping experience. It also explores how customers perceive the role of digital in the town-centres shopping journeys, improves shopping experiences and encourages positive future patronage behaviour. Ultimately, the aim is to identify the likely implications of a connected shopping experience on patronage intentions.

A qualitative research design using focus groups to explore customers' perceptions of connected town-centre shopping experiences was deployed. Then, data were analysed using thematic analysis to identify overarching themes.

Digital integration has the potential to serve discreetly different functions in the town-centre context: create interconnected information channels, facilitate improved connected shopping experiences, generate positive perceptions of a town, which subsequently shape future patronage intentions. The study also revealed expectations of digital integration are yet to be fully realised in the town-centre context and there are tensions between physical and digital domains to be overcome if digital integration is to positively influence patronage intentions.

The nature of exploratory research tends to pose questions and open out a problem rather than provide definitive answers. This study has sought to highlight key issues and also provide points of departure for future studies. The significance and generalisability of the results are limited by the size and nature of the sample.

This study provides theoretical contribution to the town-centre literature by expanding the understanding of consumers' perceptions of the role of digital integration in shopping journey experiences and unlocks insights into its potential impact on future patronage intentions. Practical considerations for integrating digital in the town centre to create more connected shopping experiences.

Effective communication of information is central to integrated care systems (ICS), particularly between providers and care-consumers. Drawing on communication theory, this paper aims to investigate whether and why source effects increase positive evaluations of health-related messages among care-consumers.

A preliminary online survey (N = 525) establishes the discriminant validity of the measures used in the main experimental study. The main study (N = 116) examines whether identical messages disclosed to be created by different sources (i.e. institutional, care-consumer, collaborative) lead to different message evaluations, and whether source credibility and similarity, and message authenticity, explain this process.

In comparison to any other source, messages disclosed to be co-created are evaluated more positively by care-consumers. This effect occurs through a parallel serial mediation carried over by perceptions of source credibility and source similarity (parallel, first serial-level mediators) and message authenticity (second serial-level mediator).

The findings offer guidelines for leveraging source effects in ICS communication strategies, signaling how collaborative message sources increase the favorableness of health message evaluations.

This research demonstrates the efficacy of drawing on marketing communication theory to build ICS communication capacity by showing how re-configuring the declared source of informational content can increase positive evaluations of health-related messages. In so doing, this research extends existing literature on message authenticity by demonstrating its key underlying role in affecting message evaluations.

The measurement of children's quality of life has an important role to play in improving their experience of health and social services, and in promoting a child‐centred approach to service provision. This article provides a rationale for both the development of robust quality of life measures specifically for children and also the use of these measures in assessing the effectiveness of treatments and policy changes. It highlights recent advances in the development of quality of life measures and provides examples of two instruments that have incorporated these steps to produce reliable and valid measures that are not only comprehensible to children of different age groups, but also meaningful to parents and health professionals. The challenge of matching statistically significant change in quality of life to changes of perceived importance to the individual is also discussed in the light of the advantages to be gained from the increased uptake within health and social care of quality of life measures for children.

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.

As an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), the purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth understanding of adolescent experiences of maternal cancer to identify the individual and contextual factors that shape adolescent experiences and evaluates the potential applicability of the Family Ecology Model to the illness context.

This analysis is focussed on three female adolescents who completed semi-structured interviews, which were subjected to IPA. Maternal illness is a challenge for adolescents, which can be improved or undermined by their contexts. The analysis yielded three sub-themes: family structure, social supports, experiencing maternal cancer at a time of transition and the lasting impact of cancer.

This study found that adolescent experiences of maternal cancer depend on their contexts from an ecological perspective the type and quality of adolescent interactions determine coping and adjustment. Maternal cancer can be difficult as adolescents are already facing specific developmental challenges. Future research can benefit from adopting an ecological perspective to further understand adolescent experiences to support adolescent that may be more vulnerable and benefit from additional supports. This is not a generalisable piece of research but it provides a very deep and detailed understanding of the impact of maternal cancer on adolescents’ developmental course and determines how the complexity of their contexts can serve as a risk or a protective factor at this challenging time.

This paper contributes to the body of research by providing a comprehensive understanding of adolescents facing maternal cancer. The Ecological Model supports the findings of this research and proves to be a good model to understand the complex interplay between adolescents and their environments when facing a difficult challenge like maternal cancer is.

Banks have significantly changed their public policies about women’s access to management, to include career breaks and job sharing, with recruitment and promotion policies claiming equal opportunity for men and women. But has there been a revolution on the high street? A qualitative study of 40 women in banking explored questions of change and continuity with 20 clerical workers and 20 managers. From their perspective, men’s power in higher management positions can still be used to obstruct women’s advancement, and often contradicts the public policy that career and motherhood are compatible. New forms of dual labour market and gendered career routes are taking the place of old ones. These sideline women into less powerful and rewarding posts. They also create new divisions between women, privileging graduate entrants, but further obstructing clerical workers’ career development.

This chapter describes the pivotal shift occurring in our national research psyche whereby Indigenous epistemology is increasingly recognised as both valid and enriching. Two key contentions emerge from a description and discussion of this shift. First, ethics review bodies must evolve to incorporate a wider knowledge framework, one which conscientiously locates Indigenous knowledge and which empowers researchers to appropriately traverse Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural terrain. The second contention argues that there are ethical responsibilities to address inequities, based on our shared Treaty partnership, and that ethics review bodies should instantiate consideration of inequities within their oversight roles. This chapter sets the scene by describing the current shift away from Western homogeneity to cultural diversity in education, noting the formal higher learning undertaken by Māori prior to colonisation, alongside current Māori educational achievement and the goal of success as Māori. The emerging recognition of mātauranga Māori (Indigenous epistemology) is exemplified by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga and Vision Mātauranga. However, this shift has not yet reached all parts of the New Zealand research community, and we argue particularly so for ethics review processes. Possible solutions are posed, and four cultural markers are offered as supporting foundations for professionals in the field as they traverse epistemological landscapes that are more attuned to Indigenous realities.

This paper aims to use Ryff’s (1989) eudaimonic view to examine how prejudice toward female workers affects their psychological well-being.

Responses were collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews along with open-ended questions in a paper-based survey. In total, 24 female workers across various organizations in Jordan participated in this study.

The results show how prejudice against female workers can affect the six dimensions of their eudaimonic psychological well-being (Ryff, 1989). Specifically, the results show that prejudice may push women to work harder to prove they are capable of achieving their goals and, as a result, it may positively enhance their self-acceptance, sense of growth, purpose in life and autonomy. However, the study also shows that prejudice against women negatively affects their environmental mastery and relationships with others.

This study may help create greater sensitivity and awareness about gender prejudice and its effects on female workers’ psychological well-being. It also highlights women’s resilience which may be deemed valuable to develop women in leadership roles in organizations.

This study offers a fresh and nuanced understanding of the impact of gender prejudice on female workers’ psychological well-being.