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The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) calls for far-reaching changes to the way economic activity will occur in EU digital markets. Before its remedies are imposed, it is critical to assess their impacts on individual markets, the digital sector, and the overall European economy. The European Commission (EC) released an Impact Assessment in support of the DMA that purports to evaluate it using cost/benefit analysis.

An economic evaluation of the DMA should consider its full impacts on dynamic competition. The Impact Assessment neither assesses the DMA's impact on dynamic competition in the digital economy nor evaluates the impacts of specific DMA prohibitions and obligations. Instead, it considers benefits in general and largely ignores costs. We study its benefit assessments and find they are based on highly inappropriate methodologies and assumptions. A cost/benefit study using inappropriate methodologies and largely ignoring costs cannot provide a sound policy assessment.

Instead of promoting dynamic competition between platforms, the DMA will likely reinforce existing market structures, ossify market boundaries, and stunt European innovation. The DMA is likely to chill R&D by encouraging free riding on the investments of others, which discourages making those investments. Avoiding harm to innovation is critical because innovation delivers large, positive spillover benefits, driving increases in productivity, employment, wages, and prosperity.

The DMA prioritizes static over dynamic competition, with the potential to harm the European economy. Given this, the Impact Assessment does not demonstrate that the DMA will be beneficial overall, and its implementation must be carefully tailored to alleviate or lessen its potential to harm Europe’s economic performance.

The attempt to establish a common European framework for core platforms' duties and responsibilities toward other actors in the digital environment is at the core of the recent scholarly debate surrounding the Digital Markets Act (DMA) proposal. In particular, the everlasting juxtaposition between the “data power” – as emerging from recent cases (Section 2) – that dominant tech companies enjoy and the concept of consumer sovereignty (Section 3) lies at the core of the proposal's attempt to identify digital core platforms as market gatekeepers. Accordingly, this chapter critically investigates the divide between power imbalance and consumer sovereignty in light of the architecture designed by the DMA, with a specific focus on its effectiveness in identifying gatekeepers' power drivers (Section 4). After highlighting the main critical aspects of the pertinent rules, opportunities for fruitful developments are then identified through the reframing of some of the notions considered in the proposal, and namely the role of “lock-in” effects and “data accumulation” (Section 5). Lastly, this chapter suggests that the DMA advancements – while desirable – are bound to be fragmentary in the absence of a wider appraisal of the nature of data power imbalance dynamics in the modern digital markets (Section 6).

Research with vulnerable groups is crucial to get their input into public policy design that will directly impact on them. However, there are many methodological and ethical challenges involved in encouraging participation from groups with a wide range of intellectual, cognitive and physical capacities while ensuring that the rights and well-being of participants are protected. Rather than exploring ethical theories, this chapter is a case study describing the practical ethical considerations that were involved in designing and holding a series of focus groups with adult health and social care service users from vulnerable cohorts. It is based on a series of focus groups which the Institute of Public Health (IPH) held with specified cohorts as part of a policy development process on adult safeguarding for the Department of Health (DOH) in Ireland. The four cohorts were people with intellectual disability, cognitive impairments, significant mental health challenges and nursing home residents. This chapter does not describe the findings of the focus groups but outlines the ethical and methodological considerations that arose in designing and conducting this research, and the practical ethical safeguards employed to mitigate risk and comply with Irish and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation governing health research. It outlines the ethical issues around protecting confidentiality and using incentives to encourage participation, how individuals' capacity to give informed consent was maximized, the risk-assessment and mitigation procedures used to prevent harms arising and the measures put in place to provide follow-up emotional support to participants.

While scholars have demonstrated persistent demographic inequalities in hiring, performance evaluations, and compensation decisions, many of the mechanisms driving these effects remain less clear. Qualitative research methods, including ethnographic approaches, are uniquely poised to fill this gap because they can illuminate how workplace inequalities are produced and reproduced on the ground. But studying workplace inequalities qualitatively also poses specific methodological challenges and considerations. In this essay, I discuss common issues researchers face when studying workplace inequalities ethnographically, including barriers in gaining access to sensitive organizational processes, building sufficient trust and rapport to move beyond official narratives of organizational practice (‘the company line’), and managing the emotional and psychological burden of discovering what lies beyond that line. I discuss potential strategies for navigating these challenges.

The overall aim of this chapter is to focus on the process of, and issues warranting consideration for, the evaluation of educational interventions. In particular, to outline some key considerations for educators to follow when assessing the evidence-base for interventions they might be considering for use in their practice. Also, important considerations for those wishing to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention they have initiated, as well as a useful checklist which summarises this all. Recognising that some readers of this chapter might be practitioners rather than researchers, it has been written with the practitioner in mind in, hopefully, a simple and practical way. There are, however, further opportunities for additional reading and resources signposted throughout for those who wish to read up on any of these areas more. In addition to those cited throughout and referenced in the Reference List at the end. There is also a section that provides the author’s Additional Recommended Readings and Resources to follow-up on. Readers might also want to refer to Chapter 3 in this book which discusses Single versus Multiple PPI approaches.

The communications industry faces a recruitment crisis. Despite the pivot to hybrid working and the ever-increasing number of young people opting to study the discipline, over half of recruiters in the public sector and three quarters of those recruiting for agencies struggle to fill vacancies. This chapter examines these trends from a radical feminist perspective, arguing the communications industry is squandering young, female talent by failing both new entrants and mothers returning to work after childbirth. This analysis is based on a series of surveys undertaken between 2020 and 2022 to examine the expectations and lived experience of women, and in particular communications students and mothers, working in or aspiring to work in the sector. Over 73% of the women surveyed had experienced gender-based discrimination and harassment, and 66% had been forced to choose between their careers and having a child. Of the young entrants to the profession surveyed, 88% believed becoming a mother would negatively impact their career, while 32% had experienced discrimination while undertaking their student placement. Analysis of these data indicates the sector faces a crisis of its own making by failing to provide a workplace culture worth working in. The chapter concludes only a direct challenge to male hegemony can redress the gender imbalance, free up talent to meet skills shortages and provide lasting change for women working in communications. It offers a series of recommendations for how professional bodies can address these issues and empower young women to achieve the career outcomes they deserve.

Research ethics and integrity stipulates that research must be conducted with responsibility towards the research community and should benefit the intended population. This chapter will share insights from an ongoing research programme to reduce family conflict in the context of dementia care while discussing the accompanying ethical considerations. Research into dementia care has primarily focused on improving outcomes for the care dyad, leaving the influence and input of the wider family unit under investigated. Family conflict can detrimentally impact the quality of care provided and leave caregivers vulnerable to psychosocial difficulties. Family conflict occurs in the context of dementia care but there is little research on how to reduce, or prevent, such conflict occurring. In this research programme, a systematic review investigated the effectiveness of interventions that include the wider family unit to reduce family conflict; only one study was included which evidenced the lack of interventions in this area. A qualitative scoping review was then conducted to explore the lived experiences of caregiving families with experience of family conflict and reported solutions. It was found that conflict occurred due to factors including care decisions and role transitions which impacted relationships and affected care provision. Solutions to conflict were less often reported, indicating an important gap in the literature. Interviews with Alzheimer's Society staff and volunteers revealed that stigma and denial surrounding dementia were prevalent, and families were often reluctant to seek external help. This research programme is currently establishing public patient involvement (PPI) to develop the research methodology and interview questions for people with dementia (PWD) and their family caregivers to explore their lived experiences and potential solutions to family conflict. To conclude, this research programme will propose a family-focused intervention aimed at systemic family conflict for those caring for someone with dementia.