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Article
Publication date: 4 May 2022

Ceri Wilson and Grace Spencer

Supporting the mental health of university students is a key priority for higher education. Students living with long-term health conditions are at increased risk of poor mental…

Abstract

Purpose

Supporting the mental health of university students is a key priority for higher education. Students living with long-term health conditions are at increased risk of poor mental health; yet little work has focused on their particular mental health needs or indeed, the implications for health education in the university setting. This study sought to identify the mental health support needs of students with long-term conditions, including best ways for universities to support these students.

Design/methodology/approach

A UK national online survey of 200 university students living with long-term physical health conditions (e.g. asthma, endometriosis, epilepsy) was conducted in 2019.

Findings

95% of respondents reported that their long-term condition/s had at least a moderate impact on their mental wellbeing, with 81% reporting that they felt depressed and anxious at least once a month because of their health. The most common suggestion for how universities can better support their mental wellbeing was to raise awareness about long-term conditions on campuses, with many reporting a lack of understanding about long-term conditions from academic and support services staff members – with negative impacts on their mental health. Because of this, some respondents reported a reluctance to come forward and seek help from university services, with 25% not formally disclosing their conditions.

Originality/value

These reported concerns underscore the need to develop health education amongst university staff about long-term conditions and to ensure these students are supported with their health at university.

Details

Health Education, vol. 122 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0965-4283

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 November 2018

Grace Spencer, Philip Hood, Shade Agboola and Catherine Pritchard

Children’s health and life chances are affected by many factors, with parents and schools holding influential roles. Yet relatively little is known about parental engagement in…

1562

Abstract

Purpose

Children’s health and life chances are affected by many factors, with parents and schools holding influential roles. Yet relatively little is known about parental engagement in school-based health education and specifically, from the perspectives of health and education professionals. The purpose of this paper is to examine professionals’ perspectives on parental engagement in school-based health education.

Design/methodology/approach

An exploratory qualitative study was conducted with ten health, education and local authority professionals from a socio-economically deprived area in England. Semi-structured interviews explored the role of professionals within the school health curricula, roles that parents played in school health, and barriers and enablers to parental engagement in school health education.

Findings

Reported barriers to engagement related to assumptions about parents’ own health behaviours, impacts of funding and inspection regimes, and protected time for health within the school curriculum. Enablers included designated parental support workers based in the school, positive role modelling by other parents, consultation and engagement with parents and a whole school approach to embedding health within the wider curriculum.

Practical implications

Findings from this study suggest the importance of building meaningful partnerships with parents to complement school health education and improve child health outcomes.

Originality/value

This paper addresses an important gap in the research on parental engagement in school-based health education from the perspectives of health and education professionals. Effective partnerships with parents are crucial to the success of school health education.

Details

Health Education, vol. 118 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0965-4283

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Ethics and Integrity in Research with Children and Young People
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-401-1

Book part
Publication date: 4 April 2013

Andra Gillespie

Purpose – Cory Booker will likely step down as mayor of Newark in 2014 or 2018. When he does, the possibility of a strong Latino candidate emerging is quite likely. There are a…

Abstract

Purpose – Cory Booker will likely step down as mayor of Newark in 2014 or 2018. When he does, the possibility of a strong Latino candidate emerging is quite likely. There are a number of black politicians who would like to succeed Booker as well. This chapter identifies eight potential successors to Booker and assesses their ability to create a multiracial electoral coalition using prior vote performance in citywide elections.Design/methodology/approach – This study regresses district (or precinct) level vote preferences for the aforementioned potential successors in previous elections on the racial and ethnic composition of the district, using voter district demographic data from 2000 and 201011The 2010 data is still incomplete at the time of publication. As such, this data will be used sparingly. compiled by the US Census Bureau and the Minnesota Population Center.Findings − There is a decade’s worth of evidence suggesting racially polarized voting among blacks and Latinos in Newark. The racialized black and Latino candidates examined in this chapter had much stronger support in districts with large coethnic populations. In contrast, the more deracialized candidates often had softer support in districts with high concentrations of coethnic voters, but often performed better in districts with higher concentrations of non-coethnics.Originality/value − While the author cautions against reading too much into the findings, the results do portend a future of racially polarized voting in Newark, especially as the city’s population diversifies and as different factions vie for power.

Details

21st Century Urban Race Politics: Representing Minorities as Universal Interests
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-184-7

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 4 November 2021

Abstract

Details

Ethics and Integrity in Research with Children and Young People
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-401-1

Book part
Publication date: 14 November 2022

Grace Spencer and Jill Thompson

The expansion of research with children offers new opportunities for the development of child-centred practice. Children's participation in research has been championed as a…

Abstract

The expansion of research with children offers new opportunities for the development of child-centred practice. Children's participation in research has been championed as a positive way to challenge the processes and practices that affect their everyday lives. Yet opportunities for collaborating with children, and leveraging their voices, remains heavily guided by adult-led priorities. In this chapter, we offer a critique of ‘child-centredness’ and related voice-based and participatory discourses in the absence of a full-fledged engagement with the power imbalances between adults and children. We draw on examples from our research with children on contemporary global challenges (COVID-19 pandemic, health and migration) to expose the ways that adult-led agendas for, and definitions of, participation can affect children's engagement in research. We highlight how children also effect change and display their agency through the sharing of their experiences with adult researchers. The dynamic nature of social change highlights children's considered engagement with contemporary challenges but also the importance of reciprocity and willingness of adults to listen and respond to the issues that children identify as being central to their lives. We attend to the ways our methodological decision-making offers opportunities for leveraging children's perspectives, but also highlight the dangers of reproducing dominant adult/child power relations when seeking to be ‘child-centred’. We conclude by offering some critical questions to prompt further debate in this field, In doing so, we highlight the value of reciprocity and critical reflexivity as necessary first steps towards a more considered engagement with adult/child power relations in ‘child-centred’ research.

Details

Establishing Child Centred Practice in a Changing World, Part A
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-407-7

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 4 November 2021

Grace Spencer, Ernestina Dankyi, Stephen O. Kwankye and Jill Thompson

Conducting research with young migrants offers an important opportunity to understand better their own perspectives on their migration experiences. Yet, engaging migrant youth in…

Abstract

Conducting research with young migrants offers an important opportunity to understand better their own perspectives on their migration experiences. Yet, engaging migrant youth in research can be fraught with ethical and methodological challenges. Institutional ethics processes have a tendency to prioritise standard principles – many of which depart from the ethical sensitivities that emerge during research practice. In this chapter, the authors explore some of the procedural and situated ethical issues involved in conducting research with child and youth migrants in Ghana. In particular, the authors highlight how the diversity of young migrants prompts definitional issues about what constitutes childhood and youth, and in different socio-cultural spatial settings. Differing categorisations of child and youth generate issues of representation and guide adult-led decisions about children’s assumed competencies and vulnerabilities to participate in research. The precarious living circumstances of many migrant children, including the absence of parental figures or legal guardians, coupled with language and cultural barriers, present particular difficulties for securing informed consent. Challenges of this kind can deny young migrants the opportunity to participate in research about their own lives and serve to reproduce dominant power asymmetries and assumptions about these children’s vulnerabilities. The authors conclude by offering some suggestions for how researchers might develop critical ethical reflexivity to support the meaningful and ethical engagement of young migrants in research.

Details

Ethics and Integrity in Research with Children and Young People
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-401-1

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Ethics and Integrity in Research with Children and Young People
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-401-1

Book part
Publication date: 4 November 2021

Emma Davidson and Christina McMellon

Practices of reflexivity have encouraged youth researchers to discuss ethical dilemmas encountered in the field more openly. Whilst this has afforded a departure away from…

Abstract

Practices of reflexivity have encouraged youth researchers to discuss ethical dilemmas encountered in the field more openly. Whilst this has afforded a departure away from abstracted accounts of practice, published work tends to focus on self-oriented reflexivity and the emotional response of the ethnographer. Participants’ own emotions, and the emotional relationships between researcher and participant, have received less consideration. Not only can this result in adversarial, challenging or ‘controversial’ encounters being sanitised or even avoided in written accounts, but also the possible processual, individual or social benefits of a relational ethnography can be downplayed. This chapter uses cross-cultural ethnographic research involving young people in Laos, Southeast Asia and in Scotland, to expose some of the ethical dilemmas that can emerge from researcher–participant relationships. Reflecting and writing about these events deliberately places the researchers in a position of vulnerability by demonstrating the diverse ways emotional connections can shape and direct ethics in practice. The chapter concludes that a balanced approach to ethics, with attention to honesty and relationality, is key to realising a more considerate, authentic ethnographic account.

Details

Ethics and Integrity in Research with Children and Young People
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-401-1

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 February 2013

Grace Spencer

Research to date has identified young people's perspectives on a number of health‐related topics such as smoking, alcohol, sexual health, physical activity and healthy eating…

1663

Abstract

Purpose

Research to date has identified young people's perspectives on a number of health‐related topics such as smoking, alcohol, sexual health, physical activity and healthy eating. Whilst this body of research draws important attention towards young people's views on topical health concerns, it arguably remains located within a pre‐defined agenda; thereby marginalising young people's own, and potentially different, frames of reference when discussing health. In light of this omission, the aim of this paper is to examine young people's own understandings of health in line with their own frames of reference.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from 55 young people aged 15‐16 years through group discussions, individual interviews and observational data in a school and surrounding community settings. Key themes were analysed for their implications for “emic” conceptualisations of health. Young people's perspectives were further compared with accounts given by professionals.

Findings

Two key themes emerged from young people's accounts: being happy and having fun. Young people's meanings of being happy highlighted the relational components of developing a positive self‐belief, pointing to a number of socially located prerequisites for promoting their health. Discussions of having fun were understood as potentially liberating, resistive and subversive, but which exist in some tension with adults’ discourses of risk and risk‐taking.

Originality/value

Examining young people's accounts points to the possibility of a more positive discourse on health – opening up new opportunities and insights for health promotion informed by concepts of empowerment.

Details

Health Education, vol. 113 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0965-4283

Keywords

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