Search results

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have been offered a privileged position in terms of the evidence base for preventive interventions for children, but practical and theoretical issues challenge this research methodology. This paper aims to address this issue.

This paper analyses practical and methodological issues of using RCTs within children's preventive services and presents the results of a qualitative study using data collected from parents who were asked to take part in an RCT of a preventive intervention.

Well recognised issues include the impossibility of blinding participants, the problem of identifying a pre‐eminent outcome measure for complex interventions, and problems with limiting access to equivalent interventions in real world settings. A further theoretical problem is the exclusion from RCTs of families who are most ready to change, resulting in a reduced level of intervention effectiveness. Qualitative evidence from one recent RCT suggests that this problem could be operating in some prevention trials. Increasing sample sizes can overcome some of these problems, but the cost of the necessarily huge trials becomes disproportionate to the intervention?

Given the limitations on RCTs in preventive settings, the paper argues their privileged position in terms of research evidence maybe undeserved.

The aim of this work is to provide an initial picture of how some design agencies are contributing toward a paradigm shift and how they are developing in the future to better inform design policies and interdisciplinary work. There is a general agreement that the current government and public sector structure and modes of operation need radical transformation. In this scenario, a shift from New Public Management towards New Public Governance paradigm has been auspicated. Design has attracted attention as a potential approach to support this transformation, but research into Service Design, as well as discussions on its future development, for public sector innovation is limited. This paper is an exploratory study into the individual work of seven representative UK design agencies operating for and within the public sector.

The paper reviews literature on public sector reform and innovation to inform comparative studies of contemporary design agencies working for public sector reform. Interviews with seven designers from NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, Participle, Innovation Unit, Uscreates, Collaborative Change, Futuregov and Snook are conducted to review their perceived role for public sector reform, their design approaches, exemplar projects and main challenges.

Emerging design strategies for Public Sector reform are: a collaborative design approach that considers all stakeholders as equal co-creators of public value; operating at different complementary levels to aim at systemic change; designing from the inside out (innovation culture) and outside in (market change). These different strategies imply the development of possible different business models. Existing creative tensions appear between embedding and outsourcing strategies, acting as facilitators vs designers, developing both designing and service delivery roles.

This paper is based on a limited sample of design agencies, and it is not a systematic study into the impact of their design work, which should be the object of a following study.

This paper brings Service Design practice into public sector innovation debate to inform future interdisciplinary research and innovation policies. It positions existing design innovation strategies within the wider picture of public sector reform to support a more informed design practice.

Few studies have looked at the UK design agencies for public sector innovation and discussed their possible future developments. This paper provides an original and holistic description of design for public sector innovation with considerations on how it should be interpreted when developing supporting innovation and design policies.

When David Farmer began his career in purchasing education, “academic” was a word he fought shy of. Now he is recognised as the foremost purchasing “academic” in the UK today. In this article he talks about the transformation that has taken place in attitudes to purchasing education and looks to the future.

OWING to the comparatively early date in the year of the Library Association Conference, this number of THE LIBRARY WORLD is published so that it may be in the hands of our readers before it begins. The official programme is not in the hands of members at the time we write, but the circumstances are such this year that delay has been inevitable. We have dwelt already on the good fortune we enjoy in going to the beautiful West‐Country Spa. At this time of year it is at its best, and, if the weather is more genial than this weather‐chequered year gives us reason to expect, the Conference should be memorable on that account alone. The Conference has always been the focus of library friendships, and this idea, now that the Association is so large, should be developed. To be a member is to be one of a freemasonry of librarians, pledged to help and forward the work of one another. It is not in the conference rooms alone, where we listen, not always completely awake, to papers not always eloquent or cleverly read, that we gain most, although no one would discount these; it is in the hotels and boarding houses and restaurants, over dinner tables and in the easy chairs of the lounges, that we draw out really useful business information. In short, shop is the subject‐matter of conference conversation, and only misanthropic curmudgeons think otherwise.

Two more unlikely bedfellows than marketing and the British National Health Service would have been difficult to find five years ago. Increasing demand, making a profit and competing for customers were less than burning issues for the NHS. However, now that discussion of such topics as internal markets, income generation and close co‐operation with the private health care sector is commonplace, marketing would appear to have a great deal more relevance to the public health care sector.

HARROGATE will be notable as the venue of the Conference in one or two ways that distinctive. The Association Year is now to begin on January 1st and not in September as heretofore; and, in consequence, there will be no election of president or of new council until the end of the year. The Association's annual election is to take place in November, and the advantages of this arrangement must be apparent to everyone who considers the matter. Until now the nominations have been sent out at a time when members have been scattered to all parts of the country on holiday, and committees of the Council have been elected often without the full consideration that could be given in the more suitable winter time. In the circumstances, at Harrogate the Chair will still be occupied by Sir Henry Miers, who has won from all librarians and those interested in libraries a fuller measure of admiration, if that were possible, than he possessed before he undertook the presidency. There will be no presidential address in the ordinary sense, although Sir Henry Miers will make a speech in the nature of an address from the Chair at one of the meetings. What is usually understood by the presidential address will be an inaugural address which it is hoped will be given by Lord Irwin. The new arrangement must bring about a new state of affairs in regard to the inaugural addresses. We take it that in future there will be what will be called a presidential address at the Annual Meeting nine months after the President takes office. He will certainly then be in the position to review the facts of his year with some knowledge of events; he may chronicle as well as prophesy.

A qualitative, feminist, case study methodology was used to research the feminist leadership of three women principals of coeducational secondary schools. Information was collected by interviewing and observing the three feminist principals, interviewing 24 staff, and collecting documents. Research indicated that being student focused was central to the practice of feminist educational leaders. This thesis explored how they were able to remain student focused in a New Zealand, neo‐liberal, education context with increased financial, accountability and marketing responsibilities. By resisting and appropriating the opportunities and demands created by the reforms, the feminist principals were, to some extent, able to resist the pressure to be less student focused. However, in doing so they worked very long hours. Their personal value systems and the school context were also important influences on their practice. There were both commonalities and diversity among the women’s leadership.

THE article which we publish from the pen of Mr. L. Stanley Jast is the first of many which we hope will come from his pen, now that he has release from regular library duties. Anything that Mr. Jast has to say is said with originality even if the subject is not original; his quality has always been to give an independent and novel twist to almost everything he touches. We think our readers will find this to be so when he touches the important question of “The Library and Leisure.”

DURING much of the Second World War, the affairs of the Library Association were conducted for the Council by an Emergency Committee. The record of its meeting on 10th June 1941, includes the following: “A resolution having been received suggesting that a committee be formed to consider post‐war reconstruction, it was resolved that by means of a notice in the LIBRARY ASSOCIATION RECORD, Branches and Sections should be invited to formulate suggestions for the consideration of the committee. A draft questionnaire for the purpose of an enquiry into the effects of the war on the public library service was approved”. In July, the Committee reported “further arrangements … for carrying out an exhaustive survey designed to give the necessary data for full and detailed consideration and ultimate recommendation as to the future of public libraries, their administration and their place in the social services”. The promised notice appeared as an editorial in September.

OUR various accounts of the Portsmouth Conference, and the official record of it which is now in the hands of readers shows that it may be regarded as a successful one. It was specially notable for the absence of those bickerings and differences which must inevitably come to the surface at times. There may be something in the suggestion of one of our writers that the weather was a main factor. However that may be, there was uniform good temper, and we came away with the belief that a good week's work for librarianship had been done.