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It is well established that there are several benefits of taking a placement year, for example, higher academic attainment, the acquisition of transferable skills and enhanced employability. It is therefore important to understand why students choose to take or not to take a placement. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In the current study, 159 first year students studying psychology were asked about their perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of taking a psychology professional placement year. Their responses were analysed using thematic analysis, and the number of participants who provided information relating to each main theme was also tabulated.

Students perceived the main benefits of placements as relating to career certainty, future prospects, experience, knowledge and skills. In contrast, they perceived the main disadvantages as practical disadvantages, social/emotional disadvantages, difficulty, and there being no guaranteed benefit of a placement.

The results are discussed in terms of their potential to inform practices for developing and enhancing psychology placements within higher education. For example, providing further empirical evidence of the benefits of placements may help staff in higher education to further promote placement years.

The study contributes to the knowledge of perceived advantages and disadvantages of taking a placement in psychology. Placements in psychology are likely to be very beneficial for employability, but are often only available on a voluntary basis.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into how female entrepreneurs develop and communicate an authentic personal brand. The authors examine the entrepreneurial marketing (EM) activities undertaken by female entrepreneurs and identify the impression management (IM) behaviours and tactics used. The authors explore the risks associated with self-promotion to gain a better understanding of how female entrepreneurs market themselves and their businesses.

The study adopts an interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA). Using semi-structured interviews, the authors explore the experiences of female entrepreneurs as they engage in IM behaviours. The sample is drawn from female entrepreneurs who have small-scale businesses, which span a range of specialist service sectors. All participants are engaging in personal branding activities. Participants were recruited via a gatekeeper and invited to take part in the study. Data from 11 female business owners were collected and analysed using IPA. Interview transcripts and field notes were analysed for broad patterns, and then initial codes developed, which allowed for themes to emerge, with a number of core themes being identified. These core themes are presented, together with verbatim quotes from participants, to provide a rich insight into the marketing activities of these female entrepreneurs.

The findings reveal the complex challenges faced by female entrepreneurs as they engage in self-promotion and IM to market their business. Four key themes emerge from the data to explain how female entrepreneurs engage in managing their brand both online and offline: experimental, risk, authenticity and supplication. The study identifies, in particular, that female entrepreneurs use the tactic of supplication in combination with self-promotion to communicate their brand. Additionally, it was found that female entrepreneurs share their personal fears and weaknesses in an attempt to be seen as authentic and manage the risk associated with self-promotion.

The study contributes to the EM literature by extending the understanding of the risks associated with self-promotion for female entrepreneurs. The study also contributes to the IM literature by providing a better understanding of IM beyond organisations and applied to an entrepreneurial domain. The study highlights a number of important implications for entrepreneurial practice and policy.

Mental toughness describes a set of attributes relating to how individuals deal with challenges, stressors, and pressure. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between mental toughness and perceived stress in police and fire officers.

The participants were 247 police officers and 130 fire fighters. Participants completed questionnaire measures of mental toughness and perceived stress, and provided information about their age, rank, and length of service within the force.

Mental toughness was found to be significantly related to perceived stress, with control of emotion, control of life, and confidence in abilities being particularly important. There was no consistent relationship of age, rank, or length of service with mental toughness and perceived stress. However, police officers reported lower levels of mental toughness and higher levels of perceived stress than fire officers.

The results suggest that assessing police and fire officers on a measure of mental toughness could provide a means of identifying individuals more likely to suffer from stress and stress-related physical and psychological illness. In addition, interventions that may enhance mental toughness could have beneficial effects within this population.

This is the first study to examine mental toughness and perceived stress within this population, and the findings have important implications for the management of stress.

Police personnel report relatively high rates of mental health difficulties, and are at an increased risk of experiencing stress, burnout, secondary traumatic stress and anxiety as a result of the nature of their work and may also experience low compassion satisfaction. However, it is likely that the prevalence of psychological distress varies across roles. The purpose of this paper is to explore psychological distress, in a large sample of police personnel, examining differences between individuals in a number of police roles.

A questionnaire assessing experience of mental health problems, perceived stress, compassion fatigue (burnout and secondary traumatic stress), compassion satisfaction and anxiety was administered to 602 police personnel, who were classified into one of ten roles (24/7 officers, communications, firearms, crime, resolution without deployment, neighbourhood, custody, safeguarding, operations and other roles). Differences based on role and the requirement for shift work were then examined.

24/7 officers had higher compassion fatigue and lower compassion satisfaction than individuals in a number of other roles. Firearms officers had lower levels of perceived stress and anxiety. Resolution without deployment officers reported higher secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue. The findings also revealed that respondents who partake in shift work showed higher levels of perceived stress.

This is the first study to the authors’ knowledge to investigate experience of mental health problems and reports of psychological distress in different roles within a UK police force. The findings have important implications, for example, in terms of identifying groups who may be particularly at risk from psychological distress.

This article aims to explore the work lives and contributions of a group of women employed at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in the early twentieth century.

Archival source material from the J. Walter Thompson Company archives at Duke University includes personnel files, advertising campaign reports, and meeting minutes. The archival work is placed in historical context.

The J. Walter Thompson Women's Editorial Department played a significant role in the development of advertising and in furthering women's opportunities as advertising professionals.

Advertising was one of the few male‐dominated professions open to women in the early years of the twentieth century. An exploration of these women's work experiences greatly enhances our understanding of the field, of women's roles as advertisers, and of women's roles as consumers.

I Am Helen Keller is a student-friendly reader; yet, it offers realistic insights into Helen’s life as a: student, writer, lecturer, vaudeville performer, and activist. The book relates to students’ real lives because Helen is portrayed as a genuine person rather than an object for herofication; an individual with economic challenges and personality flaws as well as successes. Young students are introduced to the concept of mentoring, as people who sponsored and helped Helen achieve her life goals are described. Helen Keller overcame personal adversity and is often presented to young people in character education. The heart of her story, however, is that she was one of the first civil rights leaders for people with disabilities. She was at the forefront of attitude changes around the world. In this lesson, students engage in analyzing key points of Helen Keller’s life through a read-aloud and Anticipation Guide, discussion, cooperative group work, research, and presentation skills using educational technology.

Women and marketing have had a complicated relationship for a considerable time. They have often been involved with marketing‐type practices for longer than we have appreciated to date. Against considerable odds, some have carved out careers in academia and practice that have to be admired. The purpose of this paper is to explore the work of two pioneer contributors to marketing.

This paper engages in a close reading of the work of two female contributors. Their writing is placed in historical context which helps reveal the obstacles they had to overcome to succeed.

Female teachers, lecturers and practitioners had an important role to play in theorising consumer practice and helping people to successfully negotiate a complex marketplace replete with new challenges, difficulties and sometimes mendacious marketers seeking to profit from the limited knowledge consumers possessed.

This paper explores the writings of a practitioner and scholar respectively whose work has merited only limited attention previously. More than this, it links the arguments that are made to the papers that appear in the rest of the special issue.

Recent research (Robertson et al, 2005) has demonstrated that person‐centred planning (PCP) leads to positive changes for people. This research shows how PCP is associated with benefits in the areas of community involvement, contact with friends, contact with family and choice. This paper briefly describes this research and its recommendations. In addition it explores the implications for managers and professionals supporting people with learning disabilities.

Both the ideals of the European Union (EU) and the EU's recent political difficulties have attracted comparison with the Habsburg empire. In recent years, some of those making comparison have turned to the Austrian Jewish novelists, Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, who were crucial to the imaginative emergence of the Habsburg Myth. This paper analyses their writings and those of Robert Musil and Gregor von Rezzori in relation to the Habsburg Myth as a story about European unity, about Austria-Hungary as a supranational polity and about Austria-Hungary's self-proclaimed providential purpose in European affairs. It explores the dissonance between the Habsburg Myth and the EU's territorial composition and argues that the Habsburg Myth is, nonetheless, revealing about the EU's internal hierarchies and its geopolitical difficulties in relation to Russia.