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Gatekeepers in social research are regularly taken for granted in the associated methods literature, yet they constitute an interesting social phenomenon in themselves as powerful and normally unpaid agents of research access. Questions relating to the recruitment of potential gatekeepers and to the nature of the rewards that they might seek are under-considered and locating key gatekeepers is often characterised (perhaps inadvertently) as a matter of luck or happenstance. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper is a multi-sited ethnography based on maritime industry conferences held annually in Europe and Asia. The two authors attended 18 of these conferences either as regular delegate or as a speaker. In these conferences, they maintained fieldnotes and formally and informally interviewed participants both face to face and e-mail.

Every year executives come together at commercially organised conferences focussed upon human resource management in the shipping industry. At these events, major global players discuss a programme of issues related to the business of recruiting and training seafarers. However, these international conferences are both much more and much less than they seem. They are crucial in establishing reputational capital and provide researchers with key venues for negotiating research access.

This paper argues that unlike most conferences, these can only be seen as “field configuring events” to a very limited extent but that they nonetheless serve an important purpose in securing symbolic, and more significantly reputational, capital for both individual delegates and interested academics. The paper further argues that resourceful researchers can mobilise such capital in their favour in negotiating research access contributing new ideas to the literature on gatekeepers and on research access.

This paper aims to, using the example of the highly globalised shipping industry, shed light upon the practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the extent to which it might be relied upon to fill international regulatory gaps.

The paper draws upon findings from a questionnaire study of shipboard accommodation.

The paper finds that seafarers’ welfare remains under-considered by many companies. It suggests that the consolidation of regulation pertaining to seafarer living conditions under the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) has been timely. However, a priority for the international community should be to develop the relatively low standards currently required by existing regulation to provide for better standards of seafarer welfare across the global fleet.

This evidence from the shipping industry challenges arguments for the normative basis for CSR and lends weight to those suggesting that the apparent exercise of CSR by multinational companies should broadly be understood as an exercise in public relations.

The research points to the need for the MLC to be amended to raise the mandatory standards of shipboard accommodation in the merchant shipping industry.

The paper contributes unique data on seafarers’ living conditions and augments the body of knowledge concerning the exercise of CSR in global sectors.

The purpose of this article is to help acquaint librarians with some of the major resources available regarding Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Effects (FAS/FAE).

Personality disorder is reported to elicit strong emotional responses and negative attitudes in mental health staff (Bodner et al., 2015). The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the design and development of a co-produced e-learning training package for personality disorder awareness and an evaluation of its effectiveness. This study was carried out to explore if e-learning is an effective mode of training delivery for raising personality disorder awareness.

The e-learning was uniquely developed by subject matter experts working in co-production with people with lived experience. Self-reported measures were completed at three separate intervals to evaluate the effectiveness of the training: at pre-, post- and three-month follow up. Quantitative data were collected via these questionnaires.

The results from this evaluation show that e-learning is an effective mode of delivery for raising the awareness of personality disorder among mental health professionals, achieving similar outcomes to those reported following face-to-ace training.

Attrition at follow-up phase was high which was consistent with other similar studies. The evaluation was led by the lead contributors and in the geographical area of its development. The study was relatively small and the participants were self-selected, therefore findings should be treated with caution.

E-learning can provide flexible training to compliment and act as an alternative to face-to-face personality disorder training. E-learning may provide an alternative refresher course to knowledge and understanding framework or other face-to-face methods. Co-produced training can be mirrored within an e-learning programme, careful planning to ensure the service user voice is heard and that their lived experience is embraced is required.

This is the first evaluation of a co-produced e-learning only personality disorder awareness training. It is also the first paper to carry out a review of the published evaluations of personality awareness training in the UK with comparisons explored across the studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which workers employ rule breaking, rule bending and deviations from management defined norms in the workplace and the impact this has on their occupational health and safety (OHS) experiences.

The paper uses qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted with 37 seafarers working on board four vessels engaged in international trade. The data were recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed using NVivo software.

The findings indicate that seafarers utilised workplace fiddles – which included rule breaking, rule bending and deviating from management defined norms – in order to engender a workable system in which they could remain safe but also profitable to those who controlled their labour. Moreover, the findings suggest that shore-side management deflected the responsibility for rule violations by deferring many of the decisions regarding features of life on board – such as the scheduling of work hours – to the senior officers on board.

The paper sheds light on where, in practice, responsibility for OHS lies in the international shipping industry, an industry in which workers experience relatively high rates of work-related fatalities, injuries and mental health conditions.

An innovative training initiative to raise the awareness of personality disorder and enable more effective working with people with personality disorder who come into contact with the wider multi-agency system has been developed. For the purpose of the training initiative the nationally recognised Knowledge and Understanding Framework (KUF, awareness-level programme) has been employed. An overview of the comprehensive multi-agency training initiative will be outlined with reporting and discussion of the outcome data provided within this paper. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper outlines the development and outcomes of a service evaluation study. The utilised outcome measures were carried out at pre-, post- and three-month follow-up measures. The Personality Disorder-Knowledge Attitude and Skills Questionnaire was utilised on the recommendation of the central team. Additionally a Visual Analogue Scale was developed for the purpose of this study was also employed.

Data findings are positive particularly when comparing pre- and post-results and the pre- and follow-up results. There appears to be an apparent peak in results post-training which could be attributed to the fact that knowledge and understanding is recent and fresh in the delegates mind, however positive results are still reported at follow-up there does appear to be decline in results and durability of the effect when three-month follow-up is compared against the post-training results.

Follow-up was at three months, which is a relatively short-time span post-training it would be of great interest to see in the future if the decline in the three areas continues. If this was followed up and if this pattern continued this could provide us with evidence to support the development of refresher courses. In the future, due to the multi-agency design of this service evaluation, comparisons of the different sectors, agencies and occupations involved, could also be explored further to establish what multi-agency areas the training has had the most effect and impact.

High levels of demand from multi-agencies to receive training in personality disorder is reported. Our findings and experience provide evidence that multi-agencies partners from a variety of professional backgrounds can effectively work in partnership with people with lived experience to effectively deliver the KUF training.

This innovative roll-out of KUF training provides evidence that with a little investment, a comprehensive multi-agency roll-out of KUF is achievable and can provide statistically significant positive results displaying the effectiveness and change brought about via the KUF training.

The originality of this sustainable and low-cost approach to educating the wider system is reported in this paper. This has lead to the strategy receiving national recognition winning a nursing times award in 2011 and a model of innovative practice nationally.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.