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Doctoral students are expected to undertake work-based skills training within their doctoral studies in areas such as problem solving, leadership and team working. The purpose of this paper is to explore student expectations of doctoral training within a UK Higher Education context.

The data for the study were gathered via two focus groups conducted among doctoral students from different faculties in a post-92 UK University. Participants were selected using a snowball sampling approach.

The findings suggest that the expectations of doctoral students are contingent upon their year of study, study mode, perceived fit between training goals and available training, peer recommendations, word-of-mouth (WoM) and the scholarly support they received from their supervisors.

The study suggests a better understanding of students’ segmentation can help Higher Education Institutions deliver training that meets the expectations of doctoral students in a way that result in zero or a positive disconfirmation.

This paper develops and deepens the understanding of the doctoral students’ expectations of work-based skills training and highlights the need for universities to adapt their doctoral training according to the expectations of different student segments.

This paper aims to examine how repeated exposure to health-related products that contain flavors (e.g. cherry-flavored cough syrup) create “flavor halos” that can bias perceptions about the healthfulness of foods that contain the same flavors (e.g. cherry-flavored cheesecake).

Six experiments, using both between- and within-subjects designs, explore the effects of flavor halos in hypothetical and actual consumption settings. They test the underlying mechanism, rule out competing explanations and identify an opportunity to correct the cognitive biases created by flavor halos.

Flavor halos can be created via repeated exposure to flavored medicinal products in the marketplace. These flavor halos bias dieters’ judgments about the healthfulness of vice foods containing such flavors. Dieters are motivated toward a directional conclusion about food healthfulness to mediate the guilt associated with consuming indulgent products. Providing dieters with corrective information mitigates these effects.

The authors examine one way flavor halos are created –via repeated exposure to flavored medicinal products. Future research should explore other ways flavor halos are created and other ways to mitigate their effects.

Considering the prevalence of obesity, organizations striving to help consumers pursue health goals (e.g. weight watchers) can use flavors to improve dietary compliance. Health-care organizations can help consumers understand and correct the cognitive biases associated with flavor halos.

By identifying flavor halos, this work adds to the literature investigating how flavors influence consumers’ judgments about healthfulness. The results suggest dieters apply flavor halos as they engage in motivated reasoning to license their indulgent desires.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and elucidate adolescents’ reasoning about risks related to food and eating.

Boys and girls aged 15-16 years participated in a focus group interview with role-playing as a stimulus for discussion and reflection. In all, 31 participants took part, divided into five groups. In the role-playing, the participants portrayed agents who they perceived to give messages about food. In the focus group they discussed their experience of carrying out the role-play, and how they usually cope with conflicting messages, preferences and needs regarding food and eating.

The findings suggested that there were two main themes of risk profiling related to eating. One concerned bodily risk related to the food ingested and included concerns both about not reaching health and performance due to the unfavourable intake of calories, nutrients, additives, bacteria, viruses and parasites, and threats to immediate well-being following consumption. The second main category concerned the risk of being conspicuous, or “sticking out”, which incorporated food-based gender norms and norms related to table manners. In practice, the risk of not displaying an appropriate image of themselves through their food and eating choices was more prominent than risk perceptions related to impacts of food choices on well-being and performance. Difficulties in classifying foods as “good” or “bad” enhanced their uncertainty.

The results suggest that health-promotion activities for young people should focus not only on how to feed their bodies but also on how to avoid feeding their anxieties.

Economic adversity, geopolitical, and climate crises leading to the lack of decent and sustainable work are resulting in growing and diverse migratory movements. The precarious situation of many migrant workers in their countries of employment results in a state of social exclusion due to a lack of access to relevant information sources. The purpose of this paper is to further the understanding of the information behavior of migrants by examining the role that La Escuelita, a Hebrew night school for domestic migrant workers in Israel, plays as an information ground helping migrants struggling with social exclusion.

A qualitative methodology was used and data were collected using participation observation over a three-months period. Eight students at the school were interviewed using in-depth interviews.

La Escuelita served as a vehicle for social inclusion by providing valuable everyday information to the students in a caring environment. Information was shared in multiple directions between both the staff and the students and between the students. Language barriers were revealed as one of the main factors for social exclusion. Findings revealed that although the migrant workers who study at La Escuelita are information poor regarding their struggle for social inclusion into Israeli society, they wish to learn Hebrew as a way to overcome this exclusion.

Understanding the information behavior of marginalized populations is the first step into designing and implementing information services to help them toward social inclusion. This research presents an innovative contribution by examining the significance and roles of social connections in the setting of a unique information environment.

Victim narratives consistent with anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution rhetoric leave little room for understanding agential labor in the sex industry, which profoundly impacts sex workers’ experiences in other domains. One such domain – academia – is often understood as antithetical to the “body work” of sex work. It is, after all, the domain of the mind. Drawing from my experiences as an undergraduate and graduate student as well as from my work as a sex worker, I use auto-ethnography to demonstrate the lasting impact of (1) mind/body dualisms, (2) the virgin/whore dichotomy, and (3) narratives of sexual danger on perceptions of legitimation and status for sex workers in academia. I also discuss implications for broader social concerns like legal policy.

The purpose of this study was to assess whether a multifaceted intervention could improve mental health literacy, facilitate help seeking and reduce psychological distress and alcohol misuse in staff of a multi-campus university in Australia.

In this cluster randomised trial (ACTRN12610001027000), nine campuses were paired, with one of each pair randomly assigned to either intervention or control. Interventions (which were whole-of-campus) included e-mails, posters, campus events, factsheets/booklets and mental health first aid training courses. A monitoring sample of staff were recruited from each campus. Participants had a 20-minute computer-assisted telephone interview at baseline, and at the end of academic years 1 and 2. The interview assessed mental health literacy, help seeking for mental health problems, psychological distress and alcohol use. The primary outcomes were depression and anxiety levels and alcohol use and pertained to the individual level. Six campuses were randomised to intervention and three to control and all campuses were included in the analysis.

There were no effects on depression and anxiety levels and alcohol use. Recall of intervention elements was greater in the intervention group at the end of the two-year assessment period. Staff in the intervention group showed better recognition of depression, greater knowledge of the National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines for safe levels of drinking and a greater intention to seek help for alcohol misuse from a general practitioner.

Future interventions should involve more focused interventions that include consideration of working conditions and their influence on mental health, as well as addressing mental illness among employees, regardless of cause.

ON April 23rd this year, when all countries in the world will be celebrating the Quater‐centenary of Shakespeare's birthday, the Shakespeare Memorial Library in Birmingham will have attained a majority of one hundred years. Although founded in 1864 the scope of the library was first envisaged by George Dawson, President of the local Shakespeare club in a letter to Aris's Birmingham Gazette of 1861.

Simon Cowell, the impresario behind The X Factor, a popular television talent show, has often been compared to P.T. Barnum, the legendary nineteenth century showman. This paper aims to examine the alleged parallels in detail and attempts to assess this “Barnum reborn” argument.

Putative parallels between the impresarios are considered under the aegis of two long‐standing, if contentious, historical “theories”: time's cycle and the great man thesis.

Seven broad similarities between the showmen are identified: vulgarity, hyperbole, rivalry, publicity, duplicity, liminality and history. In each case, the arguments pro and con are explored, as is humanity's propensity to personify.

In accordance with the iconic literary critic Harold Bloom, who “strikes texts together to seek if they spark”, this paper strikes two celebrated showmen together to generate historical sparks.