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The purpose of this paper is to present the learning gained from undertaking research activities in co-production with young people in order to tackle alcohol misuse in local communities.

The findings are drawn from an evaluation of an alcohol misuse change programme in which opportunities to learn about and conduct research were provided to young people through co-production. The evaluation was guided by a theory of change, and a portfolio of evidence collected which included feedback from the young people and project staff about their experiences.

This paper demonstrates that young people can be empowered to take on roles as agents of change in their own communities by learning more about research processes. However, the empowerment does not come from undertaking research training per se, but by being able to work co-productively with researchers on issues and questions that are of direct relevance to themselves and which are framed within a change agenda. Shared values, strong relationships and reciprocal knowledge exchange enabling flexible and relevant responses to real-world problems and questions are needed.

The paper suggests a reflexive and co-productive learning, design and delivery approach to involving young people in research. It challenges notions of young people as a problem in terms of alcohol misuse, and rather situates them as part of a solution that is aiming at longer-term transformational community change. This is significant in that much of the existing evidence concentrates on individual intervention.

This article discusses findings from one phase of a research study funded by the Learning and Skills Development Agency which aims to improve the thinking and communication skills of prisoners in England and Wales. Perceptions and discussions of a qualitative case study of an offending behaviour intervention ‐ Enhanced Thinking Skills (ETS) ‐ are presented, including perceptions of the ETS experience. Discussion includes factors which affect the delivery of the programme, such as group climate and dynamics, personality differences, responses of inmates and accounts of motivation. These are set in the context of current criminal justice policy in England and Wales.

The purpose of this article is to describe and consider the use of diamond ranking activities as visual cues to elicit ideas, prompt reflection and promote discussion amongst pupils (aged 10‐13), teachers and other staff in two qualitative research studies.

The activities included nine photographs as visual cues, and participants cut out these pictures and stuck them onto a piece of A3 paper in a diamond shape, ranking them by position where their preferred picture is at the top and the most disliked at the bottom.

Importantly, participants also annotated their diamond with qualitative comments and explanations.

This article explores the use of diamond ranking as visual cues – a tool within qualitative research that is under‐developed – as a way of engaging participants in the research process. Issues explored include inclusivity, active discussions and applicability to a wide range of people.

The range of tactical force options available to police is increasing, while public debate about police use of force is never far from the headlines. This paper aims to examine what factors shape how people accept police use of force.

The authors use two online experiments to test whether different force options affected judgments about the acceptability of police action and to explore the role of trust and legitimacy in people's judgments.

The authors found across both studies that respondents judged scenarios involving a weapon (baton, CS spray, Taser) as less acceptable compared to scenarios that did not (talking down, handcuffs), but they did not draw much distinction between the specific weapon used. In study 1, exposure to different police tactics had no effect on trust and legitimacy. In study 2, prior perceptions of trust were strong predictors of acceptability judgments.

There is a comparative paucity of British-based empirical research examining public attitudes toward different use of force resolutions by police. In this paper, the authors explore how use of force affects people's views of police at a time in which the nature and scope of force applications, how these are understood and indeed the basic enterprise of policing itself is being reconsidered and renegotiated.

People experiencing homelessness often have complex needs requiring a range of support. These may include health problems (physical illness, mental health and/or substance misuse) as well as social, financial and housing needs. Addressing these issues requires a high degree of coordination amongst services. It is, thus, an example of a wicked policy issue. The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenge of integrating care in this context using evidence from an evaluation of English hospital discharge services for people experiencing homelessness.

The paper undertakes secondary analysis of qualitative data from a mixed methods evaluation of hospital discharge schemes and uses an established framework for understanding integrated care, the Rainbow Model of Integrated Care (RMIC), to help examine the complexities of integration in this area.

Supporting people experiencing homelessness to have a good discharge from hospital was confirmed as a wicked policy issue. The RMIC provided a strong framework for exploring the concept of integration, demonstrating how intertwined the elements of the framework are and, hence, that solutions need to be holistically organised across the RMIC. Limitations to integration were also highlighted, such as shortages of suitable accommodation and the impacts of policies in aligned areas of the welfare state.

The data for this secondary analysis were not specifically focussed on integration which meant the themes in the RMIC could not be explored directly nor in as much depth. However, important issues raised in the data directly related to integration of support, and the RMIC emerged as a helpful organising framework for understanding integration in this wicked policy context.

Integration is happening in services directly concerned with the discharge from hospital of people experiencing homelessness. Key challenges to this integration are reported in terms of the RMIC, which would be a helpful framework for planning better integrated care for this area of practice.

Addressing homelessness not only requires careful planning of integration of services at specific pathway points, such as hospital discharge, but also integration across wider systems. A complex set of challenges are discussed to help with planning the better integration desired, and the RMIC was seen as a helpful framework for thinking about key issues and their interactions.

This paper examines an application of integrated care knowledge to a key complex, or wicked policy issue.

International relocation is undoubtedly a source of stress for families, and in particular for married couples. Yet, despite familial challenges and the fact that “family concerns” remain a top reason for assignment refusal and assignment failure, including a growing body of anecdotal evidence suggesting that many expatriate marriages fail often at huge cost to organizations, there is not one academic study yet published on expatriate divorce. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the causes and consequences of expatriate divorce.

In this exploratory case-based study, the author uses respondent data from 13 face-to-face interviews and 25 online survey participants.

Findings demonstrate that expatriate marriages end in divorce for two main reasons: first, a core issue in the marriage that exists before going abroad (e.g. alcoholism, mental health problems) and which continues while abroad; and second, when one or both spouses is negatively influenced by an expatriate culture to such an extent that a form of “group think” results in polarizing behavior that is counter to how they might behave “back home” (e.g. infidelity, sexual misconduct). The consequences of divorce for expatriates are immense and include bankruptcy, destitution, homelessness, depression, psychophysiological illness, alienation from children, and suicide.

Data are cross-sectional and findings are limited by single-response bias. Future studies would do well to research matched samples of couples engaging in global work experiences over different points in time in order to track longitudinal changes in marital quality, including why some go on to divorce while others recover from marital breakdown and stay married.

One of the strongest pieces of advice offered by most of the respondents is for spouses, and trailing spouses in particular, to know their legal rights and entitlements in each country where they are living in the event of divorce.

This is the first study to empirically explore the lived experience of expatriate divorce.

Q‐analysis is a methodology for investigating a wide range of structural phenomena. Structures are defined in terms of relations between members of sets and their salient features are revealed using techniques of algebraic topology. However, the basic method can be mastered by non‐mathematicians. Q‐analysis has been applied to problems as diverse as discovering the rules for the diagnosis of a rare disease and the study of tactics in a football match. Other applications include some of interest to librarians and information scientists. In bibliometrics, Q‐analysis has proved capable of emulating techniques such as bibliographic coupling, co‐citation analysis and co‐word analysis. It has also been used to produce a classification scheme for television programmes based on different principles from most bibliographic classifications. This paper introduces the basic ideas of Q‐analysis. Applications relevant to librarianship and information science are reviewed and present limitations of the approach described. New theoretical advances including some in other fields such as planning and design theory and artificial intelligence may lead to a still more powerful method of investigating structure.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss “system transformation” in the context of different workforces and organisations seeking to support people experiencing multiple exclusion homelessness (MEH). From a relational and integrated care perspective it aims to identify barriers to achieving more effective ways of working in the prevailing context of “managerial domination”. Communities of practice (COPs) are evaluated to identify their potential to overcome some of these barriers.

The paper presents a theoretical and conceptual discussion of a project in which a number of COPs were established and evaluated to ascertain their value in developing more relational ways of working in the context of MEH. Case studies of COPs operating in the context of MEH are explored and discussed.

It is concluded that COPs have the potential to deliver small-scale changes (“little miracles”) which are characteristically more subversive than transformative. Nevertheless, the authors still see these small gains as significant when compared to the inertia that is often found in local systems of care where more traditional management techniques (such as “payment by results”) prevail. The authors also draw attention to the scope for much improved service quality which flows from moving beyond the “tick box” and into the realms of what it really takes to tackle homelessness and multiple exclusion. In other words, although often requiring considerable amounts of “craft and graft” to deliver seemingly very small amounts of change, these “little miracles” may actually be more conducive in the long run to delivering the kind of tangible “real” change that is often aspired to by both workers and service users and their carers.

The COPs project was limited in terms of time and scale and, hence, further research would be needed to, for example, ascertain their longer-term potential.

There is merit in the theoretical perspectives discussed and, from these, of understanding how best to establish and operate COPs as a vehicle for achieving better outcomes through integrated or collaborative working.

There is much scope for better integrated or more collaborative working in the context of MEH and this paper draws attention to how COPs could be one means of achieving better outcomes for people experiencing MEH.

This is the first paper to set out the theoretical analysis of COPs as a means of achieving better integrated or collaborative working.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that influence perceptions of work-life balance among owners of copreneurial firms. Research on work-life balance in the context of family firms has focussed on the effects that perceptions of balance can have on the emotional well-being of business owners and performance of the firm. Less attention has been given to understanding the factors affecting an owner's perceptions of work-life balance. This paper not only explores the antecedents of perceptions of work-life balance but does so with copreneurs, or couples who own and manage a firm.

Data for this study were collected using surveys. In all, 210 copreneurs with businesses in nearly 20 industries answered questions about their perceptions of work-life balance, work-life conflict (WLC), life-work conflict, communication practices, characteristics of their jobs, and spousal support.

WLC was negatively related to perceptions of work-life balance. Job involvement, flexibility at work, and permeability of communication were significantly related to perceptions of WLC. Interestingly spousal support did not affect individual perceptions of life-work balance, but had a direct influence on perceptions of work-life balance.

The sample was not randomly selected, and participants were surveyed at only one point in time. Notwithstanding these limitations, the findings have implications for advancing research and theory in the areas of family business, work-life issues, and communication. While the paper focus on copreneurial firms, the findings may have implications for family firms and co-founded ventures.

The potential benefits of copreneurs’ increased awareness of these findings (from readings or through coaching) are important given prior research demonstrating that family to work conflict and work to family conflict affect the emotional well-being of family business owners, their satisfaction with work, and firm performance.

This project offers two important contributions to research in family firms. First, it focusses on copreneurial firms as a unique type of family firm which has the potential to shed light on the differences between family firms. Second, results from this study provide a picture of the predictors of work-life balance for couples who are firm owners.