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Public mental health can be described as the science, politics and art of creating a mentally healthy society. This paper discusses these three concepts with reference to the literature as the necessary components of any strategy or programme to create, promote and maintain mental well‐being at a community and population level. It goes on to describe how they were applied in a cross‐border rural mental health project in Ireland.

This paper reports on the implementation and evaluation of the JOBS programme in Ireland. This is a training intervention to promote re‐employment and improve mental health among unemployed people that was implemented on a pilot basis in the border region of the Republic and Northern Ireland. Programme participants were unemployed people recruited from local training and employment offices and health agencies. The evaluation indicated that the programme was implemented successfully and led to improved psychological and re‐employment outcomes for the intervention group, lasting up to 12 months post‐intervention. This paper reflects on the implementation issues that arose in adapting an international evidence‐based programme to the local setting and considers the implications of the evaluation findings for the roll out of the programme on a larger scale.

This paper aims to investigate how public libraries in Ireland are using their websites to present local studies collections online.

All the websites of public libraries in Ireland were evaluated against a checklist of 50 criteria by one of the authors. An analytic description was provided of the four highest‐ranking websites and semi‐structured interviews were held with staff in these library authorities.

Several interesting trends in Irish local studies and their online presentation were identified. Overall the websites were well‐presented and had a strong sense of branding. Users of these websites typically come from the Irish diaspora in Europe, the US and Australia. Library 2.0 “tools” had been adopted by three of the four authorities investigated, adding value to their websites. Recommendations for future developments are included.

This research should add to the relatively sparse literature available on local authority local studies websites.

Discrimination has been identified as a major stressor and influence on immigrant health. This study examined the role of perceived discrimination in relation to other factors, in particular, acculturation, in physical and mental health of immigrants and refugees. Data for US adults (18 +  years) were derived from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Mental and physical health was assessed with SF-12. Acculturation and perceived discrimination were assessed with multidimensional measures. Structural equation models were used to estimate the effects of acculturation, stressful life effects, perceived discrimination, and social support on health among immigrants and refugees. Among first-generation immigrants, discrimination in health care had a negative association with physical health while discrimination in general had a negative association with mental health. Social support had positive associations with physical and mental health and mediated the association of discrimination to health. There were no significant associations between discrimination and health among refugees, but the direction and magnitude of associations were similar to those for first-generation immigrants. Efforts aiming at reducing discrimination and enhancing integration/social support for immigrants are likely to help with maintaining and protecting immigrants’ health and well-being. Further research using larger samples of refugees and testing moderating effects of key social/psychosocial variables on immigrant health outcomes is warranted. This study used multidimensional measures of health, perceived discrimination, and acculturation to examine the pathways between key social/psychosocial factors in health of immigrants and refugees at the national level. This study included possibly the largest national sample of refugees.

This paper provides a quantitative review of the literature on the repercussions of idiosyncratic information on firms’ cost of equity (CoE) capital. In total, I review the results of 113 unique studies examining the CoE effects of information Quantity, Precision and Asymmetry. My results suggest that the association between firm-specific information and CoE is subject to moderate effects. First, the link between Quantity and CoE is moderated by disclosure types and country-level factors in that firms in comparatively weakly regulated countries tend to enjoy up to four times greater CoE benefits from more expansive disclosure—depending on the type of disclosure—than firms in strongly regulated markets. Second, a negative relationship between Precision and CoE is only significant in studies using non-accrual quality proxies for Precision and risk factor-based (RFB)/valuation model-based (VMB) proxies for CoE. Third, almost all VMB studies confirm the positive association between Asymmetry and CoE, but there is notable variation in the conclusions reached when ex post CoE measurers are used.

Challenge-based learning (CBL) has gained acceptance as a contemporary and progressive teaching pedagogy that provides a holistic and inclusive experience to learners in higher education (HE) institutions. However, its lack of appeal to non-STEM subjects and the need for further development, particularly concerning improved approaches, have been recognized. It seems that CBL runs the risk of becoming a portmanteau pedagogy that blends aspects of problem-based learning, project-based learning, and situated learning, as opposed to its development as an effective pedagogy tool. This points to a lack of a formal implementation framework, code of practice, and standard procedures for its delivery. We argue that blending a design thinking (DT) pedagogy with CBL can potentially provide the stability that CBL currently lacks. At the same time, it also presents a more inclusive proposition to potential non-STEM audiences. Thus, in this chapter, we seek to interrogate the intersectionality between CBL and DT literature in the context of HE teaching and learning with a view of establishing CBL as a pedagogy in its own right. We attempt to achieve this by systematically analyzing the separate literature to reveal the synergies and common touchpoints.

This paper aims to assess how cocoa supply chain companies disclose sustainable development goals (SDGs) information in their sustainability reports. This assessment highlights strategic aspects of sustainable supply chain management and reveals leveraging sustainability points in the cocoa industry.

The two-step qualitative approach relies on text-mining company reports and subsequent content analysis that identifies the topics disclosed and relates them to SDG targets.

This study distinguishes 18 SDG targets connected to cocoa traders and 30 SDG targets to chocolate manufacturers. The following topics represent the main nexuses of connections: decent labour promotion and gender equity (social), empowering local communities and supply chain monitoring (economic) and agroforestry and climate action (environmental).

By highlighting the interconnections between the SDGs targeted by companies in the cocoa supply chain, this paper sheds light on the strategic SDGs for this industry and their relationships, which can help to improve sustainability disclosure and transparency. One interesting input for companies is the improvement of climate crisis prevention, focusing on non-renewable sources minimisation, carbon footprint and clear indicators of ecologic materiality.

This study contributes to policymakers to enhance governance and accountability of global supply chains that are submitted to different regulation regimes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous study has framed the cocoa industry from a broader SDG perspective. The interconnections identified reveal the key goals of the cocoa supply chain and point to strategic sustainability choices for companies in an important global industry.

The purpose of this case study is to document the process of building a collection of works around transgender life-writing, following the identification of a significant gap in the existing collections.

This case study describes and evaluates a collection development project undertaken at Senate House Library, University of London. After evaluating four comparable case studies, guidelines were developed for acquisitions to the collection, based on subject, conservation needs and financial expense.

Twenty items were selected for the collection, dating from 1933 to 2015, including books and magazines in multiple languages. The items acquired for the collection push back against the genre’s traditional preoccupation with transition. Writers describe their experiences as a racing driver and fighter pilot (Roberta Cowell), an NGO director (A. Revathi), a Buddhist monk (Michael Dillon), a professional tennis player and ophthalmologist (Renée Richards), and a travel writer, journalist and mountaineer (Jan Morris).

Challenges included setting the scope of the collection, and questions around the cataloguing and arrangement of materials.

Items acquired for the collection entered the library separately and were processed individually by the library’s cataloguing team as they arrived. Several issues arose during this stage of the project.

To serve the needs of library users effectively, it is necessary to analyse the imbalances in collections as a routine practice.

The case study is original in focusing on a comparably small project with larger implications for the user experience and inclusivity of a library and its collections.

García Lara et al. (2011) argue that there is a conservatism-related priced risk factor in US stock returns. To put this to the test, the authors aim to analyze whether the conditional conservatism effect comes from the loading on a conditional conservatism-related factor-mimicking portfolio (systematic risk) or the conservatism characteristic itself.

The authors form characteristic-balanced portfolios from dependent sorts of stocks on the firm’s degree of conservatism and the firm’s loading on the conservatism-related factor-mimicking portfolio as proposed by Daniel and Titman (1997) and Davis et al. (2000).

The tests indicate that it is the conditional conservatism characteristic rather than the factor loading that explains the cross-sectional differences in average stock returns. Consequently, they do not find evidence for a conservatism-related priced risk factor.

This finding suggests that investors misvalue the conservatism characteristic and casts doubt on the rational risk explanation as proposed by García Lara et al. (2011).

Laws geared toward regulating the employment relationship cling to traditional definitions of workplaces, neglecting the domain of the home and those who work there. Domestic workers, a population of largely immigrant women of color, have performed labor inside of New York City's homes for centuries and yet have consistently been denied coverage under labor law protections at both the state and federal level. This article traces out the exclusions of domestic workers historically and then turn to a particular piece of legislation – the 2010 New York Domestic Worker Bill of Rights – which was the first law of its kind to regulate the household as a site of labor, therefore disrupting that long-standing pattern. However, the law falls short in granting basic worker protections to this particular group. Drawing from 52 in-depth interviews and analysis of legislative documents, The author argues that the problematics of the law can be understood by recognizing its embeddedness, or rather the broader political, legal, historical, and social ecology within which the law is embedded, which inhibited in a number of important ways the law's ability to work. This article shows how this plays out through the law obscuring the specificity of where this labor is performed – the home – as well as the demographic makeup of the immigrant women of color – the whom – performing it. Using the case study of domestic workers' recent inclusion into labor law coverage, this article urges a closer scrutiny of and attention to the changing nature of inequality, race, and gender present in employment relationships within the private household as well as found more generally throughout the low-wage sector.