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The findings of the UK prevalence study of abuse and neglect among older people provide unique opportunities for adult protection systems to consider possible changes to their priorities, activities, services and publicity. This article reports first on the contribution of adult protection coordinators to the design and execution of the research. It then sets out potential uses for the evidence provided by the study by the adult protection community in the UK. The article outlines some of the media reactions to the study that adult protection workers will also have to understand and navigate. It concludes with some suggestions for future research and service development in the UK context.

The article outlines the background to the recently commissioned UK national study of the prevalence of elder abuse and explains the methodology adopted in Stages 1 and 2 of the research. This is being funded by Comic Relief with co‐funding from the Department of Health and carried out by a team of researchers at King's College London and the National Centre for Social Research. Stage 1, the development work, was completed in autumn 2005. Stage 2, which began in March 2006, is a national survey of the private residential population of the United Kingdom.

Self-harm can affect people of all ages, yet the high prevalence rate in adolescents and the potential risk factor of suicide in adults 60 years and above has meant research has tended to focus within these areas. Therefore, the purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the experiences of self-harm in people from early adulthood to late middle age to gain greater insight and understanding in this underexplored area.

An online open-ended survey was used to collect the data from a UK user-led moderated online forum that supports people who self-harm.

Thematic data analysis indicates that feelings of shame and guilt were intensified, due to the double stigma participants face as adults that self-harm. Although most participants had seen a reduction in the frequency of their self-harm many experienced an increase in the severity of harm. In not fitting the assumed typical profile of someone that self-harm participants often struggled to gain formal support.

This was a small-scale online survey; hence, it is not possible to generalise the findings to all adults who self-harm.

The findings from this research provide evidence that greater recognition needs to be given to the reality that self-harm can affect people of all ages. As a result, access to support needs to be widened as a means of supporting those who do not fit the typical profile of someone who self-harms.

This exploratory online study provides insights around the tensions and challenges facing adults that self-harm, which remains an under-researched and largely ignored area.

Technological progress and the advancement of the 4th Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0) are well underway. However, its influence on the transformation of core sectors from the perspective of consumer well-being remains under-explored. Seeking to bridge this gap in the marketing and public policy literature, this study aims to propose a conceptual framework to explicate how data-driven, intelligent and connected IR 4.0 technologies are blurring traditional boundaries between digital, physical and biological domains.

This is a conceptual paper using primarily a literature review of the field. The authors position the work as a contribution to consumer well-being and public policy literature from the lens of increasingly important in our technology-integrated society emerging technologies.

The authors define and conceptualize technology-enabled well-being (TEW), which allows a better understanding of transformative outcomes of IR 4.0 on three essential dimensions of consumer well-being: individual, societal and environmental. Finally, the authors discuss public policy implications and outline future research directions.

The authors highlight specific gaps in the literature on IR 4.0. First, past studies in consumer well-being did not incorporate substantial changes that emerging IR 4.0 technologies bring, especially across increasingly blurring digital, physical and biological domains. Second, past research focused on individual technologies and individual well-being. What is unaccounted for is the potential for a synergetic, proactive effect that emerging technologies bring on the aggregate level not only to individuals but also to society and the environment. Finally, understanding the differences between responses to different outcomes of technologies has important implications for developing public policy. Synergetic, proactive effect of technologies on core sectors such as healthcare, education, financial services, manufacturing and retailing is noted.

OUR Fifty‐eighth Volume begins with this issue of the LIBRARY WORLD, a fact which causes a few reflections and suggestions. It was the earliest “free” journal in librarianship in this country and was designed to represent the experiments in all forms of library service which then were developing with increasing momentum, as well as ideas, aspirations, reasonable grievances, planning, furnishing, technique, personalia—indeed everything that one librarian would desire to communicate to another and to discuss with him. Our earliest contributors were the men best known in their time and, as was inevitable in 1898, were all young. Through more than half a century THE LIBRARY WORLD has appeared regularly and, except in the recent conditions created by the “printing dispute”, punctually. The same principles control us today. The same hospitality is offered to anyone of any age who has anything to say.

Presents 35 abstracts from the 2001 Employment Research Unit Annual conference held at Cardiff Business School in September 2001. Attempts to explore the theme of changing politics of employment relations beyond and within the nation state, against a background of concern in the developed economies at the erosion of relatively advanced conditions of work and social welfare through increasing competition and international agitation for more effective global labour standards. Divides this concept into two areas, addressing the erosion of employment standards through processes of restructuring and examining attempts by governments, trade unions and agencies to re‐create effective systems of regulation. Gives case examples from areas such as India, Wales, London, Ireland, South Africa, Europe and Japan. Covers subjects such as the Disability Discrimination Act, minimum wage, training, contract workers and managing change.

The study addresses the effect of product usage, satisfaction derived out of the same and the brand switching behaviour in several product categories while looking at the product involvement level in the Indian marketplace. A fair amount of work has been done in the area of customer satisfaction and loyalty and many customer satisfaction indexes are available in the market using different variables and characteristics. The study attempts to understand the brand switching behaviour of the customers and its relation not with just satisfaction derived out of the product but also connects to the usage pattern of the customers and product involvement. Five categories (vehicles, television, soap, hair oil, and ice cream), involving varying levels of involvement were chosen. Cluster analysis was used to understand the grouping of the characteristics across the categories and their effect on brand switching behaviour in correlation with satisfaction and involvement level. It was observed that product usage and related level of satisfaction fail to explain the brand switching behaviour. Product involvement was found to have moderate impact on readiness to switch. The study emphasises that marketers will have to keep a constant eye to understand the usage pattern associated with their products and the satisfaction derived out of it and also at how customers involve themselves with the product to lessen the brand switching behaviour among their customers.

Purpose – Using elective egg and sperm freezing as a case to compare representations of men and women as agents of biological reproduction, this chapter aims to understand how gender and risk are co-produced in the context of new reproductive technologies (NRTs).

Methodology – Through a content analysis of newspaper articles published between 1980 and 2016 about egg and sperm freezing, the author traces how fertility risks facing men and women are portrayed in the media.

Findings – Candidates for egg freezing were portrayed in one of the three ways: as cancer patients, career women, or single and waiting for a partner. The ideal users of sperm freezing are depicted in primarily two ways: as cancer patients and as employees in professions with hazardous working conditions. Threats to future fertility for women pursuing careers uninterrupted by pregnancy and child-rearing and women seeking romantic partners are largely portrayed as the result of internal risks. However, threats to future fertility for men working in dangerous professions are largely portrayed as external to them.

Research Limitations – Race and class did not emerge as dominant themes in these data; given the lack of accessibility to NRTs by class and race, this silence must be interrogated by further research.

Value – By comparing the constructions of at-risk groups, the author argues the medicalization of reproduction is gendered as fertility risks portrayed in the media take on a different character between men and women. This research shows how the gendered construction of infertility risk reinforces normative expectations around child-rearing and perpetuates gender inequity in parenting norms.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on mothers as key influencers in luxury retailing contexts.

Using a semiotic interpretation of mothers’ discourses, the authors underline the identity motivations for purchasing luxury apparel for their pre-adolescent children.

The paper shows that when shopping for luxury brands for their pre-adolescent children, mothers manage discrepancies between their “real” and “idealised” selves as well as the pushes and pulls of being a mother and a woman.

The findings point to possible future research on this topic, particularly with regard to investigating how luxury stores and retailers can adapt so as to satisfy mothers’ identity quest.

Managers of luxury brand retail spaces looking at the future of retailing could analyse their store environment in the light of these mothers’ identity-related motivations. As well as focussing on how children look, store layout and merchandising should provide different spaces for mothers’ identity expression, using new in-store digital technologies.

This study is one of the first to analyse luxury shopping for children taking the point of view of mothers. The paper underlines how young mothers build their new maternal identity and their projected relationship with their child through purchases of children’s luxury goods in specific retail environments.