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While known by many names, qualifying exams function as gatekeepers to graduate student advancement to PhD candidacy, yet there has been little formal study on best qualifying exam practices particularly in biomedical and related STEM PhD programs. The purpose of this study is to examine the current state of qualifying exams through an examination of the literature and exploration of university-wide policies.

The authors conducted a literature review of studies on qualifying exams and completed an external evaluation of peer institutions’ and internal institutional qualifying exam requirements to inform our discussion of qualifying exams practices in PhD training at a research-intensive US institutions.

This study identified the need for more research on qualifying exams to establish evidence-based best practices. The authors found a wide variety of qualifying exam formats, with little evidence in support for specific formats. The authors also found little evidence that student expectations are made clear. The lack of evidence-based best practices coupled with insufficient clarity for students has a real potential to disadvantage PhD students, particularly first generation, underrepresented minority, international and/or other trainees who are not privileged or socialized to navigate training environments with vague landmarks such as the qualifying exams.

There are very few studies that evaluate qualifying exams in US doctoral education, particularly in STEM fields, and to the authors’ knowledge, there has been no analysis of campus-wide policies on qualifying exams reported. The lack of evidence for best practices and the need for to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of qualifying exams are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a routine evaluation of clinical effectiveness of an adapted DBT informed skills programme (“I Can Feel Good”; Ingamells and Morrissey, 2014), run on both male and female intellectual disability wards of a medium security psychiatric hospital.

A pre–post evaluation study of routine clinical practice was undertaken utilising staff report scales collected as the primary source of evaluation.

Findings show a positive shift regarding each module for both gender groups. Due to observed baseline differences between gender groups, data were separated and analysed separately. Non-parametric statistical analysis demonstrates statistically significant improvement across three modules for the male sample (managing feelings, coping in crisis and people skills) and two modules for the female sample (managing feelings and people skills).

There appears to be subtle outcome differences regarding this programme for both gender groups across modules. Potential reasons for this are discussed, along with clinical reflections regarding gender differences and adaptations. Reflections upon future revisions including the integration of the new DBT skills (Linehan, 2014) are made in light of these findings.

Through an account of the layout, operations, and four main product lines of a small Chicago bookstore between 1938 and 1947, the purpose of this paper is to show how a neighborhood retail establishment reacted to the sweeping events of the Great Depression and World War II.

The research is based upon multiple primary data sources including store financial records, family photographs, representative artifacts and ephemera, oral history interviews, and period retailing literature.

Located in an area of Chicago heavily populated by Polish and Jewish immigrants and their children, General Book Store was a traditional mom and pop operation. The mix of its product lines – books and magazines, model kits, greeting cards, and camera supplies and photo‐finishing – evolved over time while always connecting customers to the national experience. The store afforded its owners a modest, but upwardly mobile middle‐class life style.

Although much has been written on large‐scale retailing, marketing historians have conducted very little research on small‐scale retailing in the USA. This study documents the intermingling of a business and a household economy and how the management of merchandise assortments and maintenance of customer relationships depended upon both owner interests and the opportunities and constraints presented by environmental forces.

The purpose of this paper is to inspire research at the intersection of marketing and mental health. Marketing academics have much to offer – and much to learn from – research on consumer mental health. However, the context, terminology and setting may prove intimidating to marketing scholars unfamiliar with this vulnerable population. Here, experienced researchers offer guidance for conducting compelling research that not only applies marketing frameworks to the mental health industry but also uses this unique context to deepen our understanding of all consumers.

Common concerns about conducting marketing research in the area of mental health were circulated to researchers experienced working with vulnerable populations. Their thoughtful responses are reported here, organized around the research cycle.

Academics and practitioners offer insights into developing compelling research questions at the intersection of marketing and mental health, strategies to identify relevant populations to research and guidance for safe and ethical research design, conduct and publication.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first instructional paper to provide practical advice to begin and maintain a successful research agenda at the intersection of mental health and marketing.

Clinical staff working in mental health services experience high levels of work-related stress, burnout and poor well-being. Increased levels of stress, burnout, depression and anxiety and poorer mental well-being among health-care workers are associated with more sick days, absenteeism, lower work satisfaction, increased staff turnover and reduced quality of patient care. Virtual reality (VR) relaxation is a technique whereby experiences of pleasant and calming environments are accessed through a head-mounted display to promote relaxation. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design of a study that assesses the feasibility and acceptability of implementing a multi-session VR relaxation intervention amongst mental health professionals, to improve their relaxation levels and mental well-being.

The study follows a pre–post-test design. Mental health staff will be recruited for five weeks of VR relaxation. The authors will measure the feasibility and acceptability of the VR relaxation intervention as primary outcomes, alongside secondary outcomes evaluating the benefits of VR relaxation for mental well-being.

The study aims to recruit 20–25 health-care professionals working in both inpatient and specialist community mental health settings.

Research indicates the potential of VR relaxation as a low-intensity intervention to promote relaxation and reduce stress in the workplace. If VR relaxation is shown to be feasible and acceptable, when delivered across multiple sessions, there would be scope for large-scale work to investigate its effectiveness as an approach to enable health-care professionals to de-stress, relax and optimise their mental well-being. In turn, this may consequently reduce turnover and improve stress-related sick leave across health-care services.

Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.

To demonstrate how brand netnography is useful in showing how visitors interpret the places, people and situations that they experience when traveling.

Through analysis of online consumer stories about their travel experiences, this paper probes how visitors interpret their experiences while visiting cities in Asia. Deconstructing texts written by consumers via Heider's balance theory provides the method of analysis for samples of both positive and negative travel experiences of foreign visitors.

Mapping consumer experiences shows immediate and downstream positive and negative associations of concepts, events, and outcomes in visitors' stories. These maps include descriptions of how visitors live specific destination's unique promises.

The population of bloggers who report their experiences may not be representative of the population of all visitors.

Blog‐journal stories provides the opportunity to collect emic interpretative data unobtrusively. These stories have the potential to influence substantial numbers of future visitors who go online in search of first‐person unbiased, unrehearsed reports of others' destination experiences. First‐person (emic) reports enable managers of places (brands) to learn and talk in dialects of customers.

This paper provides a revisionist proposal to Holt's five‐step strategy for building destinations as iconic brands and suggestions for tourism management. The revisionist view includes interpreting consumers' own interpretations of their place experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concepts of key messages and key message integrity, and examines their viability for communication management scholars and practitioners in evaluating media relations activities. Key message integrity addresses not only what messages transfer, but also how well.

The authors analyzed 18 nonprofit organizations’ key messages and the messages’ integrity levels using content analysis on one month of their news coverage. In-depth interviews with eight of their media relations practitioners helped validate the concepts and the results.

The authors found five unique categories and functions of key messages: information concerned with dissemination, raison d’être concerned with purpose, categories concerned with positioning, resource management concerned with accounting for resources, and social relevance concerned with legitimacy. Findings also revealed varying levels of transmission and message integrity across the categories. Interviews revealed insights into challenges for communicating organizational key messages to the news media.

This study lays the foundation for additional research on key messages and key message integrity as useful metrics for communication management scholars and practitioners.