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Project INISS was established on July 1st 1978 with a grant from the Department of Health and Social Security, and completed its work in October 1980. The aim of the project was to evaluate a number of small‐scale experimental innovations for the improvement of information services in social services departments. Three interviewing techniques were used: one to one, group and telephone interviews. This article describes these methods and offers guidelines for their suitability in particular situations.

There is much agreement in the literature that reflection on practice is critically important for the full development and ongoing learning of professionals. The methods of reflection on professional practice reported to date have been developed primarily in the context of professional education in group settings led by a tutor. Research is underway into ways in which managers can be developed as learning facilitators in the workplace. However, there are increasing limitations on the significance of this approach to the continuing development of professionals. The research reported here shows that in‐depth research interviews with professionals to investigate their work and learning can play an important part in supporting their reflection in‐depth on their practice. An analysis of the processes involved, and the characteristics of the three research interviewers involved, indicates that human resource development professionals could be trained for the role of learning facilitators of professionals through 1:1 discourse in the form of in‐depth interviews.

Sexual transmitted infections (STIs) are associated with high stigma leading to poor sexual health-seeking behaviour and mental health problems. Although human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention has generally been successful in many communities across the world, statistics for young people have remained relatively low, especially among most affected communities such as the black sub-Sahara African (BSSA) communities. This paper aims to explore the barriers to STIs and HIV testing among young BSSA communities living in the UK.

The research study used an explorative qualitative approach. The study included 6 focus groups comprising 10 people each (N = 60), and 12 one-to-one follow-up interviews were held with the research participants. Two one-to-one follow-up interviews were held from each focus group (N = 12).

The study found that perceived risk taking, perceived HIV test embarrassment, sexual health professionals’ attitudes, perceived HIV as death sentence, limited educational awareness and general HIV stigma prevented research participants from testing and impacted on their mental health well-being.

There is a need to increase sexual health and mental health education awareness among young BSSA communities. More importantly culturally sensitive interventions to reduce the impact of HIV stigma need to be rolled out in different diverse communities. This study is the first of its kind to look at the barriers affecting young BSSA communities in accessing sexual health testing services in the UK.

There is a lack of valid and reliable generic measures of Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) for children under eight. The purpose of this paper is to assess the psychometric properties of the newly formulated Quality of Life Scale for Children (QoL-C), which uses a pictorial response format.

In total, 335 primary school children completed the QoL-C on two occasions, two weeks apart. Children aged four to seven were interviewed one-to-one while children aged eight to nine completed the measure as a class activity. Test-re-test reliability, convergent validity and child-parent concordance were assessed.

Only one child refused to complete the QoL-C, which suggests the measure is user-friendly. Test-re-test reliability was moderate for the measure's total score (intraclass correlation coefficient =0.48, 95 percent CI 0.39, 0.57) but low to fair for individual items (K from 0.13 to 0.37). Internal consistency was moderate (α=0.42 time one, 0.53 time two). A small significant correlation was found between the QoL-C and Child Health Meter in the expected direction (r=−0.32), suggesting convergent validity. There was low concordance between the children's QoL-C responses and parent's responses (r=0.19) to a parallel measure.

The results suggest that further development of this measure is needed. However, the findings indicate that one-to-one support increases the reliability of very young children's responses. The use of pictures, emoticons and minimal text used in the QoL-C should be investigated further.

Low parent-child concordance underscores the importance of younger children getting the opportunity to share their views about their HRQoL.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and understand academic English language-related challenges in listening and speaking faced by English as a foreign language (EFL) international Master students enrolled in various taught Master programs in a Malaysian university from the viewpoint/lens of 16 lecturers teaching the students.

This qualitative research relied upon 16 in-depth one-to-one interview sessions with 16 lecturers teaching the taught Master programs at a higher education (HE) institution in Malaysia for data collection. Data collected were coded and categorized according to themes via qualitative analysis software, NVivo.

It was found that academic English language-related challenges in listening and speaking from the viewpoint of the 16 lecturers are such as lack of discipline content knowledge to communicate, lack of confidence in communicating orally, difficulty in understanding lectures and other oral activities in the classroom, and coping with differences in learning culture.

This study suggests policies and programs to equip lecturers and university administrators to overcome the challenges faced by the students in their academic English language practices especially in listening and speaking to ensure meaningful academic adaptation in the current context.

The uniqueness of this study is that it is a retrospection of the lecturers teaching EFL and English as a second language (ESL) international Master students in taught Master programs in a Southeast Asian country. The focus of the retrospection is on academic English language-related challenges in listening and speaking faced by EFL international Master students who are currently pursuing their Master education at a HE institution in Malaysia.

Prison social environments play an important role in the health of prisoners. How they respond to imprisonment is partially dependent upon how effectively they integrate into an institution’s social structure, learn to fit in with others and adapt to and cope with becoming detached from society, community and family ‐ hence, how they personally manage the transition from free society to a closed carceral community. This paper reports on findings of an ethnography conducted in an adult male training prison in England, which used participant observation, group interviewing, and one‐to‐one semi‐structured interviews with prisoners and prison officers. The research explored participants’ perceptions of imprisonment, particularly with regard to how they learned to adapt to and ‘survive’ in prison and their perceptions of how prison affected their mental, social and physical well‐being. It revealed that the social world of prison and a prisoner’s dislocation from society constitute two key areas of ‘deprivation’ that can have important health impacts.

University-industry collaboration yields numerous advantages resulting in potential benefits in funding research and innovation. Despite the numerous benefits, there are various perceived disadvantages of such collaboration especially in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry in prominent academic institutes in London, UK. The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes of the academics and clinicians in an academic university department towards industry collaboration.

Two methods were applied, quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative method used an online questionnaire of four-point Likert-Scale, the link of which was emailed to 80 members of the department with a response rate of 32%. The qualitative method included a one-to-one interview with eight researchers from the department to garner in-depth information on the attitude of researchers in child and adolescent psychiatry towards industry collaboration.

The online questionnaire was completed by 26 researchers, the vast majority perceived industry as biased to favour their product and as having a bad or mixed reputation. One-on-one interviews with eight prominent researchers allowed us to share their perception and attitude towards industry collaboration, although the researchers believe that availability of funding was the major advantage of working in collaboration with industry, many did not know how to access such grants and some raised concerns about industry’s record of presenting partial results.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

This paper will shed light on how prominent researchers perceive collaboration with industry.

Although researchers are very reluctant to collaborate with industry because of its public opinion and sometimes unethical and lack of integrity among the industry, with rigorous ethical guidelines and policies, the pharmaceutical industry can be a potential and significant source of funding of high-quality research and innovation.

Those in prison have expert knowledge of issues affecting their health and wellbeing. The purpose of this paper is to report on work undertaken with male prisoners. This paper presents learning and findings from the process of engaging imprisoned men as peer researchers.

The peer researcher approach offers an emic perspective to understand the experience of being in prison. The authors established the peer research role as an educational initiative at a long-stay prison in Wales, UK to determine the feasibility of engaging imprisoned men as peer researchers. Focus groups, interviews and questionnaires were used by the peer researchers to identify the health and wellbeing concerns of men in prison.

The project positively demonstrated the feasibility of engaging imprisoned men as peer researchers. Four recurring themes affecting health and wellbeing for men in a prison vulnerable persons unit were identified: communication, safety, respect and emotional needs. Themes were inextricably linked demonstrating the complex relationships between prison and health.

This was the first prison peer-research project to take place in Wales, UK. It demonstrates the value men in prison can play in developing the evidence base around health and wellbeing in prison, contributing to changes within the prison to improve health and wellbeing for all.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a unique approach to accessing, interpreting, and presenting issues concerning the lives of social science research participants. It particularly focuses on accessing those considered to be economically, socially, or politically marginalized and where there is reliance upon intersubjective accounts in two languages.

The conceptual and empirical material referred to in this paper is drawn from the author’s doctoral research of a Fair Trade case study in Malawi. The approach presented is influenced by concepts derived from postcolonial theory, grounded theory, and intersubjectivity.

For the community empowerment research focus it was important to provide space to capture voices of all participants, accounting for the hierarchical socio-political context in which people were embedded. This required the use of interpreters, introducing challenges related to intersubjectivity such as recognizing and accounting for positionalities and impressions of multiple parties collaborating in the process of collecting and interpreting qualitative research material.

Investing in trained and engaged interpreters, using pilot interviews, including participants’ data in the field research design process, and capturing marginalized voices helps a researcher to mitigate challenges related to bias and power relations.

Recognizing inherent shortcomings related to interpreter-facilitated research and power relations, the framework presented provides a reflective and practical methodological approach for qualitative researchers.

Reviews contemporary thinking on recruitment and selection in organisations. Draws upon data from a 1992 and a 1995 survey to explore the nature of current recruitment and selection practices in Ireland with particular reference to managerial jobs. Policy decisions on recruitment are examined, recruitment methods are reviewed, and the influence of ownership, size, unionisation and sector on the methods chosen is presented. Selection techniques employed are identified and the situations in which they are most likely to be utilised are highlighted.