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This article presents the findings of a study of the victimisation of three cohorts of young people living in a county town in the East Midlands. Following a brief review of research into contemporary youth victimisation in the UK, it reports the findings of the study and discusses the reasons for variations in rates of victimisation between the three cohorts. It concludes with a discussion of the implications for professionals.

FOR ME there is only one serious drawback to the forthcoming marriage of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana, and that is the prospect of our Poet Laureate flogging his dead muse to drool out another epithalamium similar to his O‐level effort for Princess Anne and Mark Phillips.

This paper tests the degree to which Sunstein's law of group polarization predicts the increase or decrease in polarization among individuals in an out-group during a polarizing event. The authors use the discourse on Parler surrounding the events of January 6th as a case study.

The study includes an overall sentiment analysis, a statistical analysis of emotions, along with eight other feelings, including anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise and trust. Specifically, the authors measure the differences in feelings related language used in posts as they pertain to Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement vs. Trump's Vice President Mike Pence both before and after January 6, 2021. The authors use this empirical analysis to show whether polarization in the Parler community increased or decreased after January 6th.

The authors find evidence that there is more complexity to polarization than Sunstein's theory would predict. The authors would expect a very polarized outed group to become more polarized relative to the general public after a central event; however, the authors see two extremes emerging within the Parler community (both strongly positive and strongly negative feelings toward Trump). The authors do not see unanimous consent across the Parler platform as Sunstein's theory would suggest; the out-group is becoming more polarized relative to the rest of the population. Instead, the authors observe a wide mix in reactions. The results of this study demonstrate that there is dissent even among the Parler echo chamber. For many themes surrounding the January 6th riots, Parler users express strong disagreement with each other and a lack of unity in their feelings for former President Trump.

The results suggest further research into polarization of outed groups and the policy implications of their polarization changes over time.

Increases in group polarization are often a motivator for public policy and are further becoming a major focus for research. Brookings' authors Stephanie Forrest and Joshua Daymude point to polarization as a substantial threat to American society, claiming “reducing extreme polarization is key to stabilizing democracy” (2022). Researchers Diana Epstein and John D. Graham demonstrate that polarized politics has impacted the “substance of rulemaking, judicial decisions, and legislation” along with “complicating long-term policy changes” (2007). The authors study how entrepreneurs have responded to this increase in polarization and its implications for public policy.

Not only does group polarization impact all types of groups, from the social to the economic, but also it has “particular implications for insulated ‘outgroups’” (Sunstein, 1999, p. 21). Groups that are excluded by either coercion or choice from dialog with other groups become even more polarized and extreme (Sunstein, 1999; Turner et al., 1989).

The authors have engaged in an empirical analysis that no other paper has addressed. This paper summarized the Parler sample data set and analyzed various themes associated with the events of January 6th, namely President Trump and MAGA themes and Vice President Pence. The analysis demonstrated a dramatic increase in negative sentiment and emotion related to Vice President Mike Pence after January 6th as well as mixed support for President Trump and an increase in disgust before and after the Capitol riot.

International attention is increasingly turning to the challenge of creating age-friendly environments. This study aims to examine the application of asset-based approaches in undertaking community development projects with older people. The paper intends to share the learning that may be useful when designing community development projects for older people in the future.

This study followed a multiple project case study design, with a focus on project delivery practices. It was undertaken as a co-production exercise involving university researchers and trained older volunteer community researchers (CRs). Over 18–24 months of qualitative research was conducted in relation to six area-based urban projects between 2018 and 2020.

There were five leading themes as follows: mapping and building on assets in highly localised settings; creating governance and direction through steering groups; developing activities with diverse groups of older people; reaching isolated and lonely older people; building local capacity to embed sustainability.

The effectiveness of assets-based approaches in promoting age-friendly agendas appears to be contingent on the values, skills, capacity and resourcing of delivery agencies, alongside wider public sector investment in communities. Diversity and inequalities amongst older people need to be taken into account and community development that specifically focuses on older people needs to be balanced with the whole population and intergenerational practice.

This paper provides an empirical account of the practical application of assets practices specifically in the context of the age-friendly community agenda. The co-production method brings together insights from academic and volunteer older CRs.

In this chapter, we explore the use of participatory and community-based research (CBR) strategies within institutional ethnography. Reflecting on our current, past, and future projects, we discuss the utility of community-based and participatory methods for grounding one’s research in the actualities of participants’ lives. At the same time, we note ontological and practical differences between most community-based participatory action research (PAR) methodologies and institutional ethnography. While participants’ lives and experiences ground both approaches, people’s perspectives are not considered as research findings for institutional ethnographers. In an institutional ethnography, the objects of analysis are the institutional relations, which background and give shape to people’s actualities. The idea is to discover something through the research process that is useful to participants. As such, the use of community-based and participatory methods during analysis suggests the greatest utility of this sociological approach for people.

The Food and Drugs Bill introduced by the Government affords an excellent illustration of the fact that repressive legislative enactments in regard to adulteration must always be of such a nature that, while they give a certain degree and a certain kind of protection to the public, they can never be expected to supply a sufficiently real and effective insurance against adulteration and against the palming off of inferior goods, nor an adequate and satisfactory protection to the producer and vendor of superior articles. In this country, at any rate, legislation on the adulteration question has always been, and probably will always be of a somewhat weak and patchy character, with the defects inevitably resulting from more or less futile attempts to conciliate a variety of conflicting interests. The Bill as it stands, for instance, fails to deal in any way satisfactorily with the subject of preservatives, and, if passed in its present form, will give the force of law to the standards of Somerset House—standards which must of necessity be low and the general acceptance of which must tend to reduce the quality of foods and drugs to the same dead‐level of extreme inferiority. The ludicrous laissez faire report of the Beer Materials Committee—whose authors see no reason to interfere with the unrestricted sale of the products of the “ free mash tun,” or, more properly speaking, of the free adulteration tun—affords a further instance of what is to be expected at present and for many years to come as the result of governmental travail and official meditations. Public feeling is developing in reference to these matters. There is a growing demand for some system of effective insurance, official or non‐official, based on common‐sense and common honesty ; and it is on account of the plain necessity that the quibbles and futilities attaching to repressive legislation shall by some means be brushed aside that we have come to believe in the power and the value of the system of Control, and that we advocate its general acceptance. The attitude and the policy of the INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON ADULTERATION, of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, and of the BRITISH ANALYTICAL CONTROL, are in all respects identical with regard to adulteration questions; and in answer to the observations and suggestions which have been put forward since the introduction of the Control System in England, it may be well once more to state that nothing will meet with the approbation or support of the Control which is not pure, genuine, and good in the strictest sense of these terms. Those applicants and critics whom it may concern may with advantage take notice of the fact that under no circumstances will approval be given to such articles as substitute beers, separated milks, coppered vegetables, dyed sugars, foods treated with chemical preservatives, or, in fact, to any food or drug which cannot be regarded as in every respect free from any adulterant, and free from any suspicion of sophistication or inferiority. The supply of such articles as those referred to, which is left more or less unfettered by the cumbrous machinery of the law, as well as the sale of those adulterated goods with which the law can more easily deal, can only be adequately held in check by the application of a strong system of Control to justify approbation, providing, as this does, the only effective form of insurance which up to the present has been devised.

The literature demonstrates how the environment for and value of research is changing. The purpose of this paper is to explore the narratives of 30 UK researchers and academics to consider how they learned about the nature and value of research through the researcher development process and within this broader context of change.

A biographical‐narrative approach is adopted, emphasising subjective experience and meaning and how this is shaped by wider social structures.

Respondents' stories highlight the continued informality of much of the development process and how a lack of systematic support can leave much to chance, potentially undermining future views of professional development. Data from respondents across generations also enable examination of some of the changes that have taken place over time in the higher education (HE) environment and the impact this has had on individuals' understanding of research. In particular, changes such as the introduction of the Research Assessment Exercise/Research Excellence Framework appear to have had a significant – and not entirely positive – shaping influence on how individuals perceive, and experience, research and its aims, leading to an emphasis on outputs over knowledge building.

A biographical‐narrative approach necessarily involves a smaller sample, nevertheless, shared themes were generated by this size of sample and inferences can be drawn.

Despite increased emphasis on research and publishing in the UK, these stories across generations suggest that training and development for researchers often remain very informal, with much left to chance. A more overt approach to researcher development, such as through a “scaffolded” learning process, in which an experienced colleague guides development activities, could help to avoid negative early experiences and increase the likelihood that individuals will develop their own sense of a “culture of developmentalism”.

Focusing on what individuals learn about the nature and value of research as they go through the development process adds to our understanding of researcher development and how this is situated within the wider HE context. Data from respondents across generations equally enable examination of some of the changes that have taken place over time, and how these re‐shape researcher development.

This piece is a review of the animal selfhood literature in sociology, organized into four main parts. First, I review the sociological literature of human–animal interactions, in which sociologists claim that animals possess selves. Second, I review how sociologists have referred to the self, from which I construct five criteria of selfhood, including self as attribution, self-awareness, intersubjectivity, self-concept/reflexivity, and narration. Third, I address how animals have selves using these criteria, drawing on sociological and ethological evidence. Fourth, I critique the animal interaction sociologists’ specific claims of animal selfhood, including their epistemological failure to distinguish between human accounts of animal subjectivities and animal subjectivities, and their empirical failure to show how animals act toward themselves. Ultimately, I conclude that animal selves, particularly in an elemental Meadian sense, are potentially real, but in most cases are unobservable or unverifiable phenomena.

The purpose of this paper is to examine diversified mentoring relationships (DMRs) at a mid-sized Midwestern state university (MMSU) in the USA.

The author conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 MMSU faculty members and professional personnel who comprised seven diversified mentoring dyads. The mentees were primarily members of underrepresented minority (URMs) groups, whereas the majority of mentors were members of the dominant culture.

A thematic analysis of the data, grounded in the literature on developmental relationships and relational dialectics theory (RDT), reveals tensions that diversified mentoring dyads experienced, as well as communication strategies that dyad members used to manage these tensions.

Although this research is limited by its small sample size and unique geographic location, the findings offer in-depth insight and practical implications for URM faculty members in predominantly white institutions around the globe.

The findings of this study have important implications for training supervisors, mentors, and senior colleagues of URM faculty members.

This study is unique in that it examines DMRs from a dyadic communication perspective; moreover, it applies RDT to DMRs in organizations.