Search results

This paper investigates the determinants of credit card use and misuse by student and young professionals. Critical to the research is the impact of materialism and knowledge on selection of the appropriate credit card.

This study uses survey research and partial least squares to investigate credit card behaviors of students versus young professionals.

In a comparative study of young professionals and students, it was found that consumer knowledge, as expected, leads to better consumer selection of credit cards. Materialism was also found to increase the motivation for more optimal consumer outcomes. For more experienced consumers, such as young professionals, it was found that despite them being more knowledgeable, they were more likely to select a credit card based on impulse.

This paper examines how materialism may in fact encourage some consumers to make better decisions because they are more motivated to develop better knowledge. It also shows how better credit card selection may inhibit impulse purchasing.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

There is increasing awareness of the needs of people with learning disabilities from different ethnic communities. This paper focuses on the impact of ethnicity on the presentation of mental health problems. The main aim of the paper is to inform those planning and delivering mental health services for people with learning disabilities of the current evidence, in order to enable their practice to improve health outcomes for people from minority ethnic communities.

This study aims to explore young children’s information practices within the context of their individual interests, examining children’s interest-related information activities, challenges encountered and enablers received.

Participants included 18 children between five and seven years of age and their parents. Data were collected using a multi-stage participatory approach. Children shared their experiences via a book discussion, poster activity, participant-generated photography and a photo-elicitation interview. Parents provided information about family demographics and their perceptions of their children’s individual interests, information practices and digital media use via questionnaires. Data were analyzed using the constant comparative method.

Young children seek information via print and digital objects, other people and experiences, and use information by applying it to their activities and sharing information with others. Challenges to information activities include children’s own capabilities and skills, constraints of information sources and parental restrictions on their activities. Enablers include affordances of technology and parental support.

This study takes a holistic approach to understanding young children’s perspectives of their information activities, examining information use and sharing activities in addition to information seeking.

This index covers all issues between February 2005 (Volume 9, Issue 1) and November 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 4). Numbers in bold refer to yolume, numbers in brackets refer to issue, with subsequent numbers to pages.

This pilot study explores how queer slash fanfiction writers reorient cis/heteronormative entertainment media (EM) content to create queer information worlds.

Constructivist grounded theory was employed to explore queer individuals' slash fanfiction reading and creation practices. Slash fanfiction refers to fan-written texts that recast cis/heteronormative content with queer characters, relationships, and themes. Theoretical sampling drove ten semi-structured interviews with queer slash writers and content analysis of both Captain America slash and material features found on two online fanfiction platforms, Archive of Our Own and fanfiction.net. “Queer” serves as a theoretical lens through which to explore non-cis/heteronormative perspectives on gender and sexuality.

Participants' interactions with and creation of slash fanfiction constitute world-queering practices wherein individuals reorient cis/heteronormative content, design systems, and form community while developing their identities over time. Findings suggest ways that queer creators respond to, challenge, and reorient cis/heteronormative narratives perpetuated by EM and other information sources, as well as ways their practices are constrained by structural power dynamics.

This initial data collection only begins to explore the topic with ten interviews. The participant sample lacks racial diversity while the content sample focuses on one fandom. However, results suggest future directions for theoretical sampling that will continue to advance constructs developed from the data.

This research contributes to evolving perspectives on information creation and queer individuals' information practices. In particular, findings expand theoretical frameworks related to small worlds and ways in which members of marginalized populations grapple with exclusionary normativity.

This article is the first of two which examine the difficulties experienced by the unqualified researcher or student who may be called upon to act as consultant in conventional or action‐research project work. The first article addresses the problems of entry; the second looks at the production of a credible and acceptable report. The thesis of both papers is that conceptual frameworks currently offered as an aid to understanding the consultancy process have concentrated on psychological and processual aspects of consultancy at the expense of the cultural. A social anthropological perspective, it is argued, can offer richer interpretations in areas where current theory is infertile. This first article addresses some of the problems of the student consultant in gaining entry and establishing a contractual basis for his activities. It begins with an examination of the cultural clashes between social scientists and managers, using current published research as examples, emphasising the effect of each on the other and the potential risk or threat involved for each. The consequences of attempts to control this work in an imbalanced situation are raised by the examination of a part of a consultancy project completed by the author, presented as a case example. The subsequent discussion of the case uses the concept of the consultant as sorcerer, allied to the dimension of apprenticeship, to analyse the case as a form of initiation rite. The conclusions drawn suggest that the content of consultancy, and even the dimensions of individual processes, may well be subordinate to the importance of “public opinion” in sustaining it as an activity. The second article will further examine this suggestion through the case example of the production of a consultancy report.