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The authors explore the under-researched area of post-decision evaluation in PPPs (public–private partnerships), focusing upon how and whether Post-decision Project Evaluation (PdPE) is considered and provided for in United Kingdom (UK) public infrastructure projects.

The authors’ research design sought insights from overviewing UK PPP planning and more focused exploration of PPP operational practice. The authors combine the extensive analysis of planning documents for operational UK PPP projects with interviews of different stakeholders in PPP projects in one city. Mobilising an open critical perspective, documents were analysed using ethnographic content analysis (ECA) and interviews were analysed using thematic analysis consistent therewith. The authors theorise the absence and ambiguities of PdPE drawing on the sociology of ignorance.

The authors find a long-standing absence and lack of PdPE in PPP projects throughout planning and operational practice, reflecting a dynamic, multi-faceted ignorance. Concerning planning practice, the authors’ documentary analysis evidences a trend in PdPE from its absence in the early years (which may indicate some natural or genuine ignorance) to different levels or forms of weak inclusion later. Regarding this inclusion, the authors find strategic ignorance played a substantive role, involving “deliberate engineering” by both public sector and private partners. Interview findings indicate lack of clarity over PdPE and its under-development in PPP practice, deficiencies again suggestive of natural and strategic ignorance.

The authors draw from the sociology of ignorance vis-à-vis accounting's absence and ambiguity in the context of PPP, contributing to an under-researched area.

A clickbait is a deceptive headline designed to boost ad revenue without presenting closely relevant content. There are numerous negative repercussions of clickbait, such as causing viewers to feel tricked and unhappy, causing long-term confusion, and even attracting cyber criminals. Automatic detection algorithms for clickbait have been developed to address this issue. The fact that there is only one semantic representation for the same term and a limited dataset in Chinese is a need for the existing technologies for detecting clickbait. This study aims to solve the limitations of automated clickbait detection in the Chinese dataset.

This study combines both to train the model to capture the probable relationship between clickbait news headlines and news content. In addition, part-of-speech elements are used to generate the most appropriate semantic representation for clickbait detection, improving clickbait detection performance.

This research successfully compiled a dataset containing up to 20,896 Chinese clickbait news articles. This collection contains news headlines, articles, categories and supplementary metadata. The suggested context-aware clickbait detection (CA-CD) model outperforms existing clickbait detection approaches on many criteria, demonstrating the proposed strategy's efficacy.

The originality of this study resides in the newly compiled Chinese clickbait dataset and contextual semantic representation-based clickbait detection approach employing transfer learning. This method can modify the semantic representation of each word based on context and assist the model in more precisely interpreting the original meaning of news articles.

This study aims to critically evaluate the trajectory of the “Child First” guiding principle for youth justice in England and Wales, which challenges adult-centric constructions of children (when they offend) as “threatening” and asserts a range of theoretical and principled assumptions about the nature of childhood and children’s evolving capacity.

Focussing on how Child First seeks to transcend the socio-historically bifurcated (polarised/dichotomised) thinking and models/strategies/frameworks of youth justice, this study examines the extent and nature of this binary thinking and its historical and contemporary influence on responses to children’s offending, latterly manifested as more hybridised (yet still discernibly bifurcated) approaches.

Analyses identified an historical and contemporary influence on bifurcated responses to offending by children in the United Kingdom/England and Wales, subsequently manifested as more hybridised (yet still discernibly bifurcated) approaches. Analyses also identified a contemporary, progressive challenge to bifurcated youth justice thinking, policy and practice through the “Child First” guiding principle.

By tracing the trajectory of Child First as an explicit, progressive challenge to previous youth justice thinking and formal “approaches”, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first to question whether, in taking this approach, Child First represents a clean break with the past, or is just the latest in a series of strategic realignments in youth justice seeking to resolve inherent tensions between competing constructions of children and their behaviour.

Background: Rising food bank usage in the UK suggests a growing prevalence of food insecurity. However, a formalised, representative measure of food insecurity was not collected in the UK until 2019, over a decade after the initial proliferation of food bank demand. In the absence of a direct measure of food insecurity, this article identifies and summarises longitudinal proxy indicators of UK food insecurity to gain insight into the growth of insecure access to food in the 21st century.

Methods: A rapid evidence synthesis of academic and grey literature (2005–present) identified candidate proxy longitudinal markers of food insecurity. These were assessed to gain insight into the prevalence of, or conditions associated with, food insecurity.

Results: Food bank data clearly demonstrates increased food insecurity. However, this data reflects an unrepresentative, fractional proportion of the food insecure population without accounting for mild/moderate insecurity, or those in need not accessing provision. Economic indicators demonstrate that a period of poor overall UK growth since 2005 has disproportionately impacted the poorest households, likely increasing vulnerability and incidence of food insecurity. This vulnerability has been exacerbated by welfare reform for some households. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically intensified vulnerabilities and food insecurity. Diet-related health outcomes suggest a reduction in diet quantity/quality. The causes of diet-related disease are complex and diverse; however, evidence of socio-economic inequalities in their incidence suggests poverty, and by extension, food insecurity, as key determinants.

Conclusion: Proxy measures of food insecurity suggest a significant increase since 2005, particularly for severe food insecurity. Proxy measures are inadequate to robustly assess the prevalence of food insecurity in the UK. Failure to collect standardised, representative data at the point at which food bank usage increased significantly impairs attempts to determine the full prevalence of food insecurity, understand the causes, and identify those most at risk.

An important facet of student’s sense of belonging is students’ relationships with, and time spent in, the university campus. The purpose of this paper is to explore the notion that access to campus “green space”, including parks, fields and gardens, may bolster students’ sense of belonging, improve well-being feelings and promote place attachment.

The authors surveyed students in different locations (including three green and one non-green campus spaces) across a large UK campus-based Northern institution. 146 students participated in the study in one of the four campus locations. The authors investigated how being in green spaces on campus may impact students’ sense of belonging, well-being and place attachment. The authors also qualitatively explored students’ perceptions of campus spaces through Ahn’s (2017) 10 Words Question measure.

Analyses demonstrate that students surveyed in green spaces reported significantly more positive sense of belonging, compared to students surveyed in non-green campus spaces. Campus location did not impact well-being, however. Students associated green spaces on campus with “calm”, “positive emotion” and “nature” words and non-green spaces with “busy”, “social” and “students”.

Taken together, the results of this paper suggest that access to green spaces can be important for campus sense of belonging. Thus, efforts should be made to ensure the sustainability of these important spaces across university campuses.

This study crucially examines how occupying green spaces on university campuses may impact students’ feelings of belongingness. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that uses field-based methods to understand students’ feelings whilst occupying green spaces.

This paper offers a way of revivifying classical accounting research in the form of a pragmatist neoclassical programme with a sound epistemological underpinning.

The paper draws on a pragmatist perspective on financial accounting and accounting research springing from John Dewey's theory of inquiry.

Although a pragmatist underpinning does not entail specific methodological prescriptions, it can provide fruitful insights in research design. The paper discusses the structure and content of a research programme drawing on a pragmatist underpinning and sets out proposals for a practical research agenda. Although the agenda is shaped around the topic of identifiable intangibles, much of the paper has substantially wider relevance.

The approach justifies a revival in scholarly research employing classical methods and directed at improving accounting methods and standards.

The approach would promote closer engagement between scholarly accounting and practitioners such as standard-setters, making some contribution to closing the widely acknowledged gap between research and practice.

The paper offers a neoclassical programme of research drawing considerably more extensively on pragmatist philosophy than did theorisation in the classical period.

Service-learning (SL) is a widely accepted pedagogy that can enrich the learning experience for students in higher education while they apply their skills in a meaningful community service. This research is part of a larger project that aimed to motivate educational achievement among youths living in a priority neighborhood through SL. Toward this goal, this study investigated the impact of SL on the college students from a college information technology programmer-analyst (ITPA) program, who were deployed as role models to youths in a priority neighborhood on the east coast of Canada.

The overall project used the design-based methodology. Seven college students were deployed in two phases to a community center as role models for the delivery of science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics (or STEAM) programs to youths living in a priority neighborhood. Data were collected using open-ended survey, journal entries and focus groups and was qualitatively analyzed by drawing on two frameworks: the experiential-learning framework by Kolb (1984) and the conceptual SL framework by Ash and Clayton (2009).

The findings describe the outcome of the college students' experiences in SL with respect to the development of skills and capacities needed by employers. Specifically, their experiences mirrored all aspects of the two frameworks applied. Therefore, the study validates the use of SL pedagogy in higher education. In addition, the study identified the role of SL as an integration strategy for international students. While the research contributes to the wider SL conversation for policymakers, faculty and administrators of higher education, it also promotes development opportunities for college students.

The integration of SL pedagogy is widespread among programs in higher education. However, there are no common SL frameworks used in literature. The study is novel in that it combines two theoretical frameworks – Kolb (1984) and Ash and Clayton (2009) in explaining the outcomes. In addition, it uses two high-impact educational practices – SL and role modeling to improve educational attainment for college students.

Around the world, prison complexes have always been fundamentally taxing environments. The strained atmosphere within these prisons often contributes to the deterioration of mental health, mostly those who may already be psychologically vulnerable. This paper aims to understand whether there exists a relationship between the built environment of prisons, particularly the central prisons of India and its effects on the mental health of inmates.

By means of literature reviews, the study parameters were found to be connectivity to nature, lighting, acoustics, colour, air quality and thermal comfort. The data collected through interviews and email correspondences with identified experts were analysed thematically using a deductive approach to derive a set of practical recommendations, which could be implemented in Indian prisons.

The built environment of prisons impacts the prison population by further contributing to depressive symptoms. The effects of the built space persist regardless of social factors. A well-designed environment is healthy for its occupants and would yield positive changes. However, it is not the sole contributor to depression; social interactions, prison management, societal acceptance and meaningful activities are equally relevant factors. The sole focus of this paper is the relationship between the built environment and the mental health of inmates.

There is a paucity of research into the intersection between prison architecture and the mental health of inmates in the Indian subcontinent. This paper that addresses the gap may have significant consequences on how criminal reform is perceived, and also encourage further research in this field.