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This paper aims to examine how doctoral students in education and applied linguistics fields successfully navigated graduate writing demands by participating in a support community that catalyzed writing productivity, peer mentoring and feedback. Guiding graduate students’ writing processes based on scholarly interests and providing peer support are vital to scholarly productivity and transition into academia.

Following a collaborative analytic autoethnographic case study design (Adams et al., 2022; Chang et al., 2013), the authors narrated major events that impacted their writing and publication experiences. The authors visualized their entire doctoral writing experience based on the frequency of writing events that contributed to writing productivity. In data triangulation discussions, the authors reflected on writing experiences.

Findings show that the support community alleviated individual struggles associated with writing a dissertation and high-quality papers. Key factors contributing to scholarly growth included nonevaluative peer support, feedback and shared academic resources. Writing within the periphery of faculty research and predominantly focusing on doctoral milestones led to individual scholarly interests being overshadowed. Without structured guidance, doctoral writers may develop initiatives to alleviate individual struggles and meet academic writing demands in the disciplines.

The authors recommend including structured guidance on developing writing productivity and a personal research agenda in the early stages of the doctorate.

This study offers unique examples of how a student group supported writing productivity and socialization into the academic community. It illustrates the multifaceted nature of academic writing influenced by faculty–student relationships, peers and individual initiatives. This paper provides doctoral writers and graduate programs with examples of accomplishing academic publishing goals.

This paper aims to explore the effects of parents’ support factors on Chinese university students’ digital entrepreneurship motivation on live streaming platforms. Based on the Social support theory, this study divides influencing factors into emotional, instrumental, informational and appraisal aspects. Meanwhile, considering the impact of China’s regional differences, the paper refers to the Regional difference theory and performs a multi-group analysis to assess the differences based on Chinese university students’ regional backgrounds.

By testing 556 samples based on the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling, all support factors parents provide can stimulate Chinese university students’ digital entrepreneurship motivation.

Based on the multi-group comparison, parents’ informational support exerts a more substantial influence on the digital entrepreneurship motivation for university students from central and east regions rather than those from the western region, and parents’ instrumental support exerts a lower influence on digital entrepreneurship motivation for east university students than for west university students.

This paper applies the Social support theory as a theoretical framework to divide the impact factors, and it uses the Regional difference theory as a guide for the multi-group analysis of correlations, which is significant for online entrepreneurial motivation research and a better understanding of student groups. In addition to testing the hypotheses, the study also measures the importance–performance map analysis to explore additional findings of influencing factors and discuss managerial implications.

This study aims to compare the social support among patients with schizophrenia or methamphetamine dependency with healthy individuals.

Using convince sampling, the authors recruited 80 patients (schizophrenia, n = 40; methamphetamine dependency, n = 40) and their companions (healthy individuals, n = 40) who were referred to a psychiatric hospital in a cross-sectional study in Sari, Iran. In in-person interviews, the authors collected data on demographic characteristics and measured social support using a standardized questionnaire.

The three groups were similar regarding age and marital status, but different in gender distribution (p = 0.001). The average social support score was 58.0 in the schizophrenia group and 42.3 in the methamphetamine-dependent group, both significantly lower than 63.6 in the healthy group (p = 0.001). The social support scores in schizophrenia and methamphetamine-dependent groups were significantly lower than those in the healthy group across all subgroups of gender (p < 0.04), age (p < 0.05) and marital status (p < 0.001). The methamphetamine-dependent group had the lowest score overall and across all demographic groups and social support subdomains.

This study had two main limitations. First, the study samples were from one city and one hospital in the north of Iran and so may not be generalizable to other population and settings. Second, the authors did not study the causes or predictors of low social support like social stigma which should be studied in future studies.

Despite the limitations, this study found low social support for people diagnosed with schizophrenia or methamphetamine dependency. Intervention to increase social support for them, especially for those with substance use, is required.

This study analyzes whether industry relatedness between a corporate borrower and its group peers significantly affects that firm's borrowing cost.

A regression analysis is run on bank-loan data of a sample of Indonesian companies for 2010–2020. The main variables of interest are the natural logarithms of the borrowing firm's number of affiliates classified within either similar 2- or 4-digit GICS industries, and the Caves weighted index of these firms' related diversification. This index measures how firms in a group are diversified in relation to the borrower. The dependent variable is the all-in credit spread, stated in basis points, over the LIBOR or similar benchmark, as of the loan issuance date.

Findings support the industry-relatedness hypothesis and contradict the risk-reduction hypothesis and show that banks charge lower loan spreads on a borrowing firm that either operates within a similar industry as its affiliate or diversifies into related sectors or industries. Consistent with the co-insurance-effect hypothesis, the results also underline the importance of the parent and first-layer firms as supporting instead of the tunneling vehicles within business groups. These conclusions hold even after segregating the sample and using the loan maturity as the dependent variable.

This study uses a unique diversification measurement based on the borrowing firm's sector or industry, relative to other group members, and offers new insights on business group diversification and bank loan costs.

The purpose of this paper is to outline what early support should be offered to children and young people with neurodevelopmental conditions including those who are autistic or have intellectual disability. A review of all child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) services in the Northwest completed by NHS England and Improvement (Doyle and Ryan, 2021) found that there was no clear Tier 2 offer (for mild to moderate mental health issues) for autistic children and young people or for those with intellectual disability. Following this review, a project group that had developed a model for mental health services for autistic children and young people and for those with intellectual disability (Wee et al., 2021) was tasked with articulating the “Getting Help” offer for children and young people with neurodevelopmental conditions, including intellectual disability.

A working group was created consisting of professionals from mental health, education and local authority and lived experience representatives of coproduction partners. A brief review of the background literature was also conducted. Six meetings were held to create a framework for the “Getting Help” offer and to discuss what the offer should be based on professional expertise and lived experience.

Recommendations for the Getting Help multi-agency offer included pre- and post-assessment support as part of a single attention deficit hyperactivity disorder/autism/neurodevelopmental pathway, community support for children with intellectual disability, access to adapted mental health support and the need for early recognition and support for avoidant and restrictive food intake disorder. Key themes from working group discussions included the reduction in the quality of services experienced by children and families due to silo working, which increased the risk of falling between multi-agency services and led to early signs of neurodevelopmental needs, or mental health issues being missed. Another theme was aiming for equity of access and outcomes.

This work is a response to a coproduced review of CAMHS in the Northwest and incorporates the lived experience of young people and families. It also adopts a holistic multi-agency neurodevelopmental approach rather than focusing on a single diagnosis or service.

The “Picture This, Picture Me” research project enabled young people who have experience of a parent in prison to challenge the narrow narrative of “prisoners’ children” by sharing their wider sense of identities and their needs. This paper aims to show the value of specialised voluntary sector support groups for children with a parent in prison as well as demonstrate that parental imprisonment, whilst significant, is only one part of their story.

Children’s experiences are explored through expressive and creative research methods informed by photovoice research, including taking and responding to photos and caption writing, short conversational interviews and curation of artefacts.

Children’s perspectives are presented: what matters to them, what makes them happy, how do they perceive themselves beyond the label of “a prisoner’s child”, how do community-based support services help and what they would like people to know about children who have been impacted by parental imprisonment.

This research contributes to an emerging research area on the role of services from the community and voluntary sector and non-formal educational organisations that support children impacted by parental imprisonment at a personal and family level.

This research offers useful knowledge to professionals, including those in education, children’s services and non-formal community-based services, with an interest in holistically supporting children and families with a relative in prison.

Children’s insights are offered on the value of peer-to-peer and community-based interventions that support them holistically, including articulating their self-identity, life and educational aspirations and practical issues for families.

There is minimal research on including and hearing the voices of children who have a family member in prison and their perspectives are invaluable.

This study aims to address the challenge many organizational leaders face in fostering workforce cohesion. Focusing on the context of sports club volunteering, this study investigates how leaders can enhance group cohesion among volunteers. The study findings provide valuable insights applicable across various work settings.

Through a multilevel design, this study examined the role of autonomy–supportive and structuring leadership in shaping social and task cohesion within volunteer teams at the group level. In total, 557 volunteers nested within 52 nonprofit sports clubs situated in the Flemish region of Belgium were involved in this study, providing a robust foundation for our analysis.

This research revealed that regular volunteers form “true groups”, exhibiting substantial between-group variance in social and task cohesion and a strong within-group consensus. Additionally, the findings underscored the significance of autonomy–supportive leadership in fostering cohesion, demonstrating a positive relation with social and task cohesion at the group level.

This study demonstrates that volunteer teams, like work teams in the for-profit sector, actively engage in interpersonal exchanges within their organization, which help shape their collective sense of unity and alignment with common objectives. Leaders can enhance these interactions by fostering an autonomy–supportive environment where members feel empowered to share their perspectives and ideas. Additionally, the findings suggest that the nature of the task and the specific context can influence which leadership style is most effective, with the provision of structure also playing a role. With these insights, leaders in diverse organizational settings can effectively nurture the development of cohesive groups.

The therapeutic community (TC) is an environmental intervention where principles of working together democratically can enhance self-agency. While availability of inpatient TCs within the UK National Health Service (NHS) has declined, shorter or alternative interventions using core TC approaches have shown promise in enacting change. The purpose of this paper is to report and reflect on the development and running of a pilot nano-TC.

Foundations Group was a 2-h TC group intervention set up and run within the NHS for 18 months in 2021–2022, and taking place on City Farm premises. The group was convened as part of the complex emotional needs service in a mental health NHS Trust in the South West of England. Over the study period, the group comprised 11 members, one peer member and three staff members.

The authors reflected on the TC stance of working democratically with a fluid hierarchy, taking a non-expert approach, and using support and challenge to enhance self-agency and belongingness. The authors have detailed the structure of the group session including use of community meetings, psychoeducation, creative sessions and reviews. Members took on roles within the group including chairing sessions.

This group was a novel service within the NHS Trust where it was conducted and may represent a standalone therapeutic group. The authors hope it will show that core TC principles can be applied in shorter interventions than have previously been used.

This paper looks at mainstream lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA+) support services in Aotearoa New Zealand, which predominantly center white queer voices and services and fail to account for the intersectional identities of young ethnic queers.

This exploratory, qualitative study investigated the social and professional support experienced and responded to by 43 young ethnic queers living in Aotearoa New Zealand, who were between 18 and 35 years of age. Participants identified as queer, non-binary, gay, pansexual, demisexual, gender fluid, non-binary and trans among others and held ethnic heritage from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas. Persadie and Narain's Mash Up methodological approach (2022) was used to analyze the data. Mash Up allowed us to understand the intersectional spaces of queer ethnic lives in white-dominated spaces, the ways in which young ethnic queers resisted the marginalization of their racialized being and took agency to counter actions and decisions that negated their presence and intersectional identities.

The findings from the study showed that young ethnic queers responded to the lack of adequate support services by establishing their own voluntary organizations and support networks. The study revealed that ethnic queer young people were critical of the white-dominated LGBTQIA+ support organizations; they created their own transformative spaces where they found “family” and community where they could be open about their queerness without the fear of rejection and stigma, while still advocating for equitable resources and an intersectional approach in queer mainstream services.

This paper provides valuable information on the lack of support for queer ethnic young people in Aotearoa New Zealand. The absence of information on the needs of this group poses a challenge to government departments, which rely on data to inform policy and allocate resources. The limited research and knowledge of this community make them less visible and, consequently, less likely to be given resources. It also means that harmful practices and behaviors toward queer ethnic young people by families and communities are more likely to go unnoticed and unaddressed. The paper also shows that the agency of young ethnic queers to create their own transformative spaces and to challenge the white-centric spaces, which have failed to consider their intersectional identities, has been instrumental to their well-being.

In this JOCM Viewpoint article, the author reflects on the expectations of some minoritized group members that power holders and otherwise privileged group members should exhibit authentic allyship. Specifically, it is suggested that these expectations are unrealistic given both the challenges of being an ally and the absence in many power holders of the type of consciousness that enables effective allyship.

An analysis of the challenges inherent in allyship as well as the criticism that performative rather than authentic allyship frequently occurs is followed by a review of research on consciousness and the implications of the level of consciousness for generating effective ally behavior.

Different stages of consciousness generate different types of responses to the challenges of allyship, some being more effective than others. Reaching a certain stage of consciousness development may increase the likelihood that the ally will be able to hold space for the emotional well-being of the marginalized and the need for instrumental change, which are both necessary for effective allyship to occur. Without these, an individual’s allyship is likely to be absent or at the most performative. Allyship groups can be helpful in supporting this level of consciousness through their group norms.

This viewpoint challenges conventional assumptions that privileged members of society should engage in allyship and suggests only a subset will be able to make the commitment and exhibit the behaviors required of authentic allies.