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The purpose of this research paper is to review and contrast traditional foresight methods through the lens of one of the key insights about complex adaptive systems – namely, a system's sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

Foresight methods have often been criticized about their linear way of looking at the future. Insights from complex adaptive systems research, however, provide a new theory‐driven approach for developing real foresight methods as opposed to traditional forecasting methods based primarily on linear extrapolation. This serves as a starting point for the re‐analysis and re‐classification of the foresight methods, presented profoundly in the American Council for the United Nation's University Millennium Project's Futures Research Methodology – V2.0.

The findings of the analysis show which foresight methods actually present the future as a continuation of the present, and which instead are able to identify a system's new and emerging initial conditions; and what kind of possible understanding of the system the methods offer to the user.

This research paper provides a new perspective to reopen the discussion about the necessary qualities of foresight methods. This paper argues that instead of trying to forecast the future the foresight methods should help us to see and influence the future as it is emerging.

Discussion and guidelines for methodological work and an introduction of complex systems concept‐tools map, a new set of methods and the way how it could be used together with Futures Research Methodology – V2.0 represent vast implications for organizations' foresight practices.

The origins of novelty are two: the complex adaptive systems perspective to discuss foresight methods, and the presentation of the new set of methods to support and complement Futures Research Methodology – V2.0.

The aim of this paper is to describe how academic institutions that focus improvement of student learning do much better than those that focus on compliance and assessment.

A reflective observation of institutional interaction with the North Central Association Higher Learning Commission, especially the 264 colleges and universities that have participated in the Commission's assessment workshops, provides insight into the characteristics that make the most positive difference.

The paper finds that academic institutions do better when: assessment is best understood as the means and student learning itself as the end; shared responsibility and collective capacity are intentionally developed; internal leaders, of different types, are identified and developed; collaborative processes that actively engage people replace concerns about buy‐in; institutions jump in and learn as they go along; program review becomes an area of shared faculty/administration interest; changed, parallel or separate core processes permit attention to enduring issues; and institutions begin wherever they chose to begin and from there develop the means to complete a full cycle of outcomes assessment. Another more recent emphasis is the need to inform the public and other stakeholders about what students are learning.

This paper draws on the insights of those who work at the Higher Learning Commission, who share the unusual perspective of having experience of dealing with hundreds of academic institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of service flexibility in addressing consumer vulnerability for chronically-traumatized consumers within the funerary context.

Using phenomenological philosophy and a grounded approach, data was collected and analyzed through 12 depth interviews with funeral service providers, coupled with observations and photographs of three second-line funeral processionals.

Study results include the following three primary roles of service providers in supporting chronically-traumatized consumers: the role of service fluidity in addressing trauma, mitigating vulnerability via service providers as community members and alleviating suffering through compassionate service. Service flexibility and value co-creation efforts were executed through an expansive service ecosystem of vendors.

When consumers experience vulnerability that demands reliance upon service industries, service providers can intentionally implement fluidity and agility in service design, adopt understanding and altruistic practices, and operate with empathy and compassion to orchestrate mutually-beneficial service outcomes.

Rooted in transformative service research, providers are advised to consider modifying services to improve well-being and mitigate vulnerability for chronically-traumatized consumers via fluidity, community and compassion.

This study contributes originality to the body of service marketing literature by illustrating how service providers alleviate vulnerability for chronically-traumatized consumers through three adaptive service strategies.

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.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

This study aimed to understand adolescents’ experiences, negative feelings and coping mechanisms associated with the major disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to develop a baseline for understanding adolescents and their environment to assist future developments of technological and other solutions to mitigate adolescents’ loneliness, improve their wellbeing and strengthen their resilience.

The data about adolescents’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic was collected through virtual interviews conducted via Zoom. A total of 39 adolescents (aged 12 through 18 years) primarily from the North East of the USA participated in the study. The transcripts of the interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis.

This study found evidence of negative disruptions to adolescents’ social, learning and emotional routines. This study also found that in dealing with the effects of COVID-19 disruption, most of the participants exhibited five key attributes of individual resilience, including social competence, problem-solving, critical consciousness, autonomy and a sense of purpose. External factors supporting resilience were also mentioned, including technology resources, family, school and broader community.

This study relied on first-hand adolescents’ reports of their experiences, feelings and coping strategies during the pandemic. This study applied a resilience framework to interpret the findings and translate them into recommendations for further development of support systems for adolescents.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the barriers preventing women in prostitution from accessing co-ordinated health services in the Republic of Ireland. By examining the experiences of migrant women engaged in prostitution, the research contributes to knowledge pertaining to the psychosocial experiences of female sex workers’ access to healthcare.

The study interviewed migrant women across Ireland, using a biographical narrative approach and an adapted voice-centred relational model of analysis to determine the necessity for a health promotion strategy for this demographic.

The findings indicate migrant women work primarily indoors, hold precarious legal status and are in Ireland due to processes of globalisation, migration and economic necessity. The women discussed their entry into prostitution and their experiences within prostitution in the context of their psychosocial experiences.

While the findings are from a small qualitative sample confined to the Republic of Ireland, it is the first study to prioritise migrant sex workers’ psychosocial experiences in Ireland.

The research concludes education and service development that respects the various social determinants impacting women in prostitution is missing but remains necessary in Ireland. It finds a gendered reform of policies using an ecological framework for health that can address issues of poverty, migration and the global trends of the sex industry.

This means a national review of current services in health, social work and community development fields is timely.

This paper gives insight into the lives of migrant women involved in the sex industry and can make an important contribution to future research directions and practice in Irish and European prostitution contexts.

As our correspondent on another page suggests, the economic crisis may have reactions upon libraries. The most obvious one he mentions is the increased difficulty we shall experience in obtaining American books. Not all libraries, public or private, make any special collection of books published in the United States, although there has been an increasing tendency to buy more as the relations of the two countries have grown closer through their common struggle; in fact, we know libraries which have spent many hundreds of pounds in the course of the past year or two on the select lists of books which have been made for us by American librarians. It is most unfortunate that the manipulation of dollar currency should have brought about a situation in which even the exchange of ideas between the countries becomes more difficult. One suggestion might be made and that is that our American colleagues should continue to sift the literature of this time of famine for us, so that further select lists may be available in better days.