Exploring issues of children as actors in social research

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus among childhood researchers on the concept of children's agency, or children as social actors, within research. The argument for the focus on children as ‘agents’ has commonly critiqued an earlier dominant tradition of research, whereby children had been positioned as passive objects of investigation, with their capacity for social agency largely ignored.This paper provides a theoretical and methodological exploration of the concept of children's agency in the research process. The authors outline conceptual developments that have contributed to the increased focus on children's agency and discuss how this focus has influenced research methods, both in terms of counting children in and researching collaboratively with them. Key elements of a methodological framework for promoting children's agency in collaborative research are outlined and some of the contextual obstacles to the implementation of this framework are discussed, in particular those encountered in attempting to ‘balance power relations’ between adults and children. The facilitation by adults of children themselves as researchers is identified as a possible way forward.The paper concludes with a brief discussion on the extent to which the acknowledgement of children's agency in research may lead to more inclusive policy practices.     

Employee absence,age and tenure: A study of nonlinear effects and trivariate models

Multiple regression techniques were used to explore the nature of the relationships between age, tenure and absence in 2417 British local government workers drawn from three work groups. The data were collected from organizational records and included measures of both non-certified absence and medically certified absence. Linear and curvilinear associations among age, tenure and absence were examined. The possible moderating or mediating role of tenure in the relationship between age and absence was subsequently analysed. The data revealed linear relationships between age and absence that were negative for non-certified absence and positive for certified absence. In contrast, curvilinear relationships were found between tenure and absence that were U-shaped for noncertified absence and inverse U-shaped for certified absence. Tenure was found to moderate but not to mediate the relationship between age and absence. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of the changing age and career paths of the workforce, and of methodological issues in absence research.     

Augmented likelihood for incorporating auxiliary information into left-truncated data

Lifetime Data Analysis - Time-to-event data are often subject to left-truncation. Lack of consideration of the sampling condition will introduce bias and loss in efficiency of the estimation. While...     

Volunteers in charity retailing: Recruitment and training

Volunteer activity has received considerable research attention in recent years. There is, however, little academic research to date into volunteer issues in charity retailing. This article examines volunteers in charity shops and reports, in particular, on how volunteers are recruited and trained in the charity retailing. This article examines volunteers in charity shops and reports, in particular, on how volunteers are recruited and trained in the charity sector. The authors conclude that in an increasingly competitive market, charity retailers need to reexamine their recruitment and training policies in order to attract and retain a diverse core of volunteers.     

Preface

Sociological Forum -