Protective indigenous collective value of Ubuntu and child neglect: Implications for rural child protection practice

Theories on collective efficacy and social support suggest that indigenous values that support collective practices and sanction community obligations to childcare would be protective against child neglect. Likewise, new qualitative findings show that collective values are stronger in rural areas than in urban. This study tested the claims that the value of Ubuntu, which is a symbolic cultural value of ‘being for others’, will be protective against the likelihood of neglect; this relationship will be stronger in rural compared with urban communities in Ghana. Using data obtained from a nationally representative sample of 1100 mothers (from 22 communities) in Ghana, we tested the claims using fixed effects logistic regression. The Ubuntu norms were significantly endorsed in rural communities compared with the urban. The overall model showed that higher levels of Ubuntu are associated with lower odds of child neglect (OR .47, [.29, .76] p < 0.05), and the relationship remained significant only in the rural sample (OR .13, [.06, .31] p < 0.001). Similar evidence was recorded for the Ubuntu norms of community care and compassion. The results suggest that child protection in rural Ghana can be fruitful when interventions are developed to boost the value of Ubuntu and the norms of collective childcare.     

Major Wind Energy & the Interface of Policy and Regulation: A Study of Welsh NSIPs

This article examines how sub-national policy is applied in consenting decisions for major wind energy infrastructure. The study focuses on the Welsh tier of governance and the perspective of the public, building on existing work on ‘territorial politics’ and public participation. It looks explicitly at the regulatory stage of decision-making, which is critical to understanding multi-level governance contexts for energy infrastructure. Two cases of ‘Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects’ (NSIPs) in the UK are assessed and findings show how conflict is fuelled by the ways in which different tiers of policy and regulation interact.     

Personality traits and career satisfaction of human resource professionals

Occupational choice frameworks suggest that personality factors influence person-job fit. This paper focuses on personality factors and career satisfactions of human resources (HR) managers. ‘Big Five’ and narrow personality traits as well as managerial style variables were drawn from an archive of 1846 HR managers and 1375 non-managers. Results indicated that HR managers differed from 51,297 individuals in other occupations and from non-managerial HR specialists on many of the study variables, most of which were also related to career satisfaction. Implications for differentiation selection and development of HR managers were discussed.     

Assessing the Personal Negative Impacts of Hooking Up Experienced by College Students: Gender Differences and Mental Health

Hooking up is a normative behavior among college students that is associated with a range of positive and negative consequences. While previous research has primarily focused on women’s negative experiences of hooking up, the current study explored the relationships among hooking up behaviors, psychological distress, and a broad range of negative effects of hooking up in both male and female college students. Using a multisite sample of college students, we developed the 14-item Negative Impact of Hookups Inventory (NIHI) to assess negative health outcomes, emotional responses, and social consequences associated with hooking up. Unprotected sex and having more hookup partners were associated with greater negative experiences of hooking up. Contrary to expectations, there were no gender differences in the total number of negative hookup effects, although men reported more frequent hookups. In addition, negative impacts of hooking up were positively associated with psychological distress regardless of gender. The NIHI may offer a useful tool to assess the negative impacts of hooking up. Understanding students’ hookup experiences is an important step toward developing targeted health interventions related to hooking up behavior in young adult populations.     

“I was Excited by the Idea of a Project that Focuses on those Unasked Questions” Co‐Producing Disability Research with Disabled Young People

In this article, we detail the politics and practicalities of co‐produced disability research with disabled young people with life‐limiting and life‐threatening impairments. We centre an ESRC‐funded arts‐informed co‐produced research project that has brought together a Co‐Researcher Collective of disabled young people. Co‐production is an established approach; however, our co‐researchers have led us to develop inclusive research practices that engage with online social research methods in innovative ways. As we detail our experiences, we aim to encourage disability studies researchers and others to adopt virtual environments when researching with and for the lives of disabled people.     

Building Bridges into the Community: Social Capital in a Volunteering Project for Care Leavers

Volunteering to address poor life outcomes often experienced by care leavers is emphasised in UK policy. Although volunteering is credited with the ability to generate social capital, there is limited research on the impact of volunteering on the social capital of care leavers. This article re‐examines data from an evaluation of a volunteering project for care leavers. It explores in what ways young people's participation in the project constitutes social capital. The findings support the importance of regular face‐to‐face contact and co‐production for young people to become creators of their own social capital.     

Asylum and refugee support in the UK: civil society filling the gaps?

The vast majority of asylum seekers in the UK are not permitted to enter the labour market. In the absence of the right to work asylum seekers receive welfare support, which amounts to less than a third of the weekly spend of the poorest 10% of British citizens. This article presents new research on the third sector response to the poverty created by this policy regime. Through a four-pronged methodological design we map the scale of this response, and in doing so offer an alternative critical perspective on the inadequacies of government policy, inadequacies which lead to the human rights of some who are within, or who have been through the system, being breached.     

Analysis of the implementation of ergonomic design at the new units of an oil refinery

Ergonomic design is the adaptation of working conditions to human limitations and skills in the physical design phase of a new installation, a new working system, or new products or tools. Based on this concept, the purpose of this work was to analyze the implementation of ergonomic design at the new industrial units of an oil refinery, using the method of Ergonomic Workplace Assessment. This study was conducted by a multidisciplinary team composed of operation, maintenance and industrial safety technicians, ergonomists, designers and engineers. The analysis involved 6 production units, 1 industrial wastewater treatment unit, and 3 utilities units, all in the design detailing phase, for which 455 ergonomic requirements were identified. An analysis and characterization of the requirements identified for 5 of the production units, involving a total of 246 items, indicated that 62% were related to difficult access and blockage operations, while 15% were related to difficulties in the circulation of employees inside the units. Based on these data, it was found that the ergonomic requirements identified in the design detailing phase of an industrial unit involve physical ergonomics, and that it is very difficult to identify requirements related to organizational or cognitive ergonomics.     

Naoki Ueno’s Transformative Practice

ABSTRACT

Reflecting upon scholarly engagement with Naoki Ueno beginning in the 1990s, this commentary recalls the particular commitments of Ueno’s research practice and their relations with studies conducted under the auspices of the Work Practice and Technology research group at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center. Those lines of connection are further traced through the contributions to this special issue, emphasizing the eclectic, and also synthetic, contributions of Ueno’s body of research, as well as the research that it has inspired.