Research Note: The LIVITY study: research challenges and strategies for engaging with the black caribbean community in a study of HIV infection

There is an increasing incidence of new HIV‐1 diagnoses among black Caribbeans in the UK, but there has been limited research in this area. The LIVITY study is the first in‐depth epidemiological and behavioural study to examine the impact of HIV among black Caribbeans in the UK. The UK black Caribbean community has traditionally been regarded as less likely to participate in clinical research and surveys. We identified three major challenges to recruitment to the LIVITY study: general distrust of the research process; the considerable stigma surrounding HIV in the black Caribbean community and the sensitivity of obtaining detailed sexual histories. The strategies devised to help overcome these barriers to optimise recruitment included: the establishment of a black Caribbean Community Advisory Group to facilitate communication between the community and the researchers and assist in questionnaire design to improve acceptability to the participants; use of healthcare practitioners as gatekeepers; extensive piloting and modification of the questionnaire among black Caribbean patients; reassurances of confidentiality during recruitment; and ethnic matching between interviewer and study participants. Another challenge was the high rate of loss to follow‐up among eligible patients, potentially compromising the study’s generalisability. Nevertheless, use of the above strategies resulted in a satisfactory enrolment rate of 57%, who were representative of all eligible patients.     

Friendship in children with internalizing and externalizing problems: A preliminary investigation with the Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships

This study examined the relationship between friendship representation and internalizing and externalizing problems in school-aged children. One hundred Caucasian 6–7 year-old children (50 males and 50 females) and their mothers took part in the study. The Draw-a-Man Test, the Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships, and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL/6-18) were used. Children with internalizing problems, externalizing problems, comorbid internalizing and externalizing problems, and a control group were compared on their pictorial representations of friendship. Results showed that children with externalizing problems included more pictorial indices of each friend's autonomy and a larger imbalance of importance between them; children with internalizing problems drew themselves as less similar to their friends. In conclusion, children's pictorial representation allows exploring some aspects of their tacit knowledge about the relationship with a best friend, which is not easily expressed verbally by young children. Finally, the implications of these findings for theoretical and empirical research development on friendship are discussed.     

An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of an FE/HE Partnership in the Delivery of a Preparation for Practice Module within an Undergraduate Social Work Degree Programme

The Preparation for Practice module at the University of Ulster is delivered to 170 first year students via a collaborative arrangement between higher and further education institutions. In each of the five sites, students receive large group and small group teaching facilitated by social work training agency workers and academic tutor dyads. An evaluation of the module sought the perceptions of the agency and academic facilitators regarding the overall collaborative arrangement and the model of co-teaching involving social work academics and agency partners. Respondents were asked to complete a semi-structured questionnaire, which generated data from a Likert scale and also invited qualitative commentary. The Likert scale data were analysed via SPSS and the qualitative information was scrutinised using a manual thematic analysis technique. Findings indicated that continuous communication, consistency in programme content and the acknowledgement of the differences in organisation resources were key to a successful collaborative arrangement. It was also noted that a co-teaching model should be viewed as a positive vehicle for achieving module objectives in a safe learning environment.     

An assessment of sustainable housing affordability using a multiple criteria decision making method

Housing affordability is a complex issue that must not only be assessed in terms economic viability. In order to increase quality of life and community sustainability the environmental and social sustainability of housing must also be taken into consideration.     

Does the Stock Market Gender Stereotype Corporate Boards? Evidence from the Market's Reaction to Directors' Trades

Attitudes towards male and female managers within organizations are well documented, but how the stock market perceives their relative capabilities is less studied. Recent evidence documents a negative short‐run market reaction to the appointment of female chief executive officers and suggests that female executives are less informed than their male counterparts about future corporate performance. These results appear to dispute the stock market value of having women on corporate boards. However, such short‐run market reactions may retain a ‘gender bias’, reflecting the prevalence of negative stereotypes, where the market reacts to ‘beliefs’ rather than ‘performance’. This study tests for such bias by examining the stock market reaction to directors' trades in their own companies' shares, by measuring both the short‐run and longer‐term returns after the directors' trades. Allowing for firm and trade effects, some evidence is found that, in the longer term, markets recognize that female executives' trades are informative about future corporate performance, although initially markets underestimate these effects. This has important implications for research that has attempted to assess the value of board diversity by examining only short‐run stock market responses.     

De Bruin,A.; Teasdale,S. (ed.), A Research Agenda for Social Entrepreneurship,Edward Elgar Publishing,Cheltenham, UK,and Northampton,USA, 2019, pp. 183, bibliography,index, US $131.96

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Collective Action as the Material Expression of Opinion-Based Group Membership

In this article, we argue that progress in the study of collective action rests on an increasingly sophisticated application of the social identity approach. We develop the view, however, that the application of this theoretical perspective has been limited by theoretical and empirical difficulties in distinguishing between social categories and psychological groups. These problems have undermined the ability of researchers to correctly specify the collective identities that actually underpin many instances of collective action. As a partial solution to this problem we focus on collective identities based on shared opinion (opinion-based groups). We develop the proposition that much collective action reflects the crystallization or instantiation of opinion-based groups. We also outline an intervention aimed at stimulating commitment to collective action through group-based interaction involving opinion-based group members. We conclude by emphasizing that opinion-based groups tend to be most successful when they present themselves as being representative or aligned with dominant, positively valued social categories such as nations.     

Women,Health and Housing Assistance: Implications in an Emerging Era of Housing Provision

Women and the households that they head are over‐represented among the most economically and socially disadvantaged households in Australia. Recent changes in the provision of housing assistance for low income households in Australia have distinct implications for women and this paper examines the implications of these changes. Shifting the emphasis in housing assistance away from publicly provided and rent‐controlled housing to direct subsidisation of rents for private tenants has important, largely negative, consequences for the health, affordability and security of housing for many women. This situation is made worse given the current housing affordability crisis in Australia; a crisis that extends across all private housing tenures.     

Social development strategies of a non-governmental grassroots women's organisation in Nigeria

Social development initiatives of rural and poor urban women in Africa are efforts that redress the post-colonial economic development planning oversights of many African nations. Grass roots movements are responsive initiatives that have provided rural women with bottom-up management and planning opportunities focused on quality of life issues for themselves, their families, the community, and, ultimately, the nation. Since 1982, Country Women's Association of Nigeria (COWAN), a non-governmental organisation, has addressed the needs of rural and urban poor women through economic activities that have empowered them and increased their levels of self-sufficiency. With COWAN's emphasis on popular participation and indigenous leadership, macro-community development practices are employed, as is the recognition of individual and collective skills and talents. Social workers of today should be aware of commonalities that exists in the struggles of these and other Third World women, for their struggles are not unlike those of oppressed groups found in the USA and other developed countries.     

Media, ‘Fat Panic’ and Public Pedagogy: Mapping Contested Terrain

Discourses regarding a ‘global obesity crisis’ and alternative frames (e.g. weight‐inclusive approaches to health) have proliferated through various media of communication. These media range from traditional print and visual formats (e.g. newspapers and television shows) to digital media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube), which enable different publics to produce, and not just consume, text, images and other data relating to the body. Reflecting a sociological understanding of educational practices as extending beyond formal schooling, mediated obesity discourse and counter‐movements have also been conceptualised as public pedagogies, which instruct people how to relate to their own and other's bodies, health and subjectivities. This article examines what is critically known about various media at a time when governments and agencies are reinvigorating the global war on obesity, with populations being ‘advised’ to become and remain conscientious weight watchers. In conclusion, the article underscores the salience of social studies of the media when seeking to rethink obesity, incorporating critical reference to moral panic theory and the need to better understand what media can ‘do’ as enactments of public pedagogy.