Player account-based gambling: potentials for behaviour-based research methodologies

The emergence of player account-based gambling is a result of escalating technological sophistication and the incorporation of these developments into gambling. This term refers to gambling from a centralized account that is linked to an identified individual. Player account-based gambling is increasingly being utilized for multiple forms of Internet, mobile and land-based gambling through player cards and user-names. Player accounts track and store a wealth of data on gambling behaviour and related activities. Gambling research has been justifiably criticized for its reliance on self-report rather than behavioural measures. Research analysing player account data may advance conceptual models, identify behavioural risk factors for problem gambling and evaluate and guide effective policy and responsible gambling programmes. Although research utilizing player account data has unique limitations, it offers considerable benefits for researchers, operators and regulators. Research methodology incorporating the use of player account data stands to make significant contributions to the gambling field.     

Limit your time,gamble responsibly: setting a time limit (via pop-up message) on an electronic gaming machine reduces time on device

In the current study, we assessed whether undergraduate electronic gaming machine (EGM) gamblers would be more apt to set a time limit and spend less time gambling when asked to consider setting an explicit time limit prior to their gambling session. To this end, participants (N = 43) were randomly assigned to a time limit pop-up condition or control condition, both of which involved gambling on an EGM in a virtual reality (VR) casino. In the time limit pop-up condition, participants were asked (via pop-up message) to consider setting a time limit on play and entering that limit in an available text box prior to commencing play. In the no time limit pop-up condition, participants engaged in play immediately upon accessing the EGM in the VR casino (i.e. they were not exposed to a time limit pop-up message). As predicted, participants who were explicitly asked to consider setting a time limit on their EGM play were significantly more likely to do so and spent less time gambling than those who were not given such instructions. The results provide preliminary support for the contention that setting a time limit on EGM play is an effective responsible gambling strategy.     

Governing Women's Capabilities in China's Urban Expansion

By the middle of the twenty-first century, China's urban population is likely to have grown by about 500 million, to more than 1.1 billion people. This article applies Amartya Sen's concept of capabilities to explore how the government of urban expansion is affecting the generation of rural women whose villages currently are being enclosed by cities and towns. Drawing on interviews, press reports and government and Women's Federation documents from Zhejiang province, it illustrates how local governments' economic growth strategies hinge, in part, on reconstructing gendered relations in the spatial organization, civic management, production and social reproduction in new metropolitan sites. The article concludes, first, that unless China's leaders commit to involving rural women's representatives in urban planning and management, enforcing women's rights to property and enabling women to decide whether and when to work and retire, the capabilities of this generation of rural women will expand little; and, second, that Sen's concept overlooks organizational and material conditions that are necessary for women to enhance their capabilities.     

Family planning and reproductive health: the link to environmental preservation

This paper seeks to refocus the attention of environmentalists on the importance of population trends to environmental sustainability and identifies prevention of unintended pregnancy as potential common ground for environmentalists and family planning advocates. The health and other welfare benefits of preventing unintended pregnancy are felt most keenly by individual women, men, and their families. At the same time, however, preventing unwanted pregnancies usually results in smaller family size, an important factor in slowing population growth and, as a result, a source of broader benefits—including environmental benefits—to society.     

Journal Finder, a Second Look: Implications for Serials Access in Today''s Library

Since The University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Jackson Library introduced Journal Finder in August 2001, the service has grown and evolved. Its features and capabilities have been expanded, enhanced, and refined, and a partnership program has been developed. Journal Finder enjoys significant initial success and appears to meet a real need in the research life of faculty and students. Additionally, Journal Finder has revealed several user trends with implications for the library, including the use of print serials, photocopying, interlibrary loan, and document delivery/pay-per-view, and it continues to provide insights and data for serials collection management decisions. Serials Review 2003; 29:287–294.     

Residents and Residence: Factors Predicting the Health Disadvantage of Social Renters Compared to Owner-Occupiers

Numerous studies have found that owner-occupiers live longer and stay healthier than renters. Epidemiologists often view housing tenure as a proxy for economic circumstances rather than as having directly health-promoting or damaging effects. Housing researchers, on the other hand, have tended to study physical and psychosocial aspects of housing that might directly impact upon health. Linking these two literatures, we analyzed nearly 3,000 postal questionnaires from a stratified random sample of Scottish adults. In particular, we examined differences between owners and social renters that might explain observed tenure differences in health. Personal characteristics explained much of the difference between owners and social renters, but some dwelling and neighborhood characteristics also played a role.     

Virtually Embedded Ties

The Internet and other communication and information technologies have not only increased the efficiency and effectiveness of existing forms of interorganizational connection, but have also made possible the emergence of a new form - “virtually embedded ties”. Such ties have two essential features: first, they utilize electronic communication and information technologies; second, the use of those technologies allows them to overcome the exchange-related problems previously addressed through the formation of socially embedded ties. We argue that virtually embedded ties offer an important alternative to socially embedded ties in industries that are characterized by high levels of dynamism.     

“One able daughter is worth 10 illiterate sons”: Reframing the patriarchal family

This research note reports on interviews with 120 mothers employed in garment factories in Bangladesh. These mothers express views on the necessity of being married, having sons, and educating daughters that challenge traditional patriarchal practices. They report that men of their families can no longer guarantee women and children lifetime support in the context of extreme poverty and landlessness. Many of them thus choose to assist their husbands, brothers, and parents through wage employment. Their employment creates a space in which these women can begin to make choices and decisions independent of the wishes of the men in their families. Their responses indicate a crack in the traditional patriarchal family system, which requires that a woman be dependent, first on her father, then on her husband, and then on her adult son.     

Quacks and Clerks: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Structure and Function of the British Medical Civil Service

The British government's requirement for expert medical advice from the 1850s led to the development of a medical civil service, which reached its peak in size and authority in the 1970s. By this time the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) had direct management of a staff of over 170 medically qualified civil servants, who provided expertise on the development and implementation of new medical treatments as well as on broader health protection and promotion issues. The successive Whitehall efficiency reviews from 1979 onwards culminated in 1994 in the merger of the parallel medical and civil service reporting hierarchies in the Department of Health, effectively reducing the CMO's ability to call upon the support of medical civil servants, at a time of increasing new health threats such as AIDS and MRSA. This article uses government reports to chart the rise and fall of the British medical civil service. It discusses how, in the last ten years, the British government has become more imaginative in its use of temporary specialist medical advisers (tsars) brought in from the NHS, in relaxing the formal civil service hierarchies, and quietly abandoning the statutory Standing Medical Advisory Committee (SMAC). This article suggests that when the government has failed to give adequate support to its CMOs, the medical civil service has suffered from poor morale, experienced recruitment difficulties, and the ability to respond to health crises has been compromised. It highlights the chronic lack of historical awareness in the development of health policy in Britain.