Agreement and discrepancy between children,parents, and social workers on school‐based effort avoidance in child welfare services

A multiperspective approach is beneficial for obtaining reliable and multifaceted pictures of child behaviour problems. The goal of the present study is to examine interrater agreement on school‐based effort avoidance between children receiving child welfare services, parents, and social workers. Given previous findings, interrater agreement is expected to be low. Self‐reported data on school‐based effort avoidance were gathered for children and adolescents in child welfare services. Additionally, social workers (using the Teacher‐Report Checklist for social and learning behaviour) and parents (using the parallel version of the self‐rating questionnaire on school‐based effort avoidance) were asked to complete an external assessment tool to compare children's perspectives with the ratings of significant adults. The results confirmed significant discrepancies between parents' and children's ratings on effort avoidance tendencies. Furthermore, there were only small to moderate correlations between children's self‐ratings and the adults' assessments; however, the consensus between adults was higher than the interrater agreement between children and social workers. Discrepancies in ratings from multiple informants underline the importance of integrating multiple perspectives, especially children's perspectives, in the diagnostic process in order to plan and adapt appropriate care and treatment.     

Victims,soldiers, peacemakers and caretakers: the neoliberal constitution of women in the EU’s security policy

Feminist scholars praise and criticize the UNSC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security for its considerations of women and gender in conflicts. Poststructuralist feminists show how gender is constructed in the UN’s security policies and how these constructions reproduce gendered dichotomies between women and men and representations of women as victims, part of civil society and neoliberal subjects. Although the UNSC Resolutions 1325 and 1820 are implemented by the EU, there is no literature on how the EU is taking up the UN’s discourse. Scholars studying gender policies in and of the EU mainly analyze the (in)effectiveness of EU gender mainstreaming but rarely interrogate its discursive foundations. Using a governmentality perspective, I argue that on the one hand the EU produces a binary and stereotypical understanding of gender, and on the other hand constitutes women as neoliberal subjects responsible for their own well-being, ignoring broader structures of (gender) inequality and war and making gender equality solely an instrument to achieve more security and development.     

Urban and peri-urban agriculture and its implication on food and nutrition insecurity in northern Ghana: a socio-spatial analysis along the urban–rural continuum

Food and nutrition insecurity remains a challenge in sub-Saharan Africa. Several studies have examined food and nutrition insecurity in urban or rural areas but have not captured the whole continuum. Between November and December 2013, 240 households were surveyed along the urban–rural continuum in Northern Ghana. The study objective was to understand the socio-spatial dynamics of household food and nutrition insecurity and to investigate the role played by urban, peri-urban and rural agriculture. The study found that there was more involvement in agriculture in rural areas compared to peri-urban areas and urban areas. Households from urban areas were more food insecure (HFIAS >?11) compared to their counterparts in peri-urban and the rural areas. Stunting increased by 3.4 times (p?=?0.048) among households located in the peri-urban area. Wasting was reduced by 0.16 times among household that produced staple food or vegetables (p?=?0.011). Overweight was reduced by 0.04 times among households that produced livestock (p?=?0.031). The results reveal a socio-spatial dimension of food and nutrition insecurity that is related to agricultural activities.     

Prenatal Reflective Functioning and Accumulated Risk as Predictors of Maternal Interactive Behavior During Free Play,the Still‐Face Paradigm,and Two Teaching Tasks

This study examined whether prenatal reflective functioning (RF) was related to mothers’ interactive style across contexts with their 6‐month‐old infants (M age = 6.02 months, SD = 0.41, 54% boys), and to what extent quality of prenatal RF could account for the influence of accumulated risk on maternal interactive behavior. Accumulated risk was defined as the sum‐score of a selection of risk factors that have been associated with suboptimal infant development. Mother–infant dyads (N = 133) were observed during free play, two teaching tasks, and the Still‐Face Paradigm (SFP). Better prenatal RF was associated with more positive maternal behavior in all settings and less negative behavior during teaching and SFP reengagement. Accumulated risk and prenatal RF predicted shared variance in maternal interactive behavior (with unique predictive effects observed only for RF on sensitivity during teaching and SFP play, and for accumulated risk on sensitivity and positive engagement during SFP play, and internalizing‐helplessness during SFP reengagement). Accumulated risk had an indirect effect on maternal sensitivity during teaching and SFP play through prenatal RF. These findings suggest not only that RF may be targeted prenatally to improve mother–infant interactions, but also that enhancing RF skills may ameliorate some of the negative consequences from more stable perinatal risk factors that influence parent–child interactions.     

Building ‘cowshed cultures’: A cultural perspective on the promotion of stockmanship and animal welfare on dairy farms

Improving animal welfare is an important part of the development of the agricultural industry, particularly at a time when intensification and the encroachment of factory-style production systems is making the maintenance of human-animal relations increasingly difficult. Animal science deals with the issue of improving stockmanship by focusing on the relationships between attitudes and behaviour, under the premise that improved attitudes will lead to improved behaviour. From an analysis of 42 interviews with owners, sharemilkers and workers on dairy farms in New Zealand we present a different view, seeing behaviour instead as part of a self-reinforcing culture in which animals, humans and the physical structure all contribute to the development of farm specific ways of doing and being. We further suggest that changing one stockperson's attitude alone is insufficient to ensure a change in the culture as other actors – including animals and non-human actors – reinforce any existing culture that has developed, making both attitudinal and behavioural change difficult. We conclude by discussing the key importance of designing farm systems and structures that promote positive interactions between animals and humans and suggest that this, rather than simply promoting knowledge and attitudinal change, is likely to be the most effective way of maintaining stockmanship in the face of an industrialising agriculture.     

Conducting Large‐Scale Surveys in Secondary Schools: The Case of the Youth On Religion (YOR) Project

There are few published articles on conducting large‐scale surveys in secondary schools, and this paper seeks to fill this gap. Drawing on the experiences of the Youth On Religion project, it discusses the politics of gaining access to these schools and the considerations leading to the adoption and administration of an online survey. It is concluded that successful research in schools has to be planned carefully in collaboration with key members of staff, and justified as an educational activity. Providing speedy feedback was helpful to ensure schools benefited from the research and to keep them engaged with the project. © 2011 The Author(s). Children & Society © 2011 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited     

Ergonomic risk assessment of nasogastric tube placement and implications for design and training

The placement of nasogastric (NG) tubes is known to be prone to error and may lead to serious issues for patient safety and wellbeing. In some instances these have been catastrophic and resulted in the death of the patient. This study sought to explore the potential risks associated with this procedure through the use of systematic prospective risk assessment. The research team used the Prospective Hazard Analysis (PHA) toolkit developed by Ward et al (2010) . The study has shown a wide number of risks that cover equipment design, work organisation, and training issues. The link between equipment design and training provides an important example of the need for a systematic approach to reducing errors and improving resilience in this aspect of healthcare.     

Who Among the Elderly Owns Stocks? The Role of Cognitive Ability and Bequest Motive

Conventional advice is to reduce risky investments as one ages. Such a generalized focus on risk avoidance may be inappropriate for elderly with longer life spans and those with financial goals that extend beyond their lifetime. To better understand risky asset holdings among the elderly, we investigated the effect of cognitive ability and bequest motive on stock ownership and stock purchase. Using the 2004 wave of the Health and Retirement Study, we found that one-third of elderly households held stocks and 36% of those elderly stockowners had recently acquired stocks. The respondent??s cognitive ability and bequest motive were strongly related to stock ownership. Among those who owned stock, a bequest motive was positively related to a recent purchase of stocks.     

The structure of employee attitudes to safety: A European example

This paper concerns organizational safety culture and the structure or architecture of employee attitudes to safety as part of that culture. It begins by reviewing the somewhat scant literature relevant to this area, and then reports a study, conducted in a European company, which collected and factor analysed data on employee attitudes to safety. The framework provided for the study was that offered by Purdham (1984), and the results suggested that employees' attitudes to safety, within this company (across occupation/occupational level and country), could be mapped By five orthogonal factors: personal scepticism, individual responsibility, the safeness of the work environment, the effectiveness of arrangements for safety, and personal immunity. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and attention is drawn to their subsequent use in an intervention to enhance safety culture within the organization by attacking supervisors' attitudes to safety.