Listen to Me! Children's experiences of domestic violence

This paper reports on a study undertaken in the Republic of Ireland during 2005 and is based on the experiences of children and young people who have lived with domestic violence. The objectives of the study were to explore the impact of domestic violence on children, identify their needs and recommend appropriate interventions to be brokered through a centrally based women's support service. Data were gathered from 70 participants, including 37 service providers/volunteers, 11 mothers and 22 children and young people who had lived in violent environments. The data indicated that children respond in unique ways to living with domestic violence, and that services to meet their needs must be tailored to suit their individual situations. The impact of domestic violence on their lives manifested itself with regard to their sense of fear and anxiety in relation to themselves, their siblings and their mothers; their self‐esteem and sense of being ‘different’, their relationships (including ambivalent relationships with their fathers); their experiences of education and their sense of a lost childhood. The final report for the study was based on the total data collection, but this paper will concentrate primarily on the material elicited from the children and young people. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Diagnosing Customer Value: Integrating the Value Process and Relationship Marketing

The concept of value and, more specifically, customer value is of increasing interest to both academics and practitioners. This paper undertakes a substantial review of past and current literature on value and categorizes this considerable body of research into nine streams of literature. Building on the emerging relationship marketing paradigm, it then proposes a framework for relationship value management. Nine core streams of value literature are identified and discussed: consumer values and consumer value; the augmented product concept; customer satisfaction and service quality; the value chain; creating and delivering superior customer value; the customer's value to the firm; customer‐perceived value; customer value and shareholder value; and relationship value. To date, the core focus of most of this literature has been on the nature of value from the perspective of the organization and its customers – the customer–supplier relationship. However, it is argued that the emergence of the relationship marketing paradigm has emphasized the role of other stakeholders in building relationships. An existing multiple stakeholder model of relationship marketing, the six markets model, is introduced and is integrated with key concepts from the value literature to produce a conceptual framework for relationship value management.     

Tim Holt

Tim Holt Outgoing President of the Royal Statistical Society. Julian Champkin spoke to him about life and statistical independence.     

Using Activity Theory to Understand Entrepreneurial Opportunity

Entrepreneurship is often described as the ability to recognize and exploit opportunities. Identifying opportunities is intentional and idiosyncratic insofar as they are recognized as opportunities is a novel and conscious event (otherwise the entrepreneur would be doing nothing new). Yet opportunities also have to be recognized by others as ones that are worthy of being recognized and pursued; the opportunity is a socially embedded construct. Thus opportunity recognition and pursuit can be understood as the skillful integration of prevailing and emerging objects and relations of business activity typically articulated through collaborative enterprise. To expand on this view I use an activity theory perspective that shows how the potentially transformative character of entrepreneurial opportunities unfurls from within the historical and cultural reproduction of collective activities. I note, however, different emphases within current takes on activity theory, notably between subjective perspectives and open-design perspectives. In discussing these theoretical differences using existing entrepreneurial studies, as well as selected data from a study of 90 entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom, I suggest a possible reconciliation. I conclude by suggesting that where activity theory promotes a rich and nuanced understanding of the socially embedded nature of entrepreneurial opportunities, entrepreneurial studies can also contribute to a nuanced development of activity theory insofar as the entrepreneurial object of activity (opportunity recognition and its pursuit through creating a business) has what I identify as an aesthetic as well as pragmatic logic.     

Factors affecting college students' perceptions of sexual relationships between high school students and teachers

This study explored the effects of respondent gender, gender combination (male teacher/female student versus female teacher/male student), and teacher age (24 versus 39-years-old) on the perception of a sexual relationship between a teacher and a 16-year-old student. Participants were 80 male and 80 female undergraduates. A MANOVA yielded significant main effects for respondent gender and gender combination. Subsequent ANOVAs indicated that men generally viewed the experience more positively and that the male teacher/female student combination was viewed more negatively than the female teacher/male student pairing.     

Not the Same: A Comparison of Female and Male Clients Seeking Treatment from Problem Gambling Counselling Services

Previous studies of problem gamblers portray this group as being almost exclusively male. However, this study demonstrates that females comprised 46% of the population ( n = 1,520) of persons who sought assistance due to concerns about their gambling from the publicly-funded BreakEven counselling services in the state of Victoria, Australia, in one 12-month period. This suggests that the model of service delivery which is community based counselling on a non-residential basis may be better able to attract female clients than treatment centres where males predominate such as veterans centres. A comparative analysis of the social and demographic characteristics of female and male gamblers within the study population was undertaken. As with previous studies, we have found significant differences between males and females who have sought help for problems associated with their gambling. Gender differences revealed in this study include females being far more likely to use electronic gaming machines (91.1% vs. 61.4%), older (39.6 years vs. 36.1 years), more likely to be born in Australia (79.4% vs. 74.7%), to be married (42.8% vs. 30.2%), living with family (78.9% vs. 61.5%) and to have dependent children (48.4% vs. 35.7%), than males who present at these services. Female gamblers (A$7,342) reported average gambling debts of less than half of that owed by males (A$19,091). These gender differences have implications for the development and conduct of problem gambling counselling services as it cannot be assumed that models of service which have demonstrated effectiveness with males will be similarly effective with females.     

ADVERTISING AND PRODUCT QUALITY IN POSTED-OFFER EXPERIMENTS

Sellers selected both price and quality but buyers had limited information about those choices in the experiments reported here. Market efficiency was high under full information with truthful advertising of prices and qualities, but was much lower with no advertising of price or quality. Efficiency did not improve when sellers were permitted to advertise price, but not quality, and in half of these experiments "lemons" outcomes occurred. Although the range of outcomes is great, it cannot be claimed that price advertising improves efficiency when quality is unknown.