Motherhood on ice? A media framing analysis of older mothers in the UK news

Changing gender roles and increased sexual and economic freedom have created opportunities for women to give birth relatively late in life. However, stigma and misplaced fears about physical capacity are often reported as sources of anxiety among older, and in vitro fertilisation-induced mothers. In this study, we apply a specially adapted method for analysing news media content to a week's selection of material in the British media following the dissemination of research at an international medical conference. Our findings suggest, despite some positive commentaries, that much negative discourse is circulated by the media about older mothers, from implied claims of selfishness (older mothers as 'delaying' conception) to violations of the 'natural order'. These latter claims reflect the long-standing ambivalence by the media generally towards scientific advancement, but they also reveal continuing resistance towards unorthodox lifestyles

Fear of the unknown: a pre-departure qualitative study of Turkish international students

This paper presents findings from eleven in-depth interviews with Turkish undergraduate students, who were, by the time of data collection, about to spend a semester at a European university under the Erasmus exchange scheme. The students all agreed to be interviewed about their feelings about studying in a foreign culture, and were found to be anxious prior to departure about the quality of accommodation in the new destination, their language ability and the opportunity to form friendships. Fears were expressed about possible misconceptions over Turkey as a Muslim and a developing country. Suggestions are made for HEI interventions to allay student travellers’ concerns

Education and health knowledge: Evidence from UK compulsory schooling reform

We investigate if there is a causal link between education and health knowledge using data from the 1984/85 and 1991/92 waves of the UK Health and Lifestyle Survey (HALS). Uniquely, the survey asks respondents what they think are the main causes of ten common health conditions, and we compare these answers to those given by medical professionals to form an index of health knowledge. For causal identification we use increases in the UK minimum school leaving age in 1947 (from 14 to 15) and 1972 (from 15 to 16) to provide exogenous variation in education. These reforms predominantly induced adolescents who would have left school to stay for one additionally mandated year. OLS estimates suggest that education significantly increases health knowledge, with a one-year increase in schooling increasing the health knowledge index by 15% of a standard deviation. In contrast, estimates from instrumental-variable models show that increased schooling due to the education reforms did not significantly affect health knowledge. This main result is robust to numerous specification tests and alternative formulations of the health knowledge index. Further research is required to determine whether there is also no causal link between higher levels of education – such as post-school qualifications – and health knowledge

Policy mixes for incumbency: the destructive recreation of renewable energy, shale gas 'fracking,' and nuclear power in the United Kingdom

The notion of a ‘policy mix’ can describe interactions across a wide range of innovation policies, including ‘motors for creation’ as well as for ‘destruction’. This paper focuses on the United Kingdom’s (UK) ‘new policy direction’ that has weakened support for renewables and energy efficiency schemes while strengthening promotion of nuclear power and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas (‘fracking’). The paper argues that a ‘policy apparatus for incumbency’ is emerging which strengthens key regimebased technologies while arguably damaging emerging niche innovations. Basing the discussion around the three technology-based cases of renewable energy and efficiency, fracking, and nuclear power, this paper refers to this process as “destructive recreation”. Our study raises questions over the extent to which policymaking in the energy field is not so much driven by stated aims around sustainability transitions, as by other policy drivers. It investigates different ‘strategies of incumbency’ including ‘securitization’, ‘masking’, ‘reinvention’, and ‘capture.’ It suggests that analytical frameworks should extend beyond the particular sectors in focus, with notions of what counts as a relevant ‘policy maker’ correspondingly also expanded, in order to explore a wider range of nodes and critical junctures as entry points for understanding how relations of incumbency are forged and reproduced

Historicising Material Agency: from Relations to Relational Constellations

Relational approaches have gradually been changing the face of archaeology over the last decade: analytically, through formal network analysis; and interpretively, with various frameworks of human-thing relations. Their popularity has been such, however, that it threatens to undermine their relevance. If everyone agrees that we should understand past worlds by tracing relations, then ‘finding relations’ in the past becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Focusing primarily on the interpretive approaches of material culture studies, this article proposes to counter the threat of irrelevance by not just tracing human-thing relations, but characterising how sets of relations were ordered. Such ordered sets are termed ‘relational constellations’. The article describes three relational constellations and their consequences based on practices of fine ware production in the Western Roman provinces (first century BC – third century AD): the fluid, the categorical, and the rooted constellation. Specifying relational constellations allows reconnecting material culture to specific historical trajectories, and offers scope for meaningful cross-cultural comparisons. As such a small theoretical addition based on the existing toolbox of practice-based approaches and relational thought can impact on historical narratives, and can save relational frameworks from the danger of triviality.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10816-015-9244-

Protocol for evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of ePrescribing systems and candidate prototype for other related health information technologies

Background: This protocol concerns the assessment of cost-effectiveness of hospital health information technology (HIT) in four hospitals. Two of these hospitals are acquiring ePrescribing systems incorporating extensive decision support, while the other two will implement systems incorporating more basic clinical algorithms. Implementation of an ePrescribing system will have diffuse effects over myriad clinical processes, so the protocol has to deal with a large amount of information collected at various ‘levels’ across the system. Methods/Design: The method we propose is use of Bayesian ideas as a philosophical guide. Assessment of cost-effectiveness requires a number of parameters in order to measure incremental cost utility or benefit – the effectiveness of the intervention in reducing frequency of preventable adverse events; utilities for these adverse events; costs of HIT systems; and cost consequences of adverse events averted. There is no single end-point that adequately and unproblematically captures the effectiveness of the intervention; we therefore plan to observe changes in error rates and adverse events in four error categories (death, permanent disability, moderate disability, minimal effect). For each category we will elicit and pool subjective probability densities from experts for reductions in adverse events, resulting from deployment of the intervention in a hospital with extensive decision support. The experts will have been briefed with quantitative and qualitative data from the study and external data sources prior to elicitation. Following this, there will be a process of deliberative dialogues so that experts can “re-calibrate” their subjective probability estimates. The consolidated densities assembled from the repeat elicitation exercise will then be used to populate a health economic model, along with salient utilities. The credible limits from these densities can define thresholds for sensitivity analyses. Discussion: The protocol we present here was designed for evaluation of ePrescribing systems. However, the methodology we propose could be used whenever research cannot provide a direct and unbiased measure of comparative effectiveness