"I think maybe 10 years seems a bit long." Beliefs and attitudes of women who had never used intrauterine contraception

Aim To explore, in a general practice setting, the concerns, beliefs and attitudes about intrauterine contraception (IUC) reported by women, who had never used the methods. Methods We used a sequential mixed-method (QUAL/quant) approach. A pragmatic, self-selecting sample of 30 women, aged 18–46 years, who had never used IUC), was recruited through seven general practices in South East England. Themes arising from qualitative interviews were used to construct a quantitative survey, completed by a pragmatic sample of 1195 women, aged 18–49 years, attending 32 general practices in the same region, between February and August 2015. Results Qualitative themes were concerns about the long-acting nature of IUC, concerns about body boundaries, and informal knowledge of IUC, especially ‘friend of a friend’ stories. Women were not sure if the devices can be removed before their full 5- or 10-year duration of use, and felt that these timeframes did not fit with their reproductive intentions. Quantitative survey data showed that the most commonly endorsed concerns among never-users were painful fitting (55.8%), unpleasant removal of the device (60.1%), and concern about having a device ’inside me' (60.2%). Conclusions To facilitate fully informed contraceptive choice, information provided to women considering IUC should be tailored to more fully address the concerns expressed by never-users, particularly around the details of insertion and removal, and concerns about the adverse, long-term effects of the device. Women need to be reassured that IUC can be removed and fertility restored at any time following insertion

‘It's good to be able to talk’: An exploration of the complexities of participant and researcher relationships when conducting sensitive research

Drawing on qualitative data from a project on young women’s experiences of abortion, this paper considers the dual exchange of the research interview. It considers the view that researcher and participant ‘collude’ in the research process to meet their individual and differing needs. The paper explores the researcher’s active role in stimulating participants to talk about and disclose highly personal, and potentially stigmatising, experiences and interrogates the ways in which participants may use, or re-frame, research in a quasi-therapeutic capacity as a process of catharsis. This raises questions around whether the participant and researcher share common research goals, and the implications of this for informed consent. The paper concludes with a discussion of the problems of balancing the need of the researcher to ‘get the job done’ and to generate meaningful rich data, and the need to prioritise participant and researcher wellbeing throughout the research, suggesting that further consideration needs to be given to the post-consent process

How far does the apple fall from the tree? The size of English bank branch networks in the nineteenth century

After the Bank Charter Act in 1833, English banks could branch nationally without legal or geographical restriction. It has been previously thought that despite this freedom, early English joint-stock banks predominantly began as single units. Drawing upon a new dataset, this article maps the growth of branch banking, the size of bank networks and their geographical location and spread. It demonstrates that banks pursued branching strategies against the intentions of regulators and were successful in forming large and complex networks. However, ultimately, the majority settled for local, district and multi-regional structures, as opposed to national structures

War memorials in organizational memory: a case study of the Bank of England

Nation-states are not the only bodies to have invested in memory-building through the construction of war memorials. This article moves the analysis on from nation-states to firms. It undertakes an analysis of war memorials built by the Bank of England. At the close of World War I, the Bank of England was not yet a nationalized company. Yet, it still, like many other organizations, engaged in this process of memorialization. We show that businesses closely followed the habits of nation-states when it came to commemorating war. The building of monuments and the ceremonies, which took place around them assigned values to the imagined communities, groups and nations. These events continue to the present day

Visualizing organizational identity: the history of a capitalist enterprise

This article examines the context in which firms reflect on their own history in order to help form their organizational identity. By undertaking research in business archives, it shows that external change is as important as an internal transition in understanding shifts in the way an organization understands its past. We trace the messages communicated internally through paintings of past chairmen and senior staff when they were displayed inside the head office of Lloyds Bank during the 1960s and 1970s. These portraits generated interest and were an effective means of non-verbal communication which provoked a discussion about the purpose, values and norms in the firm’s past, present, and future. The objects retold the story of the bank’s success as a privately owned family firm in the midst of on-going political debates inside the Labour party about the nationalization of large banking companies. With the portraits in place, they recognized the bank’s history as a capitalist enterprise. The pictures legitimized the tradition of private ownership, helped to form organizational identity, and set future obligations that would see its continuation in what was a period of potential change