28 research outputs found
Materteral Consumption Magic
With themes of corporate and civic paternalism, magic, Disney-like fantasy and childcare, this article recovers and analyses the Hay’s rooftop playground, the people who invented it and their motivations for luring generations of children up there. The space is placed in the context of the development of modern playgrounds and department stores. Drawing on consumers’ memories, the playground’s main attractions are revealed. The motivations of energetic and innovative store manager Jim Hay are outlined, including his cultivation of workers and customers according to his corporate paternalist beliefs. James Hay’s creation of ‘Aunt Haysl’ and the woman who successfully became her, Edna Neville, is explained. The roof’s storybook character and benevolent orientalism, Neville’s retirement, the roof’s closure and its afterlife are covered. Overall, I argue that the rooftop playground was an important modern, urban commercial space where public history was both made and nostalgically created as part of Christchurch's cultural heritage. I use the term 'materteral consumption magic' to capture the central discourses in the roof's history, to explain its success, and its potent creation as collective memory
Helen May, Baljit Kaur, and Larry Prochner, Empire, Education, and Indigenous Childhoods: Nineteenth Century Missionary Infant Schools in Three British Colonies
Exploring the perspectives of selectors and collecters of trial outcome data : An international qualitative study
Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank all interviewees that took part in this study, as well as our colleagues and fellow members of the Trial Forge, HRB-TMRN, and MRC Trial Methodology Hubs networks that supported in identifying potential participants. Funding This project was funded by the Chief Scientist Office, grant number HIPS/18/04Peer reviewedPublisher PD
A good use of time? : Providing evidence for how effort is invested in primary and secondary outcome data collection in trials
BACKGROUND: Data collection is a substantial part of trial workload for participants and staff alike. How these hours of work are spent is important because stakeholders are more interested in some outcomes than others. The ORINOCO study compared the time spent collecting primary outcome data to the time spent collecting secondary outcome data in a cohort of trials. METHODS: We searched PubMed for phase III trials indexed between 2015 and 2019. From these, we randomly selected 120 trials evaluating a therapeutic intervention plus an additional random selection of 20 trials evaluating a public health intervention. We also added eligible trials from a cohort of 189 trials in rheumatology that had used the same core outcome set. We then obtained the time taken to collect primary and secondary outcomes in each trial. We used a hierarchy of methods that included data in trial reports, contacting the trial team and approaching individuals with experience of using the identified outcome measures. We calculated the primary to secondary data collection time ratio and notional data collection cost for each included trial. RESULTS: We included 161 trials (120 phase III; 21 core outcome set; 20 public health), which together collected 230 primary and 688 secondary outcomes. Full primary and secondary timing data were obtained for 134 trials (100 phase III; 17 core outcome set; 17 public health). The median time spent on primaries was 56.1 h (range: 0.0-10,746.7, IQR: 226.89) and the median time spent on secondaries was 190.7 hours (range: 0.0-1,356,832.9, IQR: 617.6). The median primary to secondary data collection time ratio was 1.0:3.0 (i.e. for every minute spent on primary outcomes, 3.0 were spent on secondaries). The ratio varied by trial type: phase III trials were 1.0:3.1, core outcome set 1.0:3.4 and public health trials 1.0:2.2. The median notional overall data collection cost was £8015.73 (range: £52.90-£31,899,140.70, IQR: £20,096.64). CONCLUSIONS: Depending on trial type, between two and three times as much time is spent collecting secondary outcome data than collecting primary outcome data. Trial teams should explicitly consider how long it will take to collect the data for an outcome and decide whether that time is worth it given importance of the outcome to the trial.Peer reviewe
(Dis)located Olympic patriots: sporting connections, administrative communications and imperial ether in interwar New Zealand
During the interwar period (1919-1939) protagonists of the early New Zealand Olympic Committee NZOC worked to renegotiate and improve the country's international sporting participation and involvement in the International Olympic Committee IOC. To this end, NZOC effectively used its locally based administrators and well-placed expatriates in Britain to variously assert the organisation's nascent autonomy, independence and political power, progress Antipodean athlete's causes, and, counter any potential doubt about the nation's peripheral position in imperial sporting dialogues. Adding to the corpus of scholarship on New Zealand's ties and tribulations with imperial Britain (in and beyond sport) (e.g. Beilharz and Cox 2007; Belich 2001, 2007; Coombes 2006; MacLean 2010; Phillips 1984, 1987; Ryan 2004, 2005, 2007), in this paper I examine how the political actions and strategic location of three key NZOC agents (specifically, administrator Harry Amos and expatriates Arthur Porritt and Jack Lovelock) worked in their own particular ways to assert the position of the organisation within the global Olympic fraternity. I argue that the efforts of Amos, Porritt and Lovelock also concomitantly served to remind Commonwealth sporting colleagues (namely Britain and Australia) that New Zealand could not be characterised as, or relegated to being, a distal, subdued, or subservient colonial sporting partner. Subsequently I contend that NZOC's development during the interwar period, and particularly the utility of expatriate agents, can be contextualised against historiographical shifts that encourage us to rethink, reimagine, and rework narratives of empire, colonisation, national identity, commonwealth and belonging
Perinatal mental health services in pregnancy and the year after birth: the ESMI research programme including RCT
Background It is unclear how best to identify and treat women with mental disorders in pregnancy and the year after birth (i.e. the perinatal period). Objectives (1) To investigate how best to identify depression at antenatal booking [work package (WP) 1]. (2) To estimate the prevalence of mental disorders in early pregnancy (WP1). (3) To develop and examine the efficacy of a guided self-help intervention for mild to moderate antenatal depression delivered by psychological well-being practitioners (WP1). (4) To examine the psychometric properties of the perinatal VOICE (Views On Inpatient CarE) measure of service satisfaction (WP3). (5) To examine the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of services for women with acute severe postnatal mental disorders (WPs 1–3). (6) To investigate women’s and partners’/significant others’ experiences of different types of care (WP2). Design Objectives 1 and 2 – a cross-sectional survey stratified by response to Whooley depression screening questions. Objective 3 – an exploratory randomised controlled trial. Objective 4 – an exploratory factor analysis, including test–retest reliability and validity assessed by association with the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire contemporaneous satisfaction scores. Objective 5 – an observational cohort study using propensity scores for the main analysis and instrumental variable analysis using geographical distance to mother and baby unit. Objective 6 – a qualitative study. Setting English maternity services and generic and specialist mental health services for pregnant and postnatal women. Participants Staff and users of mental health and maternity services. Interventions Guided self-help, mother and baby units and generic care. Main outcome measures The following measures were evaluated in WP1(i) – specificity, sensitivity, positive predictive value, likelihood ratio, acceptability and population prevalence estimates. The following measures were evaluated in WP1(ii) – participant recruitment rate, attrition and adverse events. The following measure was evaluated in WP2 – experiences of care. The following measures were evaluated in WP3 – psychometric indices for perinatal VOICE and the proportion of participants readmitted to acute care in the year after discharge. Results WP1(i) – the population prevalence estimate was 11% (95% confidence interval 8% to 14%) for depression and 27% (95% confidence interval 22% to 32%) for any mental disorder in early pregnancy. The diagnostic accuracy of two depression screening questions was as follows: a weighted sensitivity of 0.41, a specificity of 0.95, a positive predictive value of 0.45, a negative predictive value of 0.93 and a likelihood ratio (positive) of 8.2. For the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, the diagnostic accuracy was as follows: a weighted sensitivity of 0.59, a specificity of 0.94, a positive predictive value of 0.52, a negative predictive value of 0.95 and a likelihood ratio (positive) of 9.8. Most women reported that asking about depression at the antenatal booking appointment was acceptable, although this was reported as being less acceptable for women with mental disorders and/or experiences of abuse. Cost-effectiveness analysis suggested that both the Whooley depression screening questions and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale were more cost-effective than with the Whooley depression screening questions followed by the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale or no-screen option. WP1(ii) – 53 women with depression in pregnancy were randomised. Twenty-six women received modified guided self-help [with 18 (69%) women attending four or more sessions] and 27 women received usual care. Three women were lost to follow-up (follow-up for primary outcome: 92%). At 14 weeks post randomisation, women receiving guided self-help reported fewer depressive symptoms than women receiving usual care (adjusted effect size −0.64, 95% confidence interval −1.30 to 0.06). Costs and quality-adjusted life-years were similar, resulting in a 50% probability of guided self-help being cost-effective compared with usual care at National Institute for Health and Care Excellence cost per quality-adjusted life-year thresholds. The slow recruitment rate means that a future definitive larger trial is not feasible. WP2 – qualitative findings indicate that women valued clinicians with specialist perinatal expertise across all services, but for some women generic services were able to provide better continuity of care. Involvement of family members and care post discharge from acute services were perceived as poor across services, but there was also ambivalence among some women about increasing family involvement because of a complex range of factors. WP3(i) – for the perinatal VOICE, measures from exploratory factor analysis suggested that two factors gave an adequate fit (comparative fit index = 0.97). Items loading on these two dimensions were (1) those concerning aspects of the service relating to the care of the mother and (2) those relating to care of the baby. The factors were positively correlated (0.49; p < 0.0001). Total scores were strongly associated with service (with higher satisfaction for mother and baby units, 2 degrees of freedom; p < 0.0001) and with the ‘gold standard’ Client Service Questionnaire total score (test–retest intraclass correlation coefficient 0.784, 95% confidence interval 0.643 to 0.924; p < 0.0001). WP3(ii) – 263 of 279 women could be included in the primary analysis, which shows that the odds of being readmitted to acute care was 0.95 times higher for women who were admitted to a mother and baby unit than for those not admitted to a mother and baby unit (0.95, 95% confidence interval 0.86 to 1.04; p = 0.29). Sensitivity analysis using an instrumental variable found a markedly more significant effect of admission to mother and baby units (p < 0.001) than the primary analysis. Mother and baby units were not found to be cost-effective at 1 month post discharge because of the costs of care in a mother and baby unit. Cost-effectiveness advantages may exist if the cost of mother and baby units is offset by savings from reduced readmissions in the longer term. Limitations Policy and service changes had an impact on recruitment. In observational studies, residual confounding is likely. Conclusions Services adapted for the perinatal period are highly valued by women and may be more effective than generic services. Mother and baby units have a low probability of being cost-effective in the short term, although this may vary in the longer term. Future work Future work should include examination of how to reduce relapses, including in after-care following discharge, and how better to involve family members. Trial registration This trial is registered as ISRCTN83768230 and as study registration UKCRN ID 16403. Funding This project was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Programme Grants for Applied Research programme and will be published in full in Programme Grants for Applied Research; Vol. 10, No. 5. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information
Female imperialism and national identity: Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire
Through a study of the British Empire's largest women's patriotic organisation, formed in 1900, and still in existence, this book examines the relationship between female imperialism and national identity. It throws new light on women's involvement in imperialism; on the history of 'conservative' women's organisations; on women's interventions in debates concerning citizenship and national identity; and on the history of women in white settler societies. After placing the IODE (Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire) in the context of recent scholarly work in Canadian, gender, imperial history and post-colonial theory, the book follows the IODE's history through the twentieth century. Chapters focus upon the IODE's attempts to create a British Canada through its maternal feminist work in education, health, welfare and citizenship. In addition it reflects on the IODE's responses to threats to Anglo-Canadian hegemony posed by immigration, World Wars and Communism, and examines the complex relationship between imperial loyalty and settler nationalism. Tracing the organisation into the postcolonial era, where previous imperial ideas are outmoded, it considers the transformation from patriotism to charity, and the turn to colonisation at home in the Canadian North