Respect: Results of a pilot project designed to improve behaviour in English football

The research on which this article reports arose from recognition by The English Football Association (FA) that poor behaviour in affiliated football was having widespread and deleterious effects on the game, at every level, including a loss of about 7,000 referees each year. In order to address these concerns, The FA implemented a programme of pro-social behaviour change, branded ‘Respect’, and commissioned research into a 3 month pilot project in a small number of County FAs during the spring of 2008. In designing the evaluation for the Respect Pilot the researchers attempted to adhere to best practice in programme evaluation by addressing both the process and outcomes of the intended change programme (Coalter, 2007; Pawson, 2006; Weiss, 1998) and by working with a logic model that could be adapted over time (Aspen Institute, 2003; Schmitz and Parsons, 2007). The four main stakeholder groups identified to take part in the Pilot were players, coaches, referees and spectators/parents, for three age groups – Under 10, Under 16 and Open Age. Three different interventions were tested at the matches: designated spectator areas, codes of conduct with sanctions and only the captain being allowed to talk to the referee. Interviews were conducted with the four stakeholder groups at three games in each age group. In addition, week-by-week behaviour assessments from 583 trial games were entered online by over 1,000 people. Overall, both enjoyment and behaviour scores among the Active (experimental) teams were perceived to be significantly better than that among the matched Control teams (with no interventions). The experimental teams also ranked all three interventions highly over the ten weeks, with the designated spectator areas rated best, followed by the signing of codes of practice second and only captains talking to referees third. The results are discussed in relation to the future plans for the Respect campaign and the efficacy of the original logic model

The Football Association’s Child Protection in Football Research Project 2002-2006: Rationale, design and first year results

In common with most sport organisations, the English Football Association has come relatively recently to the issue of child protection. Abuses of various kinds have been known about in the sport for many years but, until the late 1990s, very little systematic work was undertaken to address this. The launch of a Child Protection Strategy by the Engalish FA in May 2000 reflected recognition by those in authority within the sport that child abuse and protection were properly the subject of football policy and should become embedded in all aspects of the affiliated game. In addition to adopting child protection, the then-Chief Executive Officer of the FA made a commitment to evidence-based policy in his strategic plan for the game. In line with this commitment, the FA commissioned a 5 year study of the impact of child protection on the game, the first year of which constituted an audit of the state of child protection in the affiliated game. Data were collected through 11 internet surveys, 32 club case studies, over 200 interviews with various stakeholders and an analysis of 132 case files for child abuse referrals. This paper sets out the context of child protection in sport more generally and the background to the FA's child protection reseach project in particular. It also presents selected first year results for key stakeholder groups

Measuring the impact of child protection through Activation States

Child protection (CP) has risen to the top of the UK sports policy agenda in the past four years and the Football Association has invested in this major strategy as part of its commitment to “use the power of football to build a better future” (FA, 2000a). Evidencing the impact of child protection is, however, a complex task, exacerbated by the dearth of measurement tools that exist for this purpose in sport. This article presents a new model of ‘Activation States’ that has been designed and used to measure shifts in football culture as child protection has begun to impact upon the sport. The model is used to map changes over time related to the knowledge, feelings, actions and discourses of key stakeholders in football. The research for which the model was designed is a longitudinal study, commissioned by the English Football (soccer) Association, on the impact of the organisation’s child protection strategy on the culture of soccer. Sample data from the project are used to illustrate the model and to examine its potential and limitations as a tool for measuring impacts in child protection and other social inclusion themes

A new methodological approach for evaluating the impact of educational intervention implementation on learning outcomes

Randomized control trials (RCTs) are commonly regarded as the ‘gold standard’ for evaluating educational interventions. While this experimental design is valuable in establishing causal relationships between the tested intervention and outcomes, reliance on statistical aggregation typically underplays the situated context in which interventions are implemented. Developing innovative, systematic methods for evaluating implementation and understanding its impact on outcomes is vital to moving educational evaluation research beyond questions of ‘what works’, towards better understanding the mechanisms underpinning an intervention’s effects. The current study presents a pragmatic, two-phased approach that combines qualitative data with quantitative analyses to examine the causal relationships between intervention implementation and outcomes. This new methodological approach is illustrated in the context of a maths app intervention recently evaluated in a RCT across 11 schools. In phase I, four implementation themes were identified; ‘teacher support’, ‘teacher supervision’, ‘implementation quality’, and ‘established routine’. In phase II, ‘established routine’ was found to predict 41% of the variance in children’s learning outcomes with the apps. This has significant implications for future scaling. Overall, this new methodological approach offers an innovative method for combining process and impact evaluations when seeking to gain a more nuanced understanding of what works in education and why

Secondary Benefits to Attentional Processing Through Intervention with an Interactive Maths App

Previous research has shown that a specific interactive app, designed to support the development of early mathematical skills and delivered on hand-held tablets, is effective at raising mathematical attainment in young children in low-and high-income countries. In the countries where this app has been deployed, teachers have consistently reported improved concentration skills in children who have received intervention with this app. To investigate the legitimacy of these claims, we conducted secondary data analyses of children’s performance on core cognitive tasks to examine if additional benefits are observed in children who received intervention with the interactive maths app compared to those that did not. We drew on data from a three-arm randomised control trial conducted in a primary school in Malawi (Pitchford, 2015). In addition to assessing mathematical skills, children’s visual attention, short-term memory, and manual processing speed were examined at baseline, before the introduction of the maths app intervention, and at endline, after the intervention had been implemented for 8 weeks. A group of 318 children (73-161 months) attending Standards 1-3 of a Malawian primary school were randomised to receive either the new maths app (treatment group), a non-maths app that required similar interactions to engage with the software as with the maths app (placebo group), or standard teacher-led mathematical practice (control group). Before and after the 8-week intervention period children were assessed on mathematics and core cognitive skills. Results showed the maths app intervention supported significant and independent gains in mathematics and visual attention. Increases in visual attention were attributable only to interactions with the maths app. No significant benefits to attention were found from using the tablet device with non-maths software or standard class-based mathematical practice. These results suggest that high-quality interactive, educational apps can significantly improve attentional processing in addition to the scholastic skills targeted by the intervention

Bacteriophages limit the existence conditions for conjugative plasmids

Bacteriophages are a major cause of bacterial mortality and impose strong selection on natural bacterial populations, yet their effects on the dynamics of conjugative plasmids have rarely been tested. We combined experimental evolution, mathematical modeling, and individual-based simulations to explain how the ecological and population genetics effects of bacteriophages upon bacteria interact to determine the dynamics of conjugative plasmids and their persistence. The ecological effects of bacteriophages on bacteria are predicted to limit the existence conditions for conjugative plasmids, preventing persistence under weak selection for plasmid accessory traits. Experiments showed that phages drove faster extinction of plasmids in environments where the plasmid conferred no benefit, but they also revealed more complex effects of phages on plasmid dynamics under these conditions, specifically, the temporary maintenance of plasmids at fixation followed by rapid loss. We hypothesized that the population genetic effects of bacteriophages, specifically, selection for phage resistance mutations, may have caused this. Further mathematical modeling and individual-based simulations supported our hypothesis, showing that conjugative plasmids may hitchhike with phage resistance mutations in the bacterial chromosome

QTL for feed intake and associated traits

The document attached has been archived with permission from the World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production.In typical beef cattle production systems, the breeding herd accounts for 65-85% of the total feed requirements (Ferrell and Jenkins, 1984 ; Montaldo-Bermudez et al., 1990) and 65-75% of this is used for maintenance. Primarily, the very large maintenance requirement is because cattle are a large, slowly maturing species with a low annual reproductive rate. Furthermore, only a single product is harvested (meat). Any improvement in the efficiency with which breeding cows maintain body weight, will result in an increase in total meat production for a given amount of feed. The key to selection for increased efficiency is to be able to accurately measure feed intake, a trait that is both difficult and expensive to measure. A less expensive alternative would be to use a DNA test for markers of genes affecting intake. This approach has the potential to significantly reduce the generation interval. The aim of this project is to locate regions (quantitative trait loci, QTL) in the cattle genome that contain genes affecting intake.W.S. Pitchford, M.L. Fenton, A.J. Kister and C.D.K. Bottem

Evaluation of a Remote Sensor for Mobile Source CO Emissions

Carbon monoxide (CO) emission measurements of thousands of vehicles per day are possible with a recently evaluated remote sensor developed at the University of Denver. Funded by the Environmental Monitoring Systems Laboratory - Las Vegas (EMSL- LV) Innovative Research Program, the evaluation has demonstrated the comparability of volume concentration measurements made by this method with traditional emission monitoring instrumentation. Measurements are made unobtrusively as vehicles pass through an infrared light beam directed across one traffic lane about 25 centimeters above the pavement. A video camera records the vehicle registration number of each vehicle as its CO emissions are measured so that characteristics of individual vehicles and vehicle fleet categories can be associated with each measurement. Determining appropriate applications and monitoring protocols for this technology is the second phase of this Innovative Research Project. Similar remote sensing technology for monitoring mobile hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions can be developed to address the urban ozone non-attainment problem

On the multiplicity of ALMA Compact Array counterparts of far-infrared bright quasars

We present ALMA Atacama Compact Array (ACA) 870 micron continuum maps of 28 infrared-bright SDSS quasars with Herschel/SPIRE detections at redshifts 2-4, the largest such sample ever observed with ALMA. The ACA detections are centred on the SDSS coordinates to within 1 arcsec for about 80 per cent of the sample. Larger offsets indicate that the far-infrared (FIR) emission detected by Herschel might come from a companion source. The majority of the objects (about 70 per cent) have unique ACA counterparts within the SPIRE beam down to 3-4 arcsec resolution. Only 30 per cent of the sample shows clear evidence for multiple sources with secondary counterparts contributing to the total 870 micron flux within the SPIRE beam to at least 25 per cent. We discuss the limitations of the data based on simulated pairs of point-like sources at the resolution of the ACA and present an extensive comparison of our findings with recent works on the multiplicities of sub-millimetre galaxies. We conclude that, despite the coarse resolution of the ACA, our data support the idea that, for a large fraction of FIR-bright quasars, the sub-mm emission comes from single sources. Our results suggest that, on average, optically bright quasars with strong FIR emission are not triggered by early-stage mergers but are, instead, together with their associated star formation rates, the outcome of either late-stage mergers or secular processes.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figure

Obstacle avoidance in social groups: : new insights from asynchronous models

For moving animals, the successful avoidance of hazardous obstacles is an important capability. Despite this, few models of collective motion have addressed the relationship between behavioural and social features and obstacle avoidance. We develop an asynchronous individual-based model for social movement which allows social structure within groups to be included. We assess the dynamics of group navigation and resulting collision risk in the context of information transfer through the system. In agreement with previous work, we find that group size has a nonlinear effect on collision risk. We implement examples of possible network structures to explore the impact social preferences have on collision risk. We show that any social heterogeneity induces greater obstacle avoidance with further improvements corresponding to groups containing fewer influential individuals. The model provides a platform for both further theoretical investigation and practical application. In particular, we argue that the role of social structures within bird flocks may have an important role to play in assessing the risk of collisions with wind turbines, but that new methods of data analysis are needed to identify these social structures