Capturing what is of value to children : a study exploring the challenges, advantages and issues of participatory research with 5 and 6 year olds

Listening to young children in order to elicit their views, consider their perceptions, and act upon their ideas has become increasingly prominent in policy and research with children. Momentum has gathered in this area since the 1989 United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child and the Children’s Act (2004) in the United Kingdom. These documents committed British policy to the inclusion of children’s voices in matters and services which impact on their lives. Educational research which promotes children’s voices tends to be dominated with projects which include older children, either in the upper stages of their primary education and above, or based in preschool and the transitional phase into schooling. This research gathers perceptions from three cohorts of children in Year 1 (aged 5-6) in England to find out what is important to them and considers the challenges and opportunities which these perceptions present. Using hand-held video cameras as a method of data collection the children filmed what was important to them. A range of activities were developed to support the children in their filming. These included puppetry, drawing, guided tours, interviewing, play and opportunities for filming at home. The children and their class teachers were invited to review and discuss the video clips with the researcher. A thematic content analysis was used to code and categorise the data. A reflexive approach is woven into the methodological discussion and is followed throughout the analysis and findings of the research. Findings indicate that the video methods used to capture children’s perceptions present ethical and methodological challenges. Despite this, the methods are advantageous in enabling a range of multi-faceted and complex relationships to come to the fore. Issues of personal ‘things’, space, rules and boundaries, both at home and at school draw attention to the environmental, physical and non-physical ‘containment’ which impacts on children’s lives. Teachers’ responses to the children’s video footage were influenced by their professional epistemology and experiences

Common Boundaries: Moving Toward Coordinated and Sustainable Planning on the Oneida Reservation

Comprehensive planning can help communities engage in purposeful and sustainable land use development. Previous research has indicated that Indian reservations in the United States often face unique roadblocks to these planning efforts: checkerboard patterns of tribal and nontribal ownership, and the presence of both tribal and local governments exercising land use authority within the same shared space. These roadblocks can lead to uncooperative, uncoordinated, or unsustainable development. Despite these noted problems, there remains an important gap in the current literature regarding solutions to overcome these roadblocks. The purpose of this study was to address that gap. Guided by Forester\u27s critical planning theory to critically examine the social and historical roots of planning within a particular community, this qualitative case study examined government records and conducted 18 interviews of tribal and local government officials. Data analysis consisted of coding data to reveal emergent themes relating to cooperative land use planning in the future. These themes included: (a) approaching planning with a regional philosophy in mind, (b) strengthening interpersonal relationships, (c) finding ways to fairly compensate each other for government services, (d) continuing to acknowledge each government\u27s ability to govern within this shared space, and (e) refraining from asserting authority over a neighboring government. This research is an important contribution to the existing literature and enhances social change initiatives by providing guidance for tribal and local government officials to increase cooperative land use planning

The epidemiology and pathology of Paranannizziopsis australasiensis in New Zealand reptiles : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Veterinary Science in Wildlife Health at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Paranannizziopsis australasiensis, has recently been diagnosed in tuatara at two captive facilities in New Zealand. This newly emerging fungal pathogen, is a member of the onygenalean fungal group formally known as Chrysosporium anamorph of Nannizziopsis vriesii (CANV). Fungi of this genera are thought to be obligate primary pathogens in reptiles, and closely related species such as Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola, and Nannizziopsis guarroi have caused significant morbidity and mortalities in captive and wild reptile populations. The detection of this disease raised concerns for wild and captive population health and resulted in a temporary cessation of tuatara breed and release programmes from affected facilities. Similar lesions have been reported in tuatara at multiple other captive facilities in New Zealand, but lack of veterinary assessment and, until recently, inadequate diagnostic capabilities has led to an inability to confirm the presence or absence of P. australasiensis in these populations. This research aimed to investigate the epidemiology of P. australasiensis in New Zealand wild and captive endemic reptiles. Skin samples were collected from nine captive, six wild and two ecosanctuary populations of tuatara across New Zealand. Skin samples from in contact geckos and skinks were opportunistically collected to determine the possible cross species infection of P. australasiensis. Samples were tested for presence of P. australasiensis by fungal culture followed by PCR, and by loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP). Soil samples were collected from burrows, basking areas and captive enclosures and analysed by LAMP to determine the presence of P. australasiensis within the environment. Paranannizziopsis australasiensis was found to be wide spread in New Zealand captive and wild reptile populations. In populations where the pathogen was detected prevalence varied between 6.7% and 44.4% for tuatara, 3.8% and 40% for geckos and 6.7% and 66.7% for skinks. A low virulence of disease associated with infection was seen in tuatara across New Zealand, with many LAMP positive tuatara being asymptomatic. Increased severity of disease was seen in two captive tuatara, where ii other concurrent disease was present. One fatality was reported. In other reptile hosts, no disease was identified, and it is suspected these species act as reservoirs for the transmission of this organism to tuatara. Paranannizziopsis australasiensis was detected multiple times in soil samples and may survive as an environmental saprophyte. Paranannizziopsis australasiensis appears to have a close association with New Zealand reptiles. The prevalence, distribution and pathology of P. australasiensis observed in this study suggests that this organism is not a threat to tuatara or other endemic reptile populations in New Zealand. The findings of this study have enabled restrictions placed on tuatara translocations, based on P. australasiensis status, to be removed

Influencing side-effects to medicinal treatments : a systematic review of brief psychological interventions

Background: Nocebo effects contribute to a large proportion of the non-specific side-effects attributed to medications and are mainly generated through negative expectations. Previous reviews show that interventions designed to change participants' expectations have a small effect on pain experience. They are also effective in reducing side-effects caused by exposure to sham medications. To date, there has been no review of the influence of such interventions on symptoms attributed to real medicinal treatments. Objective: To review studies using a randomized controlled design testing the effect of brief psychological interventions compared to usual practice on the side-effect experience to medicinal treatments in healthy volunteers and patients. Methods: We searched Web of Science, Scopus, Medline, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, and Cochrane CENTRAL using search terms for randomized controlled trials along with “nocebo,” “placebo effect,” “medication,” “side-effects,” and associated terms. Studies were eligible if they studied a human population, used an active medicine, delivered a brief psychological intervention intended to influence side-effect reporting compared to usual care or no intervention, and used a randomized controlled design. Because of the heterogeneity of the literature we used a narrative synthesis and assessed evidence quality using the GRADE approach. Results: Our database search and supplementary search of the reference sections of included studies retrieved 50,140 citations. After screening, full text review and manual reference searches, 27 studies were included. The quality of the studies and evidence was judged to be low. The strongest and most consistent effect came from omitting side-effect information, although surprisingly de-emphasizing side-effects did not affect side-effect reporting. Other techniques, including priming, distraction, and altering the perception of branding, produced mixed results. Conclusion: Brief psychological interventions can influence side-effect reporting to active medications. Research is currently investigating new ways to de-emphasize side-effects whilst still upholding informed consent, but larger confirmatory trials with suitable control groups are needed. The literature in this area would be improved by more detailed reporting of studies

Realising international human rights: Scotland on the global stage

Editorial to Special Issue of the International Journal of Human Rights

Does resilience mediate the relationship between emotion dysregulation and Generalised Anxiety Disorder?

The relationship between emotion dysregulation and Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) has been demonstrated in research for the past ten years, with the positing of the Emotion Dysregulation Model of GAD (Mennin et al., 2005). The role of resilience in buffering against mood disorders has also been investigated and resilience training has been successfully utilised as an adjunct to therapy for GAD (Fava et al., 2004). This research considers whether resilience mediates between emotion dysregulation and GAD. One hundred and eighty seven participants were recruited from online social media platforms and self-help forums and completed online questionnaires. These questionnaires included a measure of resilience, two measures of emotion regulation, a measure of worry, a measure of GAD symptoms, a depression measure and brief demographic questions. Participants were split into high and low GAD symptoms groups dependent on their score on the Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7 item questionnaire using a cut-off of 10 (Spitzer, Kroenke, William & Lowe, 2006). The results showed that participants in the high GAD symptoms group had significantly higher emotion dysregulation scores, lower resilience scores and were less likely to engage in adaptive emotion regulation strategies. Emotion dysregulation was also found to be a significant predictor of GAD symptoms. Resilience was not found to be a mediator between emotion dysregulation and GAD, however the relationship between emotion dysregulation and worry was partially mediated by resilience. This highlights potentially different mechanisms behind the pervasive worry experienced by those with GAD and GAD symptoms in general. This has important implications for future research and clinical interventions for GAD

Gutenberg goes neural : comparing features of Dutch human translations with raw neural machine translation outputs in a corpus of English literary classics

Due to the growing success of neural machine translation (NMT), many have started to question its applicability within the field of literary translation. In order to grasp the possibilities of NMT, we studied the output of the neural machine system of Google Translate (GNMT) and DeepL when applied to four classic novels translated from English into Dutch. The quality of the NMT systems is discussed by focusing on manual annotations, and we also employed various metrics in order to get an insight into lexical richness, local cohesion, syntactic, and stylistic difference. Firstly, we discovered that a large proportion of the translated sentences contained errors. We also observed a lower level of lexical richness and local cohesion in the NMTs compared to the human translations. In addition, NMTs are more likely to follow the syntactic structure of a source sentence, whereas human translations can differ. Lastly, the human translations deviate from the machine translations in style