Evaluating the impact of career management skills module and internship programme within a university business school

This study evaluates the impact of an intervention on business school graduates’ employability comprising of a curriculum-based career management skills (CMS) module and an industrial placement year. The study uses data from the destinations of leavers of higher education survey to examine the employability of different groups within the cohort (no intervention, CMS module only and CMS module plus structured work experience). It finds that structured work experience has clear, positive effects on the ability of graduates to secure employment in ‘graduate level’ jobs within six months of graduation. Furthermore, participation in the CMS module also has a clear, positive effect upon the ability of participants to secure employment

Reducing drug related deaths : a pre-implementation assessment of knowledge,barriers and enablers for naloxone distribution through general practice

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A Multi-Level Analysis of the Impacts of Services Provided By the UK Employment Retention and Advancement Demonstration

Background: The United Kingdom Employment Retention and Advancement (U.K. ERA) demonstration was the largest and most comprehensive social experiment ever conducted in the United Kingdom. It examined the extent to which a combination of postemployment advisory support and financial incentives could help lone parents on welfare to find sustained employment with prospects for advancement. ERA was experimentally tested across more than 50 public employment service offices and, within each office, individuals were randomly assigned to either a program (or treatment) group (eligible for ERA) or a control group (not eligible). Method: article presents the results of a multilevel nonexperimental analysis that examines the variation in office-level impacts and attempts to understand what services provided in the offices tend to be associated with impacts. Result: The analysis suggests that impacts were greater in offices that emphasized in-work advancement, support while working and financial bonuses for sustained employment, and also in those offices that assigned more caseworkers to ERA participants. Offices that encouraged further education had smaller employment impacts. Conclusion: Plausible results are obtained identifying those particular implementation features that tended to be linked to stronger impacts of ERA. The methodology employed also allows the identification of which services are associated with employment and welfare receipt of control families receiving benefits under the traditional New Deal for Lone Parent program

A theory-based approach to understanding condom errors and problems reported by men attending an STI clinic

The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2008 Springer VerlagWe employed the information–motivation–behavioral skills (IMB) model to guide an investigation of correlates for correct condom use among 278 adult (18–35 years old) male clients attending a sexually transmitted infection (STI) clinic. An anonymous questionnaire aided by a CD-recording of the questions was administered. Linear Structural Relations Program was used to conduct path analyses of the hypothesized IMB model. Parameter estimates showed that while information did not directly affect behavioral skills, it did have a direct (negative) effect on condom use errors. Motivation had a significant direct (positive) effect on behavioral skills and a significant indirect (positive) effect on condom use errors through behavioral skills. Behavioral skills had a direct (negative) effect on condom use errors. Among men attending a public STI clinic, these findings suggest brief, clinic-based, safer sex programs for men who have sex with women should incorporate activities to convey correct condom use information, instill motivation to use condoms correctly, and directly enhance men’s behavioral skills for correct use of condoms

Service evaluation of weight outcomes as a function of initial BMI in 34,271 adults referred to a primary care/commercial weight management partnership scheme

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Law of Society: Governance Through Contract

This paper focuses on contract law as a central field in contemporary regulatory practice. In recent years, governance by contract has emerged as the central concept in the context of domestic privatization, domestic and transnational commercial relations and law-and-development projects. Meanwhile, as a result of the neo-formalist attack on contract law, governance of contract through contract adjudication, consumer protection law and judicial intervention into private law relations has come under severe pressure. Building on early historical critique of the formalist foundations of an allegedly private law of the market, the paper assesses the current justifications for contractual governance and posits that only an expanded legal realist perspective can adequately explain the complex nature of contractual agreements in contemporary practice. The paper argues for an understanding of contracts as complex societal arrangements that visibilize and negotiate conflicting rationalities and interests. Institutionally, contractual governance has been unfolding in a complex, historically grown and ideologically continually contested regulatory field. Governance through contract, then, denotes a wide field of conflicting concepts, ideas and symbols, that are themselves deeply entrenched in theories of society, market and the state. From this perspective, we are well advised to study contracts in their socio-economic, historical and cultural context. A careful reading of scholars such as Henry Sumner Maine, Morris Cohen, Robert Hale, Karl Llewellyn, Stewart Macaulay and Ian Macneil offers a deeper understanding of the institutional and normative dimensions of contractual governance. Their analysis is particularly helpful in assessing currently ongoing shifts away from a welfare state based regulation (governance) of contractual relations. Such shifts are occurring on two levels. First, they take place against the backdrop of a neo-liberal critique of government interference into allegedly private relations. Secondly, the increasingly influential return to formalism in contract law, which privileges a functionalist, purportedly technical and autonomous design and execution of contractual agreements over the view of regulated contracts, is linked to a particular concept of sovereignty. The ensuing revival of freedom of contract occurs in remarkable neglect of the experiences of welfare state adjudication of private law adjudication and a continuing contestation of the political in private relationships. The paper takes up the Legal Realists\u27 search for the \u27basis of contract\u27, but seeks to redirect the focus from the traditional perspective on state vs. market to a disembedded understanding of contractual governance as delineating multipolar and multirational regulatory regimes. Where Globalization has led to a fragmentation, disembeddedness and transnationalization of contexts and, thus, has been challenging traditional understanding of embeddedness, the task should no longer be to try applying a largely nation-state oriented Legal Realist perspective and critique to the sphere of contemporary contractual governance, but - rather - to translate its aims into a more reflexive set of instruments of legal critique. Even if Globalization has led to a dramatic denationalization of many regulatory fields and functions, it is still not clear, whether and how Globalization replaces, complements or aggravates transformations of societal governance, with and through contract

A prospective study to assess the value of MMP-9 in improving the appropriateness of urgent referrals for colorectal cancer

Background Bowel cancer is common and is a major cause of death. Most people with bowel symptoms who meet the criteria for urgent referral to secondary care will not be found to have bowel cancer, and some people who are found to have cancer will have been referred routinely rather than urgently. If general practitioners could better identify people who were likely to have bowel cancer or conditions that may lead to bowel cancer, the pressure on hospital clinics may be reduced, enabling these patients to be seen more quickly. Increased levels of an enzyme called matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9) have been found to be associated with such conditions, and this can be measured from a blood sample. This study aims to find out whether measuring MMP-9 levels could improve the appropriateness of urgent referrals for patients with bowel symptoms. Methods People aged 18 years or older referred to a colorectal clinic will be asked to complete a questionnaire about symptoms, recent injuries or chronic illnesses (these can increase the level of matrix metalloproteinases) and family history of bowel cancer. A blood sample will be taken from people who consent to take part to assess MMP-9 levels, and the results of examination at the clinic and/or investigations arising from the clinic visit will be collected from hospital records. The accuracy of MMP-9 will be assessed by comparing the MMP-9 level with the resulting diagnosis. The combination of factors (e.g. symptoms and MMP-9 level) that best predict a diagnosis of malignancy (invasive disease or polyps) will be determined. Discussion Although guidelines are in place to facilitate referrals to colorectal clinics, symptoms alone do not adequately distinguish people with malignancy from people with benign conditions. This study will establish whether MMP-9 could assist this process. If this were the case, measurement of MMP-9 levels could be used by general practitioners to assist in the identification of people who were most likely to have bowel cancer or conditions that may lead to bowel cancer, and who should, therefore, be referred most urgently to secondary car

Dynamical Interference in the Vibronic Bond Breaking Reaction of HCO

First-principles treatments of quantum molecular reaction dynamics have reached the level of quantitative accuracy even in cases with strong non-Born-Oppenheimer effects. This achievement permits the interpretation of puzzling experimental phenomena related to dynamics governed by multiple coupled potential energy surfaces. We present a combined experimental and theoretical study of the photodissociation of formyl radical (HCO). Oscillations observed in the distribution of product states are found to arise from the interference of matter waves-a manifestation analogous to Young\u27s double-slit experiment