‘I enjoyed it because … you could do whatever you wanted and be creative’: three principles for participatory research and pedagogy

The complexity of many children’s lives can result in their ideas being neither understood nor included in mainstream opportunities for learning, particularly children who are living with disadvantage. With a focus on developing ethical and inclusive principles for participatory research and pedagogy, this paper reports on a pilot project where we worked with young, hard-to-reach individuals across four sites in England to enable them to design and carry out research about their experiences and views of disadvantage. Here, we present snapshots of the young participants’ choices of research topics and methods, which reflected their own lives and interests, and led to powerful visualizations of the complexity of child and youth disadvantage. Reflecting back on the project, we discuss effective ways to initiate and sustain participatory research that can enable young researchers to be involved as active and empowered agents at every stage of the research process. We also consider the implications for developing participatory pedagogy, with researchers working alongside educators to create school cultures that foster belonging and genuinely support all students’ expertise and ways of knowing by looking beyond the school buildings and into their lives in the wider community

Correction to: Cluster identification, selection, and description in Cluster randomized crossover trials: the PREP-IT trials

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article

Gaining and losing social support: Momentum in decision-making groups.

This paper addressed the question, is there a momentum effect in decision-making groups? That is, does movement toward a decision alternative encourage further similar movement? In the first two of three experiments, the movement of group members toward or away from a subject's preference was manipulated while holding constant the content of group discussion. The only significant effect of such shifts in position was an antimomentum effect; e.g., subjects were less likely to move toward an alternative which had gained a supporter than if no such shift in position had occurred. These experiments also demonstrated that the inverse relationship between overall level of support and likelihood of changing one's position (the “strength-in-numbers” effect) was not solely attributable to larger factions' ability to generate more arguments than smaller factions. In a final experiment, subjects were given an opportunity to defend their preference; under these conditions, the loss of a supporter might result in momentum-producing attributions (e.g., my arguments are unconvincing). However, these experimental conditions did not produce a momentum effect. Analyses of the content of subjects' speech paralleled the data on opinion change in these and previous studies—subjects were much more sensitive to current levels of support than to changes in the level of support. The antimomentum effect observed in Experiment 2 was attributed to a sensitivity to both one's current and past levels of support in the group

Unstable Proximal Femur Fractures Treated With Proximal Femoral Locking Plates: A Retrospective, Multicenter Study of 111 Cases

Objectives: A few small case series have found that proximal femur fractures treated with a proximal femur locking plate (PFLP) have experienced more failures than expected. The purpose of this study was to review the clinical results of patients with acute, unstable proximal femur fractures treated with proximal femoral locking plates in a large, multicenter patient cohort. Design: This is a retrospective clinical study. Setting: The study included patients from 12 regional trauma centers and tertiary referral hospitals. Patients: One hundred eleven consecutive patients with unstable proximal femur fractures stabilized with a PFLP and having required clinical and radiographic follow-up at a minimum of 12 months after injury. Intervention: Surgical repair of an unstable proximal femur fracture with a PFLP. Main outcome measurements: Treatment failures (failure of fixation, nonunion, and malunion) and need for revision surgery. Results: Forty-six patients (41.4%) experienced a major treatment failure, including failed fixation with or without nonunion (39), surgical malalignment or malunion (18), deep infection (8), or a combination of these. Thirty-eight (34%) patients underwent secondary surgeries, including 30 for failed fixation, nonunion, or both. Treatment failure was found to occur at a significantly higher rate in patients with major comorbidities, in femurs repaired in varus malalignment, and using specific plate designs. Conclusions: Proximal femoral locking plates are associated with a high complication rate, frequently requiring revision or secondary surgeries in the treatment of unstable proximal femur fractures. Given the high complication rate with PFLPs, careful attention to reduction, use of a PFLP implant, and consideration should be given to alternative implants or fixation techniques when appropriate. Level of Evidence: Therapeutic Level IV. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence