To assess and be assessed: Upper secondary school students’ narratives of credibility judgements

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how students construct narratives of themselves as information seekers in a school context where their descriptions of their information activities are assessed and graded. Design/methodology/approach – Blog posts on credibility judgements written by 28 students at a Swedish upper secondary school were analysed through a bottom-up coding process based in the sociocultural concept of narratives of selves. Findings – Two tensions in the students’ accounts are identified. The first tension is that between the description of the individual, independent student and the description of the good group member. The second tension is between describing oneself as an independent information seeker and at the same time as someone who seeks information in ways that are sanctioned within the school setting. Research limitations/implications – The study focuses on a specific social practice and on situated activities, but also illustrates some aspects of information activities that pertain to educational contexts in general. It explores how social norms related to credibility judgements are expressed and negotiated in discursive interaction. Practical implications – The study highlights that when information activities become objects of assessment, careful consideration of what aspects are meant to be assessed is necessary. Originality/value – The study is based on the idea of information activities as socially and discursively shaped, and it illustrates some of the consequences when information activities become objects of teaching, learning, and grading

Intimate partner violence and health-related quality of life in European men and women: findings from the DOVE study

Purpose: Little is known on the specific relation between being a perpetrator or both a victim and perpetrator of intimate partner violence (IPV) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). We assessed the association between HRQoL and abuse, considering men and women as victims, perpetrators or reciprocally. Methods: Participants were adult men and women (n = 3,496), randomly selected from the general population of six European cities. The Revised-Conflict-Tactics-Scales and the Medical-Outcomes-Study 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36) were used to measure IPV and HRQoL. The age-, education-, and city-adjusted mean scores[standard error] of the physical and of the mental SF-36 component summaries were used to compare victims-only, perpetrators-only, and those involved in both (bidirectional or reciprocal cases) with those not involved in past-year and lifetime physical assault and/or sexual coercion. Results: The physical component summary was significantly lower in women involved in past-year bidirectional physical assault compared with non-abused women. The mental component summary in women not involved in IPV was significantly higher than in those physically abused, regardless of type of involvement. Women victims-only of past-year sexual coercion and victims or involved in bidirectional concomitant physical and sexual IPV also presented lower scores in the mental component summary than women not involved in IPV. In men, significantly lower scores in the mental component summary were found in the past-year bidirectional physically assaulted group and among those involved bidirectionally in both physical and sexual IPV compared with men not involved in IPV. Conclusion: Experiencing physical and sexual IPV is negatively associated with HRQoL. Lower scores in the mental component summary of the SF-36 are evident among female victims and among males and females involved in intimate partner violence as both victims and perpetrators when compared to females and males not involved in violence

The impact of intimate partner violence on forgone healthcare: a population-based, multicentre European study

Background: To examine the relationship between forgone healthcare and involvement in intimate partner violence (IPV) as victims, perpetrators or both. Methods:This cross-sectional multicentre study assessed community non-institutionalized residents (n = 3496, aged 18–64) randomly selected from six European cities: Athens, Budapest, London, Östersund, Porto, Stuttgart. A common questionnaire was used, including self-reports of IPV and forgone healthcare (‘Have you been in need of a certain care service in the past year, but did not seek any help?’). Odds ratios (ORs), 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were computed fitting logistic regression models adjusted for city, chronic disease, self-assessed health status and financial strain. Results: Participants experiencing past year IPV (vs. no violence) reported more often to forgone healthcare (n = 3279, 18.6% vs. 15.3%, P = 0.016). IPV experienced as both a victim and perpetrator was associated with forgone healthcare (adjusted OR, 95%CI: 1.32, 1.02–1.70). Conclusion: IPV was associated with forgone healthcare, particularly for those experiencing violence as both victims and perpetrators. Results suggest that preventing IPV among adults may improve timely healthcare uptake

Contextual determinants of Intimate Partner Violence: a multi-level analysis in six European cities

Objectives: To assess whether city-level characteristics influence the risk of intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization across six European cities. Methods: The DOVE Study included 3496 participants from Athens-Greece, Budapest-Hungary, London-UK, Östersund-Sweden, Porto-Portugal and Stuttgart-Germany. IPV victimization was assessed using the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales and several contextual variables were included: GINI coefficient, gender equality index, an index of social support, unemployment rate and proportion of residents with tertiary education. Multilevel models were fitted to estimate the associations (Odds ratio, 95% Confidence Intervals) between each type of victimization and contextual and individual-level variables. Results: 62.3% of the participants reported being a victim of IPV during the previous year, with large between-city differences (53.9%-72.4%). Contextual variables accounted for a substantial amount of this heterogeneity. Unemployment rates were associated with psychological (1.05, 1.01-1.08) and physical IPV (1.07, 1.01-1.13). GINI coefficient showed a positive association with any form of IPV (1.06, 1.01-1.11) and sexual coercion (1.13, 1.01-1.25). Conclusions: We found significant associations between contextual determinants and IPV, which emphasizes the importance of considering contextual socioeconomic conditions when policy measures are designed to address IPV

Finite-gap equations for strings on AdS_3 x S^3 x T^4 with mixed 3-form flux

We study superstrings on AdS_3 x S^3 x T^4 supported by a combination of Ramond-Ramond and Neveu-Schwarz-Neveu-Schwarz three form fluxes, and construct a set of finite-gap equations that describe the classical string spectrum. Using the recently proposed all-loop S-matrix we write down the all-loop Bethe ansatz equations for the massive sector. In the thermodynamic limit the Bethe ansatz reproduces the finite-gap equations. As part of this derivation we propose expressions for the leading order dressing phases. These phases differ from the well-known Arutyunov-Frolov-Staudacher phase that appears in the pure Ramond-Ramond case. We also consider the one-loop quantization of the algebraic curve and determine the one-loop corrections to the dressing phases. Finally we consider some classical string solutions including finite size giant magnons and circular strings.Comment: 44 pages, 3 figures. v2: references and a discussion about perturbative results adde

Classical integrability and quantum aspects of the AdS(3) x S(3) x S(3) x S(1) superstring

In this paper we continue the investigation of aspects of integrability of the type IIA AdS(3) x S(3) x S(3) x S(1) and AdS(3) x S(3) x T(4) superstrings. By constructing a one parameter family of flat connections we prove that the Green-Schwarz string is classically integrable, at least to quadratic order in fermions, without fixing the kappa-symmetry. We then compare the quantum dispersion relation, fixed by integrability up to an unknown interpolating function h(lambda), to explicit one-loop calculations on the string worldsheet. For AdS(3) x S(3) x S(3) x S(1) the spectrum contains heavy, as well as light and massless modes, and we find that the one-loop contribution differs depending on how we treat these modes showing that similar regularization ambiguities as appeared in AdS(4)/CFT(3) occur also here.Comment: 29 pages; v2: updated references and acknowledgmen

The low-energy limit of AdS(3)/CFT2 and its TBA

We investigate low-energy string excitations in AdS3 × S3 × T4. When the worldsheet is decompactified, the theory has gapless modes whose spectrum at low energies is determined by massless relativistic integrable S matrices of the type introduced by Al. B. Zamolodchikov. The S matrices are non-trivial only for excitations with identical worldsheet chirality, indicating that the low-energy theory is a CFT2. We construct a Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz (TBA) for these excitations and show how the massless modes’ wrapping effects may be incorporated into the AdS3 spectral problem. Using the TBA and its associated Y-system, we determine the central charge of the low-energy CFT2 to be c = 6 from calculating the vacuum energy for antiperiodic fermions — with the vacuum energy being zero for periodic fermions in agreement with a supersymmetric theory — and find the energies of some excited states

Light-cone gauge Hamiltonian for AdS_4 x CP^3 superstring

It is developed the phase-space formulation for the Type IIA superstring on the AdS_4 x CP^3 background in the kappa-symmetry light-cone gauge for which the light-like directions are taken from the D=3 Minkowski boundary of AdS_4. After fixing bosonic light-cone gauge the superstring Hamiltonian is expressed as a function of the transverse physical variables and in the quadratic approximation corresponds to the light-cone gauge-fixed IIA superstring in flat space.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX; v2 minor improvements of the text, misprints corrected, reference added; v3: missing terms in Eqs.(8),(53) and (56) adde