Confidentiality and public protection: ethical dilemmas in qualitative research with adult male sex offenders

This paper considers the ethical tensions present when engaging in in-depth interviews with convicted sex offenders. Many of the issues described below are similar to those found in other sensitive areas of research. However, confidentiality and public protection are matters that require detailed consideration when the desire to know more about men who have committed serious and harmful offences is set against the possibility of a researcher not disclosing previously unknown sensitive information that relates to the risk of someone being harmed.</p

Applied utility and the auto-ethnographic short story: persuasions for, and illustrations of, writing critical social science

In some quarters it is argued that, narrative researchers might be classified as being either storyanalysts or storytellers. They go on to suggest that one feature of storytellers is that they undertake a form of analysis as the process of writing unfolds. With these sentiments in mind, in the present paper, we consider how auto-ethnographical accounts of traumatic and challenging life events might, through the analysis contained within, demonstrate value within the realm of applied pedagogy. In making our case we embrace and adapt the literary genre of storytelling, more specifically, the short story. The story presented here, ‘Travel Writer’, offers an opaque, multicontextualised and lifelong view of career transition. The present paper, in more general terms, considers the capacity of auto-ethnography and, more specifically, the short storied version of it, to engender critical reader engagement, to encourage personal reflection in others, and to act as a point of stimulus for the enactment of applied debate through the lens of critical social science. With regards to the assumptions of critical social science, the final discussion also considers how the auto-ethnographic text, as a pedagogic tool, might help others to contest and challenge the meta-narratives that, we argue, risk stagnating established thinking

Does the risk of childhood diabetes mellitus require revision of the guideline values for nitrate in drinking water?

In recent years, several studies have addressed a possible relationship between nitrate exposure and childhood type 1 insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. The present ecologic study describes a possible relation between the incidence of type 1 diabetes and nitrate levels in drinking water in The Netherlands, and evaluates whether the World Health Organization and the European Commission standard for nitrate in drinking water (50 mg/L) is adequate to prevent risk of this disease. During 1993-1995 in The Netherlands, 1,104 cases of type 1 diabetes were diagnosed in children 0-14 years of age. We were able to use 1,064 of these cases in a total of 2,829,020 children in this analysis. We classified mean nitrate levels in drinking water in 3,932 postal code areas in The Netherlands in 1991-1995 into two exposure categories. One category was based on equal numbers of children exposed to different nitrate levels (0.25-2.08, 2.10-6.42, and 6.44-41.19 mg/L nitrate); the other was based on cut-off values of 10 and 25 mg/L nitrate. We determined standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) for type 1 diabetes in subgroups of the 2,829,020 children with respect to both nitrate exposure categories, sex, and age and as compared in univariate analysis using the chi-square test for trend. We compared the incidence rate ratios (IRRs) by multivariate analysis in a Poisson regression model. We found an effect of increasing age of the children on incidence of type 1 diabetes, but we did not find an effect of sex or of nitrate concentration in drinking water using the two exposure categories. For nitrate levels > 25 mg/L, an increased SIR and an increased IRR of 1.46 were observed; however, this increase was not statistically significant, probably because of the small number of cases (15 of 1,064). We concluded that there is no convincing evidence that nitrate in drinking water at current exposure levels is a risk factor for childhood type 1 diabetes mellitus in The Netherlands, although a threshold value > 25 mg/L for the occurrence of this disease can not be excluded

Human behaviour and economic growth: a psychocultural perspective on local and regional development

A renewed emphasis on behavioural traits has emerged as a means of explaining regional and local differences in economic performance and development. Given this, the aim of this study is to identify distinct local psychocultural behavioural profiles and to examine the extent to which these are associated with economic growth. Combining theories of community culture and personality psychology into a holistic spatially-oriented perspective, the paper argues that the types of human behaviour found across local places emerges from the co-evolution of cultural and personality factors. An empirical analysis of localities in Great Britain identifies and explores three underlying psychocultural profiles: Diverse Extraversion; Inclusive Amenability and Individual Commitment. It is found that inclusive amenable and individually committed psychocultural behaviour generally appear to hold back local economic growth, with the exception of recessionary periods. The reverse relationship is somewhat the case for diverse extravert behaviour. It is concluded that a better understanding of the holistic relationship and co-evolution of the cultural and psychological behavioural make-up of localities and regions has the potential to provide new insights into expected development outcomes as well as the forms of policy intervention that are required within regions and localities, each of which has its own individual psychocultural character

The politics of access in fieldwork: Immersion, backstage dramas and deception

YesGaining access in fieldwork is crucial to the success of research, and may often be problematic because it involves working in complex social situations. This paper examines the intricacies of access, conceptualizing it as a fluid, temporal and political process that requires sensitivity to social issues and to potential ethical choices faced by both researchers and organization members. Our contribution lies in offering ways in which researchers can reflexively negotiate the challenges of access by: 1. Underscoring the complex and relational nature of access by conceptualizing three relational perspectives – instrumental, transactional and relational – proposing the latter as a strategy for developing a diplomatic sensitivity to the politics of access; 2. Explicating the political, ethical and emergent nature of access by framing it as an ongoing process of immersion, backstage dramas, and deception; and 3. Offering a number of relational micropractices to help researchers negotiate the complexities of access. We illustrate the challenges of gaining and maintaining access through examples from the literature and from Rafael’s attempts to gain access to carry out fieldwork in a Police Force

Shifting perspectives on coastal impacts and adaptation

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports reflect evolving attitudes in adapting to sea-level rise by taking a systems approach and recognizing that multiple responses exist to achieve a less hazardous coast.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Culture, entrepreneurship and uneven development: a spatial analysis

Interest in the proposed connection between culture and entrepreneurship has grown significantly in recent years. However, less attention has been given to the nature of the overall impact of this proposed association on development outcomes, particularly at a local level. In response, this paper analyses the relationship between the nature of the culture, entrepreneurship and development experienced across localities, proposing that the link between culture and development is mediated by entrepreneurship. It focuses upon the concept of community culture, as well as embracing a notion of development incorporating both economic and social well-being outcomes. Drawing upon a multivariate spatial analysis of data from localities in Great Britain, the findings indicate that differences in rates of entrepreneurship are strongly influenced by the community culture present in these localities. Furthermore, a bidirectional relationship is found to exist between entrepreneurship and economic and social development outcomes. It is concluded that the embeddedness of local community culture presents a significant challenge for those places seeking to promote entrepreneurially-driven development

What are communities of practice? A comparative review of four seminal works

This paper is a comparative review of four seminal works on communities of practice. It is argued that the ambiguities of the terms community and practice are a source of the concept's reusability allowing it to be reappropriated for different purposes, academic and practical. However, it is potentially confusing that the works differ so markedly in their conceptualizations of community, learning, power and change, diversity and informality. The three earlier works are underpinned by a common epistemological view, but Lave and Wenger's 1991 short monograph is often read as primarily about the socialization of newcomers into knowledge by a form of apprenticeship, while the focus in Brown and Duguid's article of the same year is, in contrast, on improvising new knowledge in an interstitial group that forms in resistance to management. Wenger's 1998 book treats communities of practice as the informal relations and understandings that develop in mutual engagement on an appropriated joint enterprise, but his focus is the impact on individual identity. The applicability of the concept to the heavily individualized and tightly managed work of the twenty-first century is questionable. The most recent work by Wenger – this time with McDermott and Snyder as coauthors – marks a distinct shift towards a managerialist stance. The proposition that managers should foster informal horizontal groups across organizational boundaries is in fact a fundamental redefinition of the concept. However it does identify a plausible, if limited, knowledge management (KM) tool. This paper discusses different interpretations of the idea of 'co-ordinating' communities of practice as a management ideology of empowerment