Biography as empowerment or appropriation: Research and practice issues

Biographical methods are increasingly recognised as making a positive contribution to research and practice in health and social care, in particular claims for empowerment are frequently made. The authors evaluate this contribution and these claims, using a matrix with axes 'bottom up' to 'top down' and 'research' to 'practice', to position and reflect on examples of their own use of biographical methods in research

Gender, caring and learning disability

The thesis explores the meaning of caring in the lives of a group of people who are labelled as dependants, adults with learning difficulties. Through biographical interviews and documentary research the author examines how care for people with learning difficulties has developed over time in one local area; and the understandings people on the receiving end have of the care offered them by families and staff. The findings suggest that dependency is not acknowledged by the majority of people interviewed who present themselves as givers of care as much as recipients of care. The research identifies gender as an important variable in the way care and caring are understood and experienced. The research makes a contribution to the literatures on gender and caring; family; peer and staff relationships of adults with learning difficulties; the history of learning disability; and qualitative research with marginalised groups

Contraceptive choices for women with learning disabilities

‘Contraceptive choices for women with learning disabilities’ is an Open University research project, supported by a grant from Open Society Foundations (Grant No: OR2014-12989). This inclusive project set out to explore women’s contraceptive decision-making and sought to include women with mild to moderate learning disabilities as well as women with high support needs. Between December 2014 and April 2015 we interviewed 19 women living in several locations across the United Kingdom

Femtosecond Photoionization of Atoms under Noise

We investigate the effect of incoherent perturbations on atomic photoionization due to a femtosecond mid-infrared laser pulse by solving the time-dependent stochastic Schr\"odinger equation. For a weak laser pulse which causes almost no ionization, an addition of a Gaussian white noise to the pulse leads to a significantly enhanced ionization probability. Tuning the noise level, a stochastic resonance-like curve is observed showing the existence of an optimum noise for a given laser pulse. Besides studying the sensitivity of the obtained enhancement curve on the pulse parameters, such as the pulse duration and peak amplitude, we suggest that experimentally realizable broadband chaotic light can also be used instead of the white noise to observe similar features. The underlying enhancement mechanism is analyzed in the frequency-domain by computing a frequency-resolved atomic gain profile, as well as in the time-domain by controlling the relative delay between the action of the laser pulse and noise.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figure

History from the inside: towards an inclusive history of intellectual disability

This paper reviews the place of the ‘voice’ in the history of intellectual disability, drawing principally on developments in the UK, but also making reference to comparative developments in other countries. Various approaches have been used by research historians to collect and represent the voices of those involved in this history; including biographical reconstruction, oral history, institutional histories and life histories. In response to the challenge, ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’ the slogan of the disabled people's movement, the paper argues for the careful use of oral and biographical accounts to augment histories told through official sources and examines some of the methodological challenges associated with such approaches. However, the argument of this paper, ultimately, is in favour of what we are calling ‘inclusive history’, where academic historians and oral/life historians contribute to the development of a 'shared' history of intellectual disability

The impact of self‐advocacy organizations on the subjective well‐being of people with intellectual disabilities: A systematic review of the literature

Background: A high sense of subjective well‐being has been associated with more prosocial behaviours, better health, work productivity and positive relationships. The aim of this systematic review was to explore what impact self‐advocacy has on the subjective well‐being of people with intellectual disabilities. Method: The authors reviewed articles focusing on the perspectives of adults with intellectual disabilities engaged with self‐advocacy groups. Searches were performed in PsychINFO, Web of Science, SCOPUS, MEDLINE and CIHNL databases, resulting in 16 articles meeting the inclusion criteria. A framework synthesis approach was used to extract data deductively based on the Dynamic Model of Wellbeing. Results: While self‐advocacy has a positive impact on all domains of the Dynamic Model of Wellbeing, negative impacts associated with participation in a self‐advocacy group were also reported. Conclusions: The benefits of participating in self‐advocacy groups on the well‐being of individuals with intellectual disabilities outweigh the disadvantages

Perceptions of trends in Seychelles artisanal trap fisheries: comparing catch monitoring, underwater visual census and fishers' knowledge

Fisheries scientists and managers are increasingly engaging with fishers' knowledge (FK) to provide novel information and improve the legitimacy of fisheries governance. Disputes between the perceptions of fishers and scientists can generate conflicts for governance, but can also be a source of new perspectives or understandings. This paper compares artisanal trap fishers' reported current catch rates with landings data and underwater visual census (UVC). Fishers' reports of contemporary 'normal' catch per day tended to be higher than recent median landings records. However, fishers' reports of 'normal' catch per trap were not significantly different from the median CPUE calculated from landings data, and reports of 'good' and 'poor' catch rates were indicative of variability observed in landings data. FK, landings and UVC data all gave different perspectives of trends over a ten-year period. Fishers' perceptions indicated greater declines than statistical models fitted to landings data, while UVC evidence for trends varied between sites and according to the fish assemblage considered. Divergence in trend perceptions may have resulted from differences in the spatial, temporal or taxonomic focus of each dataset. Fishers may have experienced and understood behavioural changes and increased fishing power, which may have obscured declines from landings data. Various psychological factors affect memory and recall, and may have affected these memory-based estimates of trends, while different assumptions underlying the analysis of both interview data and conventional scientific data could also have led to qualitatively different trend perceptions. Differing perspectives from these three data sources illustrate both the potential for 'cognitive conflicts' between stakeholders who do not rely on the same data sources, as well as the importance of multiple information sources to understand dynamics of fisheries. Collaborative investigation of such divergence may facilitate learning and improve fisheries governance

“Everyone has a story to tell”: A review of life stories in learning disability research and practice

In this paper, the authors review life stories in learning disability research and practice since the 1960s. Although there is consistent evidence of their value in giving people a voice and an identity beyond the service label, they are not widely used in the provision of health and social care. This is despite long‐standing policy commitments to person‐centred practice. The paper explores possible barriers to the use of life story work and what further research is needed if they are to be more widely and effectively used in practice

Celebrating Thirty Years of Inclusive Research

Inclusive research has been an important way of increasing the understanding of the lives and issues of people with intellectual (learning) disabilities for 30 years. Three authors of this paper, Amanda, J and Kelley, are Australian and have been conducting inclusive research for much of this time. The other three, D, Shaun and Jan, are English. Jan has been doing it for a long time, while the others are relatively new to it. In this paper, we explore together what inclusive research has achieved in its original aims of supporting people with intellectual (learning) disabilities to have a heard voice and in working towards changing attitudes, policies and practices in relation to supporting them to lead good lives. Fundamental to achieving these aims was the need for active participation by people with intellectual (learning) disabilities in conducting research relevant to them. We record what we have done, how we did it and why it was important to do this work together. We focus on what inclusive research has meant to us and how it has been used to get positive change for people with intellectual disabilities. We end with a summary of what we think inclusive research can achieve and where we think it needs to go next