24,503 research outputs found
The millennial mum:technology use by new mothers
Becoming a mother presents a woman with new challenges and a need to access new sources of information. This work considers the increase in the use of online parenting support as the first group of millennials become parents. Initial results from a survey comparing the use of technology pre and post the experience of childbirth is presented. The survey reveals that mothers are likely to increase the time they spend online and are strongly motivated by seeking social contact. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this survey for healthcare professionals wishing to give information and support through online media and suggests how HCI professionals can become involved in this work
Knowing what is known: accessing craft-based meanings in research by artists
Much of the work of artists relies on tacit or inert understanding of their craft and consequently communicating this knowledge is not necessarily easy or straightforward. This presents many challenges for art-based researchers. It also presents teaching and learning challenges involved in developing appropriate education and training to prepare artists. Arts practitioners have ways of knowing about themselves as âartistsâ and it is argued in this commentary that these have grown out of their own deep and personally significant experiences. The ways in which this knowledge is rendered also appears to be based in practical experience â that is, in particular communities of practice. Artists may typically express values and concepts that are practice based, are difficult to express in theoretical terms and reflect what is deemed by them as desirable or preferable conditions for the execution of their art form. Socially and artistically constructed ways of knowing are formed in practice and through practice as craft-based meanings. Craft-based ways of knowing are founded on particular meanings inherent in practice that are often difficult to communicate. By drawing upon the authorâs own research into practical actor training, this exposition attempts to capture the particular types of knowledge artists possess and why these may present challenges for researchers in using more open-ended methodologies whilst ensuring they provide validity. In doing so, this exposition also examines the fundamental question of what represents âevidenceâ in art-based research â knowing what is know
Time, space, and the authorisation of sex premises in London and Sydney
While the regulation of commercial sex in the city has traditionally involved formal policing, recent shifts in many jurisdictions have seen sex premises of various kinds granted formal recognition via planning, licensing and environmental control. This means that âsexual entertainment venuesâ, âbrothelsâ, or âsex shopsâ are now not just labels applied to particular types of premise, but are formal categories of legal land use. However, these categories are not clear-cut, and it is not simply the case that changes in the law instantiate a change whereby these premises are bought into being at a particular point in time. Countering the privileging of space over time that is apparent within much contemporary research on sex and the city, this paper foregrounds the varied temporalities in play here, and describes how the actions of those policy-makers, municipal bureaucrats and officers allow sex premises to variously âfade inâ, accelerate, linger or disappear as legal land uses within the city. We examine the implications of these different temporalities of the law by exploring how sex premises have been subject to regulation in London and Sydney, showing that the volatile, contradictory and fractured nature of legal space-making does not necessarily provide the certainty sought by the law but produces overlapping and contested understandings of what types of premise should be subject to regulation. More broadly the paper highlights how attention to the contingency and complexity of municipal law can help us better understand the ways that commercial sex is differently manifest in different citie
Creative adventures and flow in art-making: A qualitative study of women living with cancer
(Introduction)
A diagnosis of cancer is recognised as highly fear-arousing.
People not only face the discomforts of potentially
disfiguring medical treatment but also confront issues
of mortality. Even those who have completed treatment
tend to âlive withâ cancer for many years, because they
remain subject to intrusive thoughts about cancer and
concerned about possible recurrence and metastasis
(Saegrov and Halding 2003, Laubmeier and Zakowski
2004). As well as creating worry and vigilance, cancer
imposes what has been described as a biographical
disruption (Bury 1982). After such a diagnosis, the
person may feel that valued life goals are unattainable.
The assumptions that guided life before cancer may be
shattered and the person may feel disconnected from the
familiar self, observing â from the avoidance or the pity of
others â that only a stigmatised cancer identity remains
(Frank 1991, Mathieson and Stam 1995). Facing such
a combination of physical, emotional, cognitive and
social stressors, it would seem difficult for people with
cancer to construct a life of positive quality. Yet research
studies suggest that many people devise resourceful
coping strategies.
Some people cope by reprioritising their goals to enjoy
more authentic relationships and activities. Some even
come to re-evaluate their illness as having catalysed certain
positive changes (for example, Mathieson and Stam 1995,
Carpenter et al 1999, Urcuyo et al 2005). However, previous
research has tended to neglect the potential contribution
of meaningful occupations to maintaining or regaining
subjective wellbeing in cancer.
Flow has been conceptualised as a particular type of
optimal experience associated with âvital engagementâ, a
deep involvement in activities that are significant to the
self and that promote feelings of aliveness or vitality
(Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 2002, p83). To what
extent vital engagement offers people living with cancer a
source of subjective wellbeing has received little previous
examination in the occupational therapy literature. This
issue is addressed here
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