NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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Women's experiences of using the Alexander Technique in the postpartum: ‘…in a way, it's just as beneficial as sleep’
No full textBackground
The postpartum is a transitional period and potentially challenging time of heightened vulnerability for women where self-care is compromised. Mothers can ignore their needs while prioritising baby care. The Alexander Technique (AT) is a holistic self-management technique shown to be effective in managing some psycho-physical tension issues and heightening self-efficacy and self-care. The AT has potential to help compromised aspects of maternal well-being in the postpartum.
Objective
To explore how women familiar with the AT use it for the key postpartum issues of Sleep and rest, one of three superordinate themes identified in a qualitative interview study.
Design
Semi-structured interviews via Skype. Research approach: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.
Participants
Seven women, with varying levels of AT experience, 4–13 months postpartum.
Findings
Participants used a variety of self-care strategies through modifying their self-management with respect to Sleep and rest. Identified sub-themes were the ‘knitting’ of maternal and infant sleep, how participants rested using the AT and recognising maladaptive habits.
Key conclusions
Further research into the AT as an approach to supporting perinatal well-being is warranted.
Implications for practice
The AT has significance for self-management, self-care, addressing maternal needs for rest, restorative sleep as well as tension issues in the postpartum
Determinants of service quality and its effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty: an empirical study of private banking sector
No full textPurpose – The main purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of various service quality dimensions,
namely reliability, responsiveness, visibility, employee commitment and access to service on customer
satisfaction in the private banking sector of Bangladesh. The research also investigates the relationship
between customer satisfaction and loyalty and effect of demographic variables on customer satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach – The researchers distributed 320 self-administered survey questionnaires
among private banks’ customers in Bangladesh and obtained 200 useable responses with a 62.5% valid
response rate. The research data were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural
equation modelling (SEM) approaches. Analysis of variance and logistic regression have also been used to
obtain the supplementary findings.
Findings – The research findings indicate that visibility, responsiveness and employee commitment have positive
and significant effect on customer satisfaction, whereas reliability and access to service are found to have
insignificant influence on customer satisfaction of private banking services. The findings of this study also revealed
that customer satisfaction has positive and significant relationship with customer loyalty. But except respondents’
occupation type, all other demographic variables have no statistically significant relation with customer satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications – The research focused solely on the private banking sector of
Bangladesh, and thus the results may not be applicable to other service sectors.
Originality/value – This study conducted on customers’ perception of private banking services is based on
extended service quality dimensions and its relationship with customer satisfaction towards loyalty. The
present research findings are anticipated to offer the guidelines for improving the customer satisfaction and
loyalty of private banking services in Bangladesh as well as other countries
Capturing the Muslim experience with airport staff, security checkpoints and surveillance systems at Dublin airport.
No full textRecent research has shown that the airport can be an unwelcoming and hostile place for Muslims (Blackwood et al., 2013; Bonino, 2015; Nagra & Maurutto, 2016; Selod, 2019). With the drastic increase in the implementation of security and surveillance measures at airports since the 9/11 attacks, studies have shown these measures can affect various populations differently (Blackwood et al., 2015; Nagra & Maurutto, 2016). While studies have examined the Muslim experience at airports in Scotland, Canada and America, no studies have investigated the Muslim experiences at Irish airports. To address the gap, this study set out to examine the encounters between Muslims (living in Ireland) and airport staff, security checkpoints and surveillance systems at Dublin airport. A digital self-completion survey provided quantitative data from 31 individuals. This survey asked participants to provide their views, opinions and encounters with security personnel, security checkpoints, monitoring technologies and profiling at Dublin airport. A thematic analysis was used to interpret the findings from the survey. The findings from this study show that participants generally reported having an overall positive experience at Dublin airport. However, some individuals recalled having a negative experience with additional screening procedures in particular at Dublin airport as participants described these practices as an embarrassing and uncomfortable experience. More than half of respondents (61.29%) also believed that profiling happens at airports. The impact of these results will be compared with existing current literature. This study highlights the importance of raising awareness to the issue in an Irish context as the Muslim community is growing in Ireland. The findings presented in this thesis will add to our understanding of the Muslim experience at airports in an Irish context. This study should, therefore, be of value to researchers wishing to gain further insight into the issue in Ireland
Introduction
No full textThis collection of papers is the outcome of a one-day symposium held at The University of Newcastle, New South Wales in November 2018. The symposium marked fourteen years since the first Catullus gathering at Newcastle, which resulted in the first thematic issue of Antichthon, ‘Catullus in Contemporary Perspective’ in 2006. This inaugural thematic issue of Antichthon marked the fortieth anniversary of the foundation of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies and the publication of its journal. It is especially poignant that many of the original contributors and audience members returned in 2018, and their papers appear in this second thematic volume, ‘Catullus in the 21st Century.
I Need a Doctor, Call Me a Doctor: Attachment and the Evaluation of General Practitioners before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic
No full textAttachment is a system of threat regulation, and insecure (anxious and avoidant) attachment orientations are important individual difference antecedents to the cognitive and affective
attributions of trait inferences. However, little is known about how threat-related contexts, such as
the current COVID-19 pandemic, influence attachment-related socio-cognitive schemas. Using an
experimental research design across two independent samples of 330 (pre-onset of COVID-19) and
233 (post-onset of COVID-19) participants, we tested whether attachment orientations influenced
general practitioner (GP) ratings and selection differently pre- and post-onset of the COVID-19
pandemic. We found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, when presented with only negative
information signals, avoidant individuals attributed positive ratings to GPs, with differing ratings as
the number of positive signals increased. Differences between pre- and post-onset of the COVID-19
pandemic were less pronounced with regards to positive signals. We discuss these results in line
with signal detection theory (SDT) and provide practical implications in response to our findings
Increased Vegetation in Mountainous Headwaters Amplifies Water Stress During Dry Periods
No full textThe dynamics of blue and green water partitioning under vegetation and climate change, as well as their different interactions during wet and dry periods, are poorly understood in the literature. We analyzed the impact of vegetation changes on blue water generation in a central Spanish Pyrenees basin undergoing intense afforestation. We found that vegetation change is a key driver of large decreases in blue water availability. The effect of vegetation increase is amplified during dry years, and mainly during the dry season, with streamflow reductions of more than 50%. This pattern can be attributed primarily
to increased plant water consumption. Our findings highlight the importance of vegetation changes in reinforcing the decrease in water resource availability. With aridity expected to rise in southern Europe over the next few decades, interactions between climate and land management practices appear to be amplifying future hydrological drought risk in the region
Evaluation of Drinkaware’s Junior Cycle Alcohol Education Programme (JC AEP) 2018-2020
No full textThis is a Summary Report of Maynooth University’s Evaluation
of Drinkaware’s Junior Cycle Alcohol Education Programme
(2018-2020). The Full Evaluation Report, Tables, Appendices
and References will be available on www.drinkaware.ie Contact
[email protected] for further details
Social recovery: a new interpretation to recovery-orientated services – a critical literature review
No full textIn 2020, the significance of “lived experience” and “service user” accounts of recovery have become central to the delivery of mental health policy and practice. Reflecting on the first known account of personal recovery in the late-20th century provided new hope and encouragement that those living with mental illness could live a fulfilling life. Taking this into consideration, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relevance to this experience of those using services today.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors present a critical literature review, which is underpinned by a systematic approach adopted from Higgins and Pinkerton (1998). This involved a six-step approach seeking to answer the question – What are the service users’ views on the recovery concept within mental health services?
Findings
The conceptualisation of recovery continues to focus on biomedical parameters. A new interpretation of recovery is beginning to materialise social recovery. This new interpretation appears to be achievable through six key influencers: health, economics, social interaction/connection, housing, personal relationships and support.
Originality/value
Building on Ramon’s (2018) argument regarding the need for mental health policy to focus on the concept of social recovery, this study extends on this proposition by providing a foundational evidence base. More specifically, it not only supports the need for this shift in policy but also identifies a new interpretation building in practice. Furthermore, the authors highlight six key pillars that could potentially shape such provisions for policy
Computational Modeling in Glycoscience
No full textThe ubiquitous occurrences of glycans (from oligo to polysaccharides) as cell components to significant constituents of the terrestrial biomass provide the glycans with a panel of biological functions and physicochemical properties. The progress made in algorithms and computational power allows for the simulation of glycans in their natural environment, and new dimensions, both spatial and temporal, can be assessed. The review will illustrate advancements in high-performance computing have allowed molecular simulation methods not only to play a more substantial role in supporting experiments but to transcend such mandate to guide experimental design and to lead autonomously scientific discovery
A formal approach to finding inconsistencies in a metamodel
No full textChecking the consistency of a metamodel involves finding a valid metamodel instance that provably meets the set of constraints that are defined over the metamodel. These constraints are often specified in Object Constraint Language. Often, a metamodel is inconsistent due to conflicts among the constraints. Existing approaches and tools are typically incapable of pinpointing
the conflicting constraints, and this makes it difficult for users to debug and fix their metamodels. In this paper, we present a formal approach for locating conflicting constraints in inconsistent metamodels. Our approach has four distinct features: (1) users can rank individual metamodel features using their own domain-specific knowledge, (2) we transform these ranked
features to a weighted maximum satisfiability modulo theories problem and solve it to compute the set of maximum achievable features, (3) we pinpoint the conflicting constraints by solving the set cover problem using a novel algorithm, and (4) we have implemented our approach into a fully automated tool called MaxUSE. Our evaluation results, using our assembled set of benchmarks, demonstrate the scalability of our work and that it is capable of efficiently finding conflicting constraints