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Hay fever: why symptoms are so bad this year – and what to do if your usual remedies aren’t working
No full textAssimilation in bereavement: charting the process of grief recovery in the case of Sophie
No full textAcceptability and feasibility of online delivery of chair-based yoga for older adults with multimorbidity – Lessons from a process evaluation of the Gentle Years Yoga trial
Get PDFBackground
Yoga is a safe, effective, and popular practice among older adults, and amenable to online delivery. The Gentle Years Yoga randomised controlled trial compared the impact of a chair-based yoga programme to usual care on the health-related quality of life of older adults with multimorbidity. This embedded, longitudinal process evaluation qualitatively explored experiences and acceptability of online delivery of the trial intervention.
Methods
A subset of trial participants randomised to receive the 12-week online yoga programme, together with the trial yoga teachers, were purposively recruited to semi-structured interviews. Individual interviews were conducted via Zoom or telephone, audio-recorded, independently transcribed, and thematically analysed. Online observations were conducted of one class delivered by each teacher.
Results
Eighteen yoga participants (66–91 years; 2–8 chronic health conditions) and nine teachers were interviewed once (N = 12) or twice (N = 15) from October 2020 to April 2022. Five themes predominated, common to both groups. (1) Accessibility. Reduced communication and engagement inherent to online delivery were mostly outweighed by its removal of access barriers and provision of anonymity and distraction-free environment. (2) Technology issues. While digital literacy was variable and a barrier for some, simplified access procedures and basic audiovisual instruction optimised class engagement. (3) Delivery adaptations. Key facilitation techniques included simple, repetitive instructions, increased demonstration, personalised communication, and visibility-enhancing clothing. (4) Safety. Concerns were minimal, and mostly related to restricted visual and positional information inherent to face-to-face classes. (5) Implications and implementations. Online delivery was considered viable and potentially appealing for anyone experiencing issues accessing face-to-face classes outside the home. Potential solutions to online attendance barriers included equipment loan schemes and digital learning courses using existing community-based infrastructures.
Conclusions
Online chair-based yoga classes were feasible and acceptable to participants and teachers, and preferrable to face-to-face delivery by some. IT issues were minimal, and mainly resolvable through simple access processes and educational information. Accessibility advantages suggest online yoga may be suitable for a broad demographic, independent of age or health status. Establishing connections with existing health and community-based organisations presents a potential pathway for developing an equipment loan scheme to improve accessibility for those with financial access barriers
Book Review of Rothe and Collins (2025) Space Expansionism and Criminology: The Emerging Terrain of Crime, Harm, and Violence. Oxon: Routledge.
Get PDFAdopting Quality for School Readiness (AQSR): a heuristic framework using recommended practice and professional knowledge to support oral language in multilingual classrooms
Get PDFQuality oral language interventions support children’s readiness for formal literacy instruction and yet a framework for multilingual classrooms is not available. To address this gap, we drew on the empirical literature on linguistically diverse learners, classroom linguistic environments, and usage-based theories to identify principles for recommended pedagogical practices. We next examined how teachers explained their oral language teaching and what they said after delivering an intervention based on recommended practice. Using a reflexive approach to qualitative interview and questionnaire data, we found some convergence but also areas of limited overlap between recommended practice and teacher professional knowledge. Supporting child talk was seen to serve a motivational-affective purpose more than the cognitive-linguistic purposes implicit in research-informed recommended practices. Based on insights from specialized literature and distillations of professional knowledge, we propose a heuristic framework named Adopting Quality for School Readiness (AQSR). We also discuss uses for the AQSR framework and outstanding questions for future research
Understanding the effectiveness and underlying mechanisms of lifestyle modification interventions in adults with learning disabilities: a mixed-methods systematic review.
Get PDFBackground: Adults with learning disabilities face increased risks of unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, including alcohol consumption, smoking, low physical activity, sedentary behaviour and poor diet. Lifestyle modification interventions that target health-risk behaviours can prevent or reduce their negative effects. The goal of this project was to investigate the effectiveness and underlying mechanisms of lifestyle modification interventions in adults with learning disabilities. Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to determine the effectiveness of lifestyle modification interventions and their components in targeting health risk behaviours in adults with learning disabilities. Major electronic databases, clinical trial registries, grey literature, and citations of systematic reviews and included studies were searched in January 2021 (updated in February 2022). We included randomised and non-randomised controlled trials targeting alcohol consumption, smoking, low physical activity only, sedentary behaviour and poor diet in adults (aged ≥ 18 years) with learning disabilities. Studies were also coded based on the extent of use of theories and behaviour change techniques in interventions. Risk of bias in studies was assessed using appropriate tools. A realist synthesis of qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods literature was conducted to complement the systematic review findings by identifying key intervention mechanisms that are likely to improve the health of adults with learning disabilities. Data were synthesised in the form of a programme theory regarding complex causal mechanisms and how these interact with social context to produce outcomes. All findings were integrated into a logic model. A patient and public involvement group provided input and insights throughout the project. Results: A total of 80 studies with 4805 participants were included in the systematic review. The complexity of lifestyle modification interventions was dismantled by identifying six core components that influenced outcomes. These components could be present in interventions targeting single or multiple health risk behaviors, either as individual elements or in various combinations. Interventions on alcohol and smoking behaviours were found to be effective, but this was based on limited evidence. The effectiveness of interventions targeting low physical activity only or multiple behaviours (low physical activity only, sedentary behaviours and poor diet) was mixed. All interventions had a varying level of statistical significance. The intervention-level network meta-analysis for weight management outcomes showed none of the interventions was associated with a statistically significant change in outcomes when compared to treatment as usual and each other. Similar findings were observed in the component network meta-analysis. A variety of theories and behaviour change techniques were employed in the development and adaptation of interventions. Most studies had a high and moderate risk of bias. A total of 79 studies, reporting the experiences of more than 3604 adults with intellectual disabilities and over 490 caregivers, were included in the realist synthesis. The resulting programme theory highlighted the contexts and mechanisms relating to support involvement, negotiating the balance between autonomy and behaviour change, fostering social connectedness and fun, the accessibility and suitability of intervention strategies and delivery, along with the broader behavioural pathways to lifestyle change. It also brought out the importance of working with people with lived experiences when developing and evaluating interventions. Our logic model, bringing together the findings of both syntheses, provides guidance on the design of future interventions. Discussion: This study was the first comprehensive mixed-methods evidence synthesis to explore lifestyle modification interventions targeting multiple unhealthy lifestyle behaviours in adults with learning disabilities. We conclude that future research could benefit from codeveloping interventions and population-specific assessment frameworks with people with lived experiences. There is a need for more high-quality research with appropriate outcomes and a focus on qualitative and mixed-methods research to better understand what works for whom and why. Trial registration: This trial is registered as PROSPERO CRD 42020223290. Funding: This award was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme (NIHR award ref: NIHR128755) and is published in full in Health Technology Assessment; Vol. 29, No. 4. See the NIHR Funding and Awards website for further award information
‘A tidal wave of dopesickness’: Addiction, music and pathography in Mark Lanegan’s Sing Backwards and Weep
No full text‘A tidal wave of dopesickness’: Addiction, music and pathography in Mark Lanegan’s Sing Backwards and Weep
Published in 2020, the late Mark Lanegan’s first memoir received critical acclaim and commercial success. Lanegan’s heroin addiction and the damage done to his body drew familiar tropes from reviewers and from the music press. The text’s page on its publisher’s website includes three quotations that use variations of the term ‘brutal honesty’ while its own copy describes the book as ‘gritty, gripping and unflinchingly raw’. Such market placement speaks to some of the traditions associated with rock memoir written by men. Texts from the metal world by acts such as Mötley Crüe and Ozzy Osbourne and those from baby boomer figures such as Keith Richards are replete with exaggerated tales of debauchery and abandon. Drugs and addiction are central in these narratives and fall back on mythic and gendered constructions of excess.
Sing Backwards and Weep is, however, more complex than this. Its affectless narration offers movements and flux between temporal versions of selfhood. It is a text that ‘embraces the partial, mutable, fragmentary and subjective nature of past events’ (Edgar, Mann, Pleasance 4). So, despite the familiar ground, this memoir generates new modes of thinking about the body, musical culture and creativity.
This chapter takes this as its jumping off point in examining the manner in which this memoir can be read as a pathography. Coined by Anne Hunsaker-Hawkins in 1993, pathography is ‘a form of autobiography that that describes personal experiences of illness, treatment and sometimes death’ (1). It is a form that that ‘concern[s] the attempts of individuals to orient themselves in the world of sickness’ (2). Used widely in narratives of terminal and chronic illness and in testimonies regarding psychological and mental health, it is a form that allows for engagement with cultural and mythic understandings of illness and how they contrast with individual corporeal experiences.
In Sing Backwards and Weep, the focus is on heroin addiction and the manner in which this mediates the social and creative world inhabited by Mark Lanegan. With his band Screaming Trees, he is a central figure in the grunge boom of the early 1990s. Seattle, previously a rainy and blue-collar city situated outside of America’s metropolitan focus, is suddenly illuminated and becomes both a national and trans global site for fashion, media and commerce. In the thirty years since, it has become a mythologised space. The city’s heroin culture in particular has been romanticised, glorified and mediated. Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994 is seen as both the end of the grunge era and the beginning of the music’s totemic status in American underground culture.
Lanegan undercuts this all of this by placing his body in the centre of his narrative. It filters experiences that are personal and marginal as well as those more familiar to audiences well versed in grunge mythology. Elaine Scarry suggests that narrating pain is futile due to its ‘resistance to language’ (4) and because it has ‘no referential content’ (5). This chapter then, analyses the ways that Lanegan meets this narrative paradox.
Works Cited
Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker. Reconstructing illness: Studies in Pathography.. Purdue University Press, 1999.
Edgar, Robert, Fraser Mann, and Helen Pleasance, eds. Music, Memory and Memoir. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2019.
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford University Press, USA, 1985.
Key Words:
Pathography, addiction, grunge, Seattle, memoi
Humanistic person-centred set facilitation
Get PDFThis paper poses the question ‘What can we learn from the personcentred counselling literature which could be used by the action learning facilitator to help benefit the set?’. This question may be particularly important to facilitators seeking new ways to run their sets and to facilitators who would like to introduce a more humanistic and less mechanistic way of working with set members. Person-centred counselling is an approach to helping which aims to foster human growth and wellbeing. The person-centred approach was developed by Carl Rogers in the 1950s and has a number of similarities with Revan’s original ideas. Although Revans was insistent that action learning was not counselling there are several facets of person-centred theory which align with Revans underlying ideas and philosophy. The paper concludes with suggestions of how to incorporate Rogerian ideas into facilitation, namely those of empathy, congruence and Unconditional Positive Regard
From function to feeling: exploring the effects of human-like traits in service robots on perceived authenticity and value
No full textThe potential for integrating service robots into hospitality operations calls for exploring customer perceptions of robotic service delivery from the perspective of its acceptance. Research is necessitated to establish the determinants of positive perception of service robots among hospitality consumers. This study examined the effect of three human-centric robot traits, including personalization, efficiency, and anthropomorphism on the perceived authenticity and value of a restaurant service. The survey results (n = 358) revealed significant effects of personalization, efficiency, and anthropomorphism on perceived authenticity and four dimensions of perceived value, including emotional, social, functional, and epistemic values. Perceived authenticity partially mediated the relationship between personalization, efficiency, anthropomorphism and four value dimensions. The results demonstrated the importance of designing service robots with human-centric traits to provide more authentic and valuable service to hospitality customers
‘It is hard to establish boundaries’: Pupils’ and teachers’ perceptions of blurred lines between banter and bullying in secondary Physical Education
Get PDFThis article examines pupils’ and teachers’ perceptions of blurred boundaries between banter and bullying in secondary Physical Education (PE). Focus on this topic is timely amid policymaker concerns regarding young people’s banter escalating into bullying, or bullying being downplayed as banter within educational and sporting environments. Perceptions were gained through 14 focus groups with 49 pupils and nine interviews with PE teachers, which were thematically analysed using concepts of figuration and power relations (Elias, 1978). Whilst pupils conceptually distinguished banter from bullying, differentiating between the two in practice proved difficult during PE lessons. Difficulty was premised on subjective evaluations of performance-related comments concerning who was involved, the intention behind comments and how they were received, and if comments were considered humorous or harmful. Within the PE figuration, sporting competence proved a key power resource, resulting in humorously framed performance-related comments illuminating and heightening power imbalances between sporty and less sporty pupils. Given these pupil power dynamics and how performance-related comments were construed by some as banter and others as bullying, PE teachers should regularly remind pupils of conceptual differences between banter and bullying, set clear behavioural expectations, and consistently regulate borderline banter