This research investigates how university selection practices vary according to institutional reputation and course popularity through an examination of English university admissions and recruitment policies and practices. It seeks to evaluate what implications this has for equity in terms of student access to higher education. The research examines data from semi-structured interviews carried out in 2008/09 with admissions and recruitment from staff working at four case study institutions, selected to reflect some of the diversity in the HE market. Admissions policies and practices using information given on University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) forms, interviews, conditional offers and after A Level results have been published, are analysed. This is complemented with a multivariate analysis of UCAS data for students seeking to enter higher education in 2006/07 to test the generalisability of the qualitative findings. Quantitative analyses show how the use of discretion in conditional offers is associated with student background characteristics, course popularity and institutional reputation. Following this, institutional recruitment practices are analysed, first through an examination of ‘general’ recruitment policies and practices aimed at the consumer market as a whole, followed by an examination of the case universities’ widening participation programmes. This includes an analysis of the institutions’ access agreements. Finally, the motivations underpinning the behaviour of admissions and recruitment staff working at the case universities are discussed. Whether self-interest or altruism influences staff behaviour is analysed, alongside a consideration of the role that government incentives play in regulating university behaviour. The thesis concludes that, while some admissions and recruitment practices are likely to further equity of access for students from different social and educational backgrounds, changes can be made to increase equity of access to higher education.

This thesis adopts a cross-disciplinary perspective. Drawing on psychoanalytic and sociological theory, it examines the emotional work of UK childhood bereavement services; and explores the role of the researcher in the production of knowledge. It adopts Alvesson and Skoldberg's (2000) reflexive methodology to re-examine data from an earlier study that comprised a national postal survey of childhood bereavement services (n=127), and 8 in-depth organisational case studies. Data were collected through interviews with 60 paid and unpaid staff, a postal survey of 74 unpaid staff, and participant observation of 6 group interventions. The thesis elaborates a theory of the ambiguities and dilemmas of their complex emotional work, and the term 'emotion/al' is used to denote inter-relationship between three features of the work: it expressly engages staff with emotion; it generates emotion in staff; and services undertake emotional work with, and on behalf of, individuals, the organisation and culture. The forward slash also signifies the potential for a bifurcated experience as a result of undertaking this work. Hochschild's (1983) sociological concept of emotional labour and feeling rules and Bion's (1959; 1962; 1970) psychoanalytic theory of 'container/contained' are used to understand the emotion/al process in each of these settings as one of 'containing grief'. Bion's container/contained relationship describes the mechanism through which the capacity to link experience to thought is developed. The thesis argues that childhood bereavement services act as a 'container'. In bearing children's intense feelings of grief and through their interventions, services enable them to make meaning of their bereavement and integrate it into their life narrative. Childhood bereavement services also challenge 'feeling rules' in relation to childhood bereavement. Through their emotion/al work, they also act as a container of cultural anxiety influencing and re-defining assumptions and beliefs about children and their experience of bereavement. In containing grief, childhood bereavement services contribute to cultural change.

Public awareness about sexual abuse and sexual harassment in sport has greatly increased over the last 10 years. In England, the sport of swimming has been especially affected, first because of several high profile cases of swimming coaches being convicted of sexual abuse, and secondly because the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) has taken a proactive stance to protect children in swimming. Much of the previous research examining sexual exploitation in sport has been from the perspective of the athlete. This qualitative study was designed to examine swimming coaches' constructions of appropriateness about coach/swimmer sexual relationships. Nineteen coaches participated in either an elite, national, or county level focus group. Coaches discussed the appropriateness of coach/athlete relationships as presented in 7 vignettes. Analysis was conducted in accordance with the constructivist revision of Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 1990; Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and organised with the assistance of the software programme, QSR NVIVO. The coaches report that sex with an athlete below the legal age of consent is inappropriate. Coaches' perceptions regarding "legal" relationships vary according to whether the coach is talking about himself versus other coaches. The emergent themes influencing perceptions of appropriateness are: reducing opportunities for false allegations, the influence of public scrutiny, evaluating consequences of relationships, maintaining professional boundaries, and reluctance to judge fellow coaches. After completing the initial analysis, the emergent themes were further explored in individual unstructured interviews with three purposively selected coaches. One coach was in a long-term relationship with a swimmer, another served a prison term for child sexual abuse of a swimmer he coached, and the third had allegations against him dropped. The secondary analysis reveals that the themes about appropriateness relate to the broader issue of coaches' attempts to resolve perceived role conflict and role ambiguity that has arisen from increased awareness of child protection. This is examined with reference to how awareness of sexual abuse in sport has provoked coaches to question their roles and coaching boundaries. Results are discussed in relation to organisational psychology theories of role conflict and role ambiguity and directions for future research are suggested.

Considered the single greatest achievement in ‘engendering’ global security policy, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR 1325) is celebrated as a triumph of women’s peace movements and transnational feminist organizing. My central claim is that SCR 1325 has both over performed and under delivered. The remarkable achievements it catalysed in establishing new international standards have not been fully appreciated, explored, or understood, while its successful utilisation by women rights and peace activists in the context of 'informal peace building' has not fundamentally challenged the workings of the Security Council itself, as feminists had hoped. This has resulted in an overestimation of SCR 1325’s symbolic and practical importance, and an underestimation of the broader institutional and geopolitical factors that shaped SCR 1325’s genesis and continue to drive Security Council decision-making in relation to women and gender issues. I suggest that SCR 1325’s perceived failures have less to do with its oft-criticized textual content than with the institutions, actors, strategies, and processes that have been most central to its implementation. Historically, the geopolitics of UN decision-making on gender issues demonstrate an extreme form of bureaucratic pathology that has circumscribed opportunities for bringing gender issues onto the UN’s peace and security agenda. I introduce the concept of ‘relegation’ to explain why decision-making on women has been extrinsic to the UN mechanisms and entities that have the greatest potential for autonomous action. SCR 1325’s implementation failures also reflect the absence of a collaborative feminist epistemic community of research and praxis in the nascent field of feminist security studies. This has further limited the UN’s ability to internalise, institutionalise, and implement actions that advance, rather than undermine feminist peace building agendas.

There is accumulative evidence and successive government policy to suggest that the health and social care professions need to provide integrated services to the public. Interprofessional education is regarded as a solution to the problem and has developed from this demand. Educational initiatives of an interprofessional nature are now a regular occurrence. The role of the teacher in facilitating these programmes has been largely overlooked. The purpose of this thesis was to address this imbalance. The study adopted the illuminative evaluation paradigm to investigate the teachers' perceptions of interprofessional education and shared learning milieu. It took the form of three surveys. The first survey addressed the perceptions of the course leaders in centres for teacher education. The second survey involved new teachers, mentors and managers in colleges for nursing and midwifery education at that time. The third survey addressed interprofessional education from the perceptions of teachers of health and social care professions who were involved in IPE programmes in higher education. The central research question underlying the study was how do teachers view and implement IPE? Essential to this was the question are teachers prepared for their role in interprofessional education? Multiple methods were used to collect the data and both quantitative and qualitative methods were used in analysis. Non parametric statistics were applied to quantitative data. Computer assisted analysis was used for the qualitative data through a purpose built database using ACCESS software. The results showed that teachers or students did not have preparation for interprofessional education while the majority of teachers felt that they required it. The evidence suggested a lack of commitment at strategic level, and a lack of structuring and planning of resources to accommodate this type of education. Teachers were aware of the benefits interprofessional education could offer, but were sceptical as to the motives underlying it. In reality, interprofessional education was less than the proposed principles behind it.

Government data continues to indicate that Looked After Children and Young People (LAC/YP) are vulnerable to poor academic achievement and later life outcome. Over the years successive Governments have legislated and invested in policy changes and guidance to inform practice in an effort to close the academic and social gap between those young people in care and their non-looked after peers. The espoused target for intervention and change has been with regards to raising the aspirations of LAC/YP. Seven LAC/YP were interviewed in order to capture their views about their future aspirations and for their perspectives on the factors in their lives that they identified as helping or hindering them as they constructed their future selves. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology was used to better understand some of the lived experiences of the LAC/YP within the system aimed to raise their aspirations. Super-ordinate themes of ‘Imagined future’, ‘Current Support’, ‘Personal sense of agency’ and ‘Impact of past care’ emerged from the data. The implications for policy and practice are discussed in light of the challenges in generalising findings from IPA studies beyond the idiographic.

Objectives: This thesis investigates attrition from community-based cognitive-skills offending behaviour programmes. Part one of the thesis investigates the influence of attrition on the reconviction outcomes of those sentenced to either the Enhanced Thinking Skills (ETS) programme or the Think First programme. The data are investigated to determine whether programme dropout is detrimental to reconviction outcomes. Part two undertakes a more thorough analysis of the characteristics of programme completers, non-completers, and non-starters of the ETS programme. The three groups are compared to assess for differences in relation to demographic, psychometric, criminal history, and offender need variables. The role of organisational, or process, factors in attrition is also investigated. Finally, the reasons recorded in probation files for non-attendance at the ETS programme are examined. Methods: Part one comprises two chapters and utilises a quasi-experimental design. Data relating to a national sample of offenders sentenced to an offending behaviour programme and a comparison group of offenders sentenced to probation but not required to undertake a programme and matched on a one-to-one basis to the experimental group are utilised. Part two utilises data relating to offenders sentenced to the ETS programme within one probation area. The focus on one locality permitted a rich analysis of the factors associated with attrition. Analyses undertaken include tests of association (correlations, chi-square), parametric and non-parametric tests for differences (t-tests, ANOVAs, Kruskal Wallis, Mann Whitney), logistic regression (binary and multinomial), and calculations of effect sizes. Results: The analyses in part one provided tentative evidence of a negative impact of attrition on reconviction outcomes. This trend remained after controlling for those variables found to significantly differ between groups. The analyses within part two indicated that programme non-starters were more criminogenic than programme completers and non-completers. The non-completers, however, were the youngest of the groups and hence had less of a history but displayed a similar rate of offending as the non-starters. In relation to process factors, there was a significant association between appropriateness of targeting and attrition; offenders with risk of reconviction scores above the recommended criteria were most likely to dropout. Finally, a third of dropouts could not, should not, or were not able to attend due to the unavailability of a programme place, a further third were already in breach of their order or had committed a further offence, and the final third could and should attend, were not apparently in breach but still failed to commence. Conclusions: Programme dropouts produce worse reconviction outcomes than programme completers and matched comparisons. In evaluating correlates of attrition, dropouts are more criminogenic than programme completers. However, process factors were also associated with programme attrition. Research should investigate the impact of individual and process factors on attrition further and should use these findings to inform the debate concerning the influence of programme attrition (and hence completion) on reconviction outcomes. It is anticipated that the findings will inform clinical practice and the treatment readiness and intervention outcome research literatures.

"The purpose of this study is to compare seventy-one white and fifty-six Negro dependent children residing in the Florida State Department of Public Welfare emergency shelter homes in Jacksonville, Florida, during the months of October and November, 1960, with respect to sixteen selected family and social characteristics. The shelter homes are private facilities established for the purpose of providing emergency shelter care to dependent children. As the emergency shelter home program has been in operation only since October, 1959, an attempt will be made in this study to identify the characteristics of dependent children placed in the shelter homes and to describe their families"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "June, 1961." / "Submitted to the Graduate School of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Social Work." / Advisor: Irene E. Morris, Professor Directing Study. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-44).

This thesis explored the application of risk assessment in sexual offenders with intellectual disabilities. A systematic review of the literature appraised the quality and methodology of research examining the predictive validity of risk assessment instruments, this highlighted a lack of research taking into sexual offenders with intellectual disabilities. The empirical research paper explored the predictive validity of the RRASOR, SVR-20, RM2000-V and the ARMIDILO instruments using a retrospective design on a sample of special needs offenders with intellectual disabilities. Comparisons with mainstream offenders highlighted the difference between the instruments ability to accurately predict risk between the two groups of offenders. The findings suggest that the ARMIDILO can be useful when predicting risk for an intellectual disabled population. In the next chapter a risk assessment instrument, the RRASOR, was critically reviewed. Following on from this, a case study using an individual approached to risk assessment in an intellectually impaired sexual offender was demonstrated. This chapter emphasises that comprehensive assessment would be a prerequisite to working effectively with offenders with intellectual disabilities in order to address specific intervention needs. A social skills intervention aimed to reduce the level of dynamic risk posed. This chapter also served to outline some of the difficulties associated with risk assessment and management in routine clinical practice. The final chapter concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for clinical practice and offers some directions for future research.

The current paper reviews measures of subjective psychological well-being in older adults and draws conclusions about how the concept of well-being is defined and measured. A systematic search of four databases identified eight measures developed to capture the notion of psychological well-being; the Positive And Negative Affect Schedule, the Life Satisfaction Index, the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale, the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the Perceived Well-Being Scale, the Scales of Psychological Well-Being, the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale, and the Memorial University of Newfoundland Scale of Happiness. An evaluation of these measures revealed a range in dimensionality and composition, with measures defining well-being as primarily hedonic, eudaimonic, or a combination of the two. The validity of the measures was investigated by considering the extent to which measures capture facets of well-being identified by older people as important for successful aging. It was concluded that whilst all measures consider several important aspects of well-being, no measure captured the entire range of factors highlighted by older people as paramount to well-being.