This thesis evaluates the legacy/impact of the London 2012 Games for a non-hosting sub-region Leicestershire, principally through evaluations of four legacy-programmes (i.e. the Workplace Challenge, Get Set, Sport Makers, and Games Makers programmes), drawing conclusions about lessons learned from the Leicestershire 2012 legacy experience. The selection of Leicestershire as a non-hosting sub-region reflects the fact that little is known about the legacy/ impact of the Games in such contexts. The nature of Olympic legacy evaluation is considered as a complex, wide-ranging, and multi-staged process. This thesis thus focuses on two main areas: i) conducting a systematic review of the literature (covering the period 1996-2011) to explore and establish an understanding of the concepts of Olympic legacy , and evidenced legacy/impact of hosting the Olympics in previous Games; ii) assessing the extent to which the London 2012 Games had impacted on the changed legacy outcomes for Leicestershire through realist evaluations. Together with realist evaluations, analytic logic models and the assessment of additionality approaches are adopted in this study, focusing on the four legacy-programmes evaluations, wherein quantitative and/or qualitative methodology are utilised in order to identify the causal mechanisms that produced the anticipated/unanticipated effects in their specific contexts. This study is an empirical example of the application of the realist evaluation and assessment of additionality. It also produces an evidence base for policy analysis in order to inform stakeholders thinking regarding sustaining the legacy of the Games and any future major sporting events by identifying lessons learned for non-hosting contexts.

The economic, demographic and social changes of the latter half of the C20th have influenced the experience of individuals now at 'midlife'. Arguably the impact of these changes has been more profound for women; specifically in the UK for those educated to be the wives, mothers and carers of industrial Britain (Newsom, 1963). Now around 50 years old this group of women are likely to experience a lengthy period of 'postmaternity' (Sheriff and Weatherall, 2009) extending to over thirty years in many cases. This research considers the experience of this metaphorically entitled 'telescopic' cohort (Goldstein and Schlag, 1999). The major corpus of age related research assumes a linear developmental progression of life stages (Erikson, 1951, 1968; Gould, 1978; Levinson, 1978; Levinson, 1996; Klohnen et al., 1996; Miner-Rubinio, 2004). Drawing on life course theory (Elder, 1995; Runyan, 1982; Super, 1980) enables this research to explore how women may have changed assumptions about themselves and their expectations as the social world has changed around them, moreover offers an alternative to the essentialist, linear, deterministic models of ageing. This feminist poststructuralist examination of the experience of women at 'midlife' is divided into two parts; firstly the 'lived life' which examines demographic changes, and drawing on material from 'Jackie' magazine, considers discourses of femininity and the expectations for, and of, girls. The 'told story' is then explored using narrative interview material. How women 'story' their lives and their understanding of 'self' at midlife is examined within the context of the changing world and their ageing bodies. The research revealed that the experience of 'midlife' for this cohort of women is narrated as a time of change in social circumstances with some 'gains' and some 'losses', however it is not storied as a time of inevitable 'crisis'. Moreover despite the plethora of literature portraying the menopause as problematic, this was not supported by the interview material.

This thesis makes two significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge within crime prevention. The first of these is to evaluate the success of repeat victimisation prevention interventions. Interventions across four crime types are assessed herein, and the context-mechanisms-outcome configurations examined. The second contribution of this thesis is to assess two techniques of meta-evaluation: systematic reviews and realist syntheses. Each of these techniques is used in turn to assess the repeat victimisation prevention interventions. The contribution of each technique to the knowledge pool is then discussed, and the question of whether they are complementary or contradictory approaches answered. The thesis is framed in the context of evolutionary epistemology, which is the philosophy underpinning both approaches to meta-evaluation addressed herein. The thesis starts, with an examination of: firstly, how the evaluation methods in question have evolved, and the background to their scientific worth; and secondly, how situational crime prevention measures have evolved over time. The thesis then examines the two competing approaches for their contribution to the evaluation ecosystem by using both to assess repeat victimisation prevention interventions. Finally, the last section poses the question of whether it is survival of the fittest, or whether co-existence or adaptation could be the key to survival for these two meta-evaluative methodologies. Repeat victimisation prevention is revealed as an effective way of reducing crime, with a need for further research to apply the principle across further crime types. A requirement is identified for a greater breadth and depth of information to be included in future crime prevention evaluations. The systematic review is shown to be a useful way of assessing the overall effectiveness of the interventions, whilst the realist synthesis fills in the detail of why some interventions work and others fail. It is concluded that both approaches to meta-evaluation have useful contributions to make, and that a third way incorporating the best elements from each method should be developed.

Safeguarding adults is a priority in adult social care, and training is one of the main ways in which policy and guidance around it is implemented. Training transfer refers to the use of new learning on the job, and while the transfer literature is well developed, it does not extend to safeguarding adults training. This research aimed to identify, develop and refine a programme theory of safeguarding adults training transfer by identifying factors that facilitate or inhibit the use of safeguarding adults training in practice, and the impact that the training has. A cross sectional mixed methods realist synthesis approach was used to evaluate two safeguarding adults training programmes provided in Cornwall, UK between 2009 and 2011. Realist synthesis aims to uncover what works, for whom, in which circumstances and how, and develops policy makers’ programme theories of interventions using evidence. A systematic review of training transfer generally, and then of health and social care transfer specifically led to a revision of the policy makers’ programme theory of training. Empirical research in the form of a factorial survey and narrative analysis of qualitative interviews was then undertaken, to further revise the programme theory to be specific to safeguarding adults training. Findings emphasise the importance of considering the effect of the training culture and transfer climate on safeguarding adults training effectiveness. Factors such as opportunity to use learning and supervisor support are important to transfer and the conflict between adult learning principles and mandatory training was explored. Safeguarding adults-specific supports were also highlighted, emphasising the importance of supporting practice using mechanisms other than training. Recommendations are provided regarding how the safeguarding related transfer climate can be improved. Limitations of the study include a high likelihood of sampling bias. The limitations of individual methods and problem of generalising findings obtained from a case study of Cornwall were reduced using the realist synthesis approach.

This thesis has sought to examine the conceptualisation(s) of the field of Olympic education identified in the English language literature, and to evaluate the planning of Olympic education in practice, specifically in relation to the preparation of Olympic education programmes and systems for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. When Pierre de Coubertin introduced the modern Olympic Games, one of the ideas for the revival of the Games was to educate young people through sport. Despite Coubertin s educational philosophy, the Olympic Games have long failed to represent ideals of fair play, equal opportunity, and international harmony but being replaced by bribery, corruption, commercialism, drug use and gender discrimination instead. The IOC has strengthened the roles and mission of the Olympic bodies in particular relation to the promotion of Olympic values and Olympism through the implementation of Olympic education. As a policy aim for the Olympic Movement, the development of Olympic education programmes has become a key goal for the IOC and thus host cities/nations. Providing a concept of Olympic and Paralympic education programmes in preparation for staging the Olympic Games is a compulsory requirement for host cities and nations. However, in spite of the IOC s recent explicit and intended commitment to the development of Olympic education policies in practice, explanation of Olympic education as a concept and a set of practices is imprecise and relatively underdeveloped in the Olympic related area. In addition, there is a lack of understanding of how universal values and concepts of Olympic education are perceived and communicated in culturally diverse contexts. The thesis is divided into two related parts, which seeks to provide two fundamental contributions to knowledge in this field. Part One is focused on a meta-narrative review of the English language literature on Olympic education. The methodology of a meta-narrative review is an extension of the systematic review process and facilitates the identification of the contribution of research traditions to the phenomena under review, in this case the conceptualisation and operationalisation of Olympic education. Through the process of meta-narrative review, six research traditions were identified: educational philosophy; critical sociology; curriculum development; education psychology; development of evaluation measures; and policy analysis and evaluation. II The results of the review identified how Olympic education has been conceptualised with various unfolding storylines in different research traditions, and this analysis subsequently provided the basis for the second key element of the study in the form of templates against which to evaluate the Olympic education programmes and systems associated with Tokyo 2020. Part Two employs a case study approach and is focused on the analysis of six cases using a realist evaluation methodology, employing analytic logic models and analysis of Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) configurations. This facilitates the development of explicit and/or implicit causal claims about changes brought about by Japanese Olympic education programmes. The research has also contributed to developing a critical review of Olympic education programmes in a culturally specific, non-western context. Provision of Olympic education, within the context of national legislation requiring its introduction into the school curriculum developed by various stakeholders, represents a unique and culturally specific context for its study. Not only its education system, but also the cultural and historical values embedded within Japanese Olympic education programmes derive from the Japanese understanding of Olympism and universal Olympic values based on the Japanese values such as harmony, in particular applied in the effort in the recovery from national disasters, moral values learned from Judo and physical education, and Japanese ways of expressing hospitality. Thus, this case study of Tokyo 2020 acts as an exemplar in the diffusing of ways of developing and delivering the benefits of Olympic education programmes in culturally specific context.

The five stories in this collection are an exploration of realist fiction through a variety of narrative points of view and a diversity of characters. The stories explore issues of class, age, work and family, but in each piece, the characters struggle in their own way to discover a sense of belonging in their own lives. Central to each of these stories is a sense of place. All are set in the American west, most in rural California and the land and activities of place provide not only a specific landscape, but often a limitation, a narrative element against which the characters both resist and find their truest home.

This paper focuses on Turkey’s foreign energy policy with a special focus on cases ofNabucco and South Stream Gas Pipeline Projects and examines the issue from the perspectiveof “realist theory”.The research question aims to discover the realist tendency in Turkishforeign energy policy and to find out which gas pipeline project is more beneficial in terms ofnational interest for Turkey and also relevant for meeting the goals of Turkish Foreign EnergyPolicy.Energy is the key concept of the discussions about future of our world and sustainabledevelopment. If energy functions as a subject that increases the tensions between countriesthis means a threat to sustainable development since it becomes a factor jeopardizing peaceand makes cooperation between states imporssible. Also; energy constitutes a fundamentalplace national strategies of states along with sustainable development.In order to make the theory operational, three main dimensions, being security, economicsand strategic are used as tools or in other words as filters to look through, in the analysis offoreign and energy policy, as well as cases of Nabucco and South Stream Gas Pipeline Projects.

<p>The late-nineteenth-century realist canon in Spain is filled with male characters who are physically weak, effeminate, ineffectual, infantilized, or impotent, and, thus, decidedly "unmanly," which indicates a collective societal anxiety about masculinity in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century. I argue that this anxiety about masculinity stems from another societal worry about Spain's backwardness with respect to its more modern European neighbors and the uneven rate of modernization with its own borders. I explore these issues in four novels by Galician-born realist author Emilia Pardo Bazán: <italic>La Tribuna</italic> (1882), <italic>Los Pazos de Ulloa</italic> (1886), <italic>La Madre Naturaleza</italic> (1887), and <italic>Memorias de un solterón</italic> (1896). I analyze these texts in light of historical and theoretical work on post-Enlightenment masculinity by scholars, such as George Mosse, John Tosh, Christopher Forth, and R. W. Connell. </p><p>In the first chapter, I trace the development of the post-Enlightenment, Western, model of manliness, a primarily urban, bourgeois phenomenon, which privileged rational intellect and individual hard work. I then compare the pace and extent of modernization in Spain and England to show how Spain lacked the material conditions that would allow most Spanish men to embody modern masculinity in the late nineteenth century. For the remaining chapters, I turn my attention to <italic>Los Pazos de Ulloa</italic>, <italic>La Madre Naturaleza</italic>, and <italic>Memorias de un solterón</italic>. Each of these novels shows, in different ways, how the modern masculine ideal coexists and conflicts with other pre-Enlightenment models of manliness--based on aristocratic leisure, military prowess, or brute force. I argue that the problems faced by the male characters in these novels are a direct result of this clash of masculinities, which in turn reflects Spain's economic stagnation in the nineteenth century. In Chapter II, I show how the refusal of the rural, Galician aristocracy to embrace certain hallmarks of the modern masculine ideal, such as hard work and Enlightenment thought, leads to a destabilization of feudal hierarchies in <italic>Los Pazos de Ulloa</italic>. I then argue that this destabilization results in the pervasiveness of violence in the novel. Chapter III focuses on <italic>La Madre Naturaleza</italic>. I contend that its narrator recognizes that change must come to rural Galicia and, thus, makes a gesture toward reconciling traditional and modern values, as well as pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment models of masculinity. I then show how this reconciliation ultimately fails because the narrator condemns the social mobility upon which modernization and modern masculinity depend. In Chapter IV, I discuss the importance of marriage and fatherhood to the enactment of modern masculinity in <italic>Memorias de un solterón</italic>. I then illustrate how, in the Galician provincial capital in which the novel is set, social and economic conditions make life as a bourgeois husband and father undesirable at best, and ruinous at worst.</p> / Dissertation

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to existing knowledge. If the knowledge is not useful in building society it has limited value. In order to be a tool for decision-makers, Preventive Home Visits (PHVs) are described and discussed according to a realist synthesis approach. The premise of this approach is that a single trial cannot tell the whole story and that understanding theoutcome pattern is much more important than seeking regularities in results across different trials. In order to understand the o utcome pattern, the PHV strategy in Nordmaling is examined against other trials and scientific work, and also in grey literature such as reports and workingpapers. An increasing population of seniors means that resources for health and elderly care are being scrutinised in order to achieve the best possible health for the money invested. PHVs represent one strategy that attempts to promote health among independent seniors. This thesis is a multidisciplinary study aiming to gain knowledge about the effects of PHVs and to understand the mechanisms of importance when implementing this particular strategy. The point of departure is a study conducted in Nordmaling in the north of Sweden among healthy seniors aged 75 years and over. The study, conducted as a controlled trial during 2000 and 2001, showed a decrease in mortality as well as the utilisation of care, and an improvement in indicators of perceived health. Cost analyses showed significant savings for the municipality following a reduction in the use of home help. These and other savings combined with costs of the intervention were related to saved life years and used to conduct health economic analyses. Medical and social records from the primary health centre and the municipality, along with official registers provided information for modelling health economic analyses from a lifetime perspective. Results showed that the costs of PHVs were less than 10 000 Euros per gained life year, against an acceptable level of cost effectiveness of 50 000 Euros. Using a shorter time perspective, the result was even more favourable for PHVs. It was evident that the time window used in the analyses, the normative choice of including future healthcare costs or not, and how to handle the value of the seniors’ production were important factors in determining the results. Two years after the trial, in-depth interviews were conducted with 5 seniors who had experienced PHVs, in order to gain understanding of the outcome of the PHV trial in Nordmaling. Participants were selected with respect to their health and how they responded to advice given during the PHV trial. Grounded Theory was used to analyse the interviews. Seniors who used autonomous coping strategies in everyday life gained less from PHVs than other seniors. All participants could benefit from PHVs, but in order for these to be successful it was important for the home visitor to be professional and to understand how the different coping strategies of seniors worked. Taken together, the different aspects of this study raised normative questions that are discussed in this thesis. One, whether the production of seniors has any monetary value in health economic analyses conducted from a societal perspective, was addressed in a smaller diary study where 23 seniors were asked to keep a diary in order to identify everything they did over a oneweek period. It was evident that most of the respondents “produced” a lot, however the production of seniors is rarely taken into account in health economic analyses. The concept of “senior production” includes both the market value of what seniors do, as well as the value of what society can avoid doing if the seniors are independent and healthy.

Health promotion interventions are a key public health strategy aimed at improving population health and reducing health inequities. It is paramount that societies be able to assess whether investments in health promotion strategies are effective. However, the traditional or orthodox, evidence-based medicine approach to assessing the effectiveness of medical interventions has not proved to be appropriate for assessing health promotion interventions. Thus, there is a desperate need for workable, alternative approaches to assessing health promotion effectiveness. This study reviews current work in the field aimed at developing such alternatives and provides a critical analysis of some of the deep methodological challenges that confront this work. Through the use of a specific case study of a project aimed at implementing one of these alternative approaches ('realist synthesis'), this dissertation offers an original, empirically based analysis of the types of emerging issues that one particular attempt at developing an alternative approach must deal with. This study offers an ethnomethodological analysis of video-recorded 'work sessions', where the research team is working through specific aspects of the 'realist synthesis' project; particularly the conceptualization and categorization of 'contextual factors', and the identification and specification of `outcomes'. Through this analysis, it is demonstrated that alternative approaches to synthesizing evidence for health promotion interventions must rely upon the mundane, practical, everyday competencies of 'abstraction' and 'objectification' as they are carried out, for all practical purposes, by a research team, as it goes about solving problems and completing normal research tasks. The study concludes that much more attention needs to be paid to developing skills, representational tools and training research assistants, if alternative approaches are to be successful in completing reviews and sustaining credibility for end-users.