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An earlier study of health and social services professionals in community teams for people with intellectual disabilities (CTIDs) identified a number of significant gaps in their knowledge of mental capacity issues. The present study aims to ascertain the knowledge of staff working in residential services for people with intellectual disabilities.

Participants were staff working in three specialist residential settings catering to people with intellectual disabilities: qualified nurses working in the UK National Health Service (NHS) and in independent‐sector continuing health care settings; and senior staff in residential houses. They were administered the same structured interview as in the earlier study, which was constructed around three scenarios concerning a financial/legal issue, a health issue, and a relationships issue, as well as a set of ten “true/false” statements. Their performance was compared with that of two reference groups, the earlier CTID participants, and a group of staff working in generic (i.e. other than specialist intellectual disability) NHS services.

No differences in interview performance were found between the three groups of residential carers, who performed better than generic NHS staff but worse than CTID professionals. However, the three residential groups did differ in their self‐ratings of how well‐informed and confident they felt in relation to mental capacity issues.

The study shows that staff working in residential services for people with intellectual disabilities have only a limited understanding of mental capacity issues and their confidence in their own knowledge may not be a good guide to their ability to deal with such issues when they arise in practice.

Electronic‐retailing is the buzzword of 2000. Every other press release I receive relates to electronic commerce or Internet shopping. Therefore, it seems appropriate to focus this summer issue of Retail Insights on the subject. The first article by Rowley discusses the phenomenon of shopping bots, the intelligent agents designed to support comparison shopping across a number of Internet sites. She reviews the functions and evaluates the coverage of different shopping bots. In the second article, Wee and Ramachandra assess the level of cyberbuying activities in China, Hong Kong and Singapore by concentrating on the who, why and what of online retailing.

MANY WRITERS have something to say to us; a few speak to one's condition. For some of us, of this time and place, James Kennaway was one of those few, and this is why news of his death in December 1969 had for many people to whom he was known only through his work the impact, almost, of a personal loss.