Vanessa Pinfold, Ceri Dare, Sarah Hamilton, Harminder Kaur, Ruth Lambley, Vicky Nicholls, Irene Petersen, Paulina Szymczynska, Charlotte Walker and Fiona Stevenson
The purpose of this paper is to understand how women with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder approach medication decision making in pregnancy.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand how women with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder approach medication decision making in pregnancy.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was co-produced by university academics and charity-based researchers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted by three peer researchers who have used anti-psychotic medication and were of child bearing age. Participants were women with children under five, who had taken anti-psychotic medication in the 12 months before pregnancy. In total, 12 women were recruited through social media and snowball techniques. Data were analyzed following a three-stage process.
Findings
The accounts highlighted decisional uncertainty, with medication decisions situated among multiple sources of influence from self and others. Women retained strong feelings of personal ownership for their decisions, whilst also seeking out clinical opinion and accepting they had constrained choices. Two styles of decision making emerged: shared and independent. Shared decision making involved open discussion, active permission seeking, negotiation and coercion. Independent women-led decision making was not always congruent with medical opinion, increasing pressure on women and impacting pregnancy experiences. A common sense self-regulation model explaining management of health threats resonated with women’s accounts.
Practical implications
Women should be helped to manage decisional conflict and the emotional impact of decision making including long term feelings of guilt. Women experienced interactions with clinicians as lacking opportunities for enhanced support except in specialist perinatal services. This is an area that should be considered in staff training, supervision, appraisal and organization review.
Originality/value
This paper uses data collected in a co-produced research study including peer researchers.
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Shuming Zhao, Cathy Sheehan, Helen De Cieri and Brian Cooper
The purpose of this paper is to address gaps in the knowledge about human resource (HR) professional involvement in strategic decision-making in China compared with that in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address gaps in the knowledge about human resource (HR) professional involvement in strategic decision-making in China compared with that in Australia.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the authors compare the strategic involvement of Chinese and Australian HR professionals. Second, based on the upper echelon theory, the authors compare the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) and top management team (TMT) between both countries on HR involvement in strategic decision-making. Data were collected from matched pairs of HR and TMT executives in China (n = 168) and in Australia (n = 102).
Findings
Results indicate a difference, despite of no statistical significance, in HR involvement in strategic decision-making between Chinese and Australian samples. TMT behavioural integration was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in a collectivistic culture (i.e. in China), but not in an individualistic culture (i.e. in Australia). However, CEO support for HRM was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in Australia, whereas it is not related in China.
Originality/value
The paper conducts a comparative study and practical, and research implications are discussed at the end.
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Keywords
Matthew Hanchard, Peter Merrington, Bridgette Wessels, Kathy Rogers, Michael Pidd, Simeon Yates, David Forrest, Andrew Higson, Nathan Townsend and Roderik Smits
In this article, we discuss an innovative audience research methodology developed for the AHRC-funded “Beyond the Multiplex: Audiences for Specialised Film in English Regions”…
Abstract
In this article, we discuss an innovative audience research methodology developed for the AHRC-funded “Beyond the Multiplex: Audiences for Specialised Film in English Regions” project (BtM). The project combines a computational ontology with a mixed-methods approach drawn from both the social sciences and the humanities, enabling research to be conducted both at scale and in depth, producing complex relational analyses of audiences. BtM aims to understand how we might enable a wide range of audiences to participate in a more diverse film culture, and embrace the wealth of films beyond the mainstream in order to optimise the cultural value of engaging with less familiar films. BtM collects data through a three-wave survey of film audience members’ practices, semi-structured interviews and film-elicitation groups with audience members alongside interviews with policy and industry experts, and analyses of key policy and industry documents. Bringing each of these datasets together within our ontology enables us to map relationships between them across a variety of different concerns. For instance, how cultural engagement in general relates to engagement with specialised films; how different audiences access and/or share films across different platforms and venues; how their engagement with those films enables them to make meaning and generate value; and how all of this is shaped by national and regional policy, film industry practices, and the decisions of cultural intermediaries across the fields of film production, distribution and exhibition. Alongside our analyses, the ontology enables us to produce data visualisations and a suite of analytical tools for audience development studies that stakeholders can use, ensuring the research has impact beyond the academy. This paper sets out our methodology for developing the BtM ontology, so that others may adapt it and develop their own ontologies from mixed-methods empirical data in their studies of other knowledge domains.