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The purpose of this paper is to explore the needs of men experiencing domestic abuse from the perspective of the professionals supporting them.

An all Wales qualitative study, 20 semi-structured interviews were completed with managers and practitioners of domestic abuse services supporting men. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis.

Analysis identified six themes: against the tide of recognition, a need to recognise and accept domestic abuse, knowledge of provision, low numbers of men, resources (time and funding) and rebuilding. However, against the tide of recognition was central. Domestic abuse is understood as a heteronormative and gendered experience; abused men defy these notions.

Findings cannot be generalised across the UK. This study offers a valuable base on which to build future knowledge. Future research might consider recruiting larger samples or follow up qualitative findings with a larger quantitative survey.

This paper presents the manager and practitioner views of the service needs and solutions for men. They perceive that abused men need to recognise and accept victimisation, have knowledge of provision and know it is acceptable to seek help and receive practical support.

Increasing recognition cannot be achieved in isolation. A shared commitment is required from policy, practice and research to raise the agenda for abused men.

This is an under-researched area. This paper is the first to explore the needs of men through the lens of domestic abuse professionals.

Falls are common in older adults and are associated with injuries and serious ongoing problems. This paper aims to present a participatory evaluation of a Falls Awareness Programme implemented in South Wales for older adults living in sheltered housing schemes or in the community. It identifies methodological issues and provides recommendations for evaluation design and methods for community-based interventions in the future.

A mixed-methods study combining a non-experimental pretest–posttest design with face-to-face focus groups.

Concerns about falling and self-reported general health at baseline were worse for participants living in sheltered housing schemes, compared to participants in the community. There was no statistically significant change between baseline and follow-up in general health or concerns about falling; however, the data suggesting the programme may be more effective for people in sheltered housing schemes. Participants reported making small, but sustainable behaviour changes following the programme and described unexpected outcomes from the programme, e.g. socialising and meeting new people.

This paper demonstrates the benefit of engaging older adults in research using a participatory approach, highlights key components of community-based interventions for older people and identifies some methodological issues when conducting evaluations in the community. Specifically, it highlights the importance of selecting appropriate measurement tools for data collection and the utility of continuous monitoring where programme participation is flexible and fluid.

This article aims to report on the configuration of the integrated Support and Wellbeing Worker (SWB) role in an innovative Gwent Frailty programme from 2009 until 2011.

The health and social care Gwent Frailty programme used a configuration approach by adopting “frailty” as its unifying theme across the seven agencies involved. In order to configure this role, the Frailty Workforce Group (FWG) identified three tasks; staff engagement, identifying the SWB worker training needs, and scoping the employment options for the new role.

For others facing the same challenges there are three key principles. The first is that having a unifying concept underpinned by the commissioned “Happily independent” study legitimately enabled the FWG to deliver on its three tasks identified by the Frailty Board. The second was that time spent on early staff and trade union engagement gave positive messages about their value within the role configuration. Finally, that developing an integrated role meant that core training and development had to be consistent so that registered staff were confident they could delegate safely.

The number of articles on developing an integrated support worker role in health and social care is sparse. The value of this article is that it reports on the configuration of an innovative new integrated health and social care role working with frail people. This was based on what older people wanted from services in order to be “happily independent”.

During the 1990s the value to an intending professional accountant of undertaking a period of liberal (general) studies was promoted internationally by a number of individuals and organisations, including the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (the “Institute”). The Institute significantly changed its admissions policy for Chartered Accountants in 1996 and one change was to require four years of degree level study with a compulsory liberal studies component. This study surveys the perceptions of New Zealand accounting practitioners on the impact of this compulsory liberal component. The results of this study demonstrate that there is little support from accounting practitioners for IFAC’s claim that liberal education “can contribute significantly to the acquisition of professional skills”, including intellectual, personal and communication skills. In addition, the majority of respondents did not perceive any improvements in the professional skills of the staff that had qualified under the Institute’s current admissions policy. However, any perceived improvements were mainly attributed to the Institute’s admissions policy change. Notwithstanding the lack of support for the assertion that liberal education develops professional skills, there is a strong belief by respondents in the value of liberal education for intending professional accountants.

This paper explores the value of financial statement auditing in the public sector. The study applies theory about auditing from the private sector as well as the public sector to explore ways in which public sector auditing can be expected to be valuable. It shows that there are a number of complementary explanations that can be applied to examine the value of public audit, including agency, signaling, insurance, management control, governance and confirmation explanations. The evidence from research and history is generally consistent with the agency and management control explanations. There is some support for the signaling and insurance explanations, while research evidence suggests that governance has differing impact in the public sector compared to the private. The confirmation hypothesis is also potentially relevant. Reviewing the history of the development of public sector auditing functions shows that at least some developments were consistent with explanations such as agency theory and management control. Auditing in the public sector is an area where more research is valuable. The paper concludes with a discussion of issues for further investigation.

The 2005 APSR article by John Alford, Carolyn Funk, and John Hibbing presented data from the Virginia 30,000 Health & Lifestyle Questionnaire (VA30K), AARP twin studies, and an Australian twin study (ATR) to test their hypothesis that political attitudes are influenced by genetic as well as environmental factors. Political attitudes, they suggested, were expected to be highly heritable and particularly so on issues most correlated with personality. They employed survey responses from the Wilson–Patterson Attitude Inventory to measure political attitudes. To gauge heritability, they utilize the 2:1 genetic ratio between monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins. The authors argued that while previous studies in political attitudes had concentrated on measuring the influence of environmental variables, their test added explanatory power by considering heritability (Alford, Funk, & Hibbing, 2005).

While women's labor force participation has increased, their positions vary in prestige, authority, autonomy, and segregation in comparison with men's. Earlier research in which they evaluate their job quality, however, finds women's job satisfaction to be the same or higher than men's, and nonwhites' job satisfaction lower than whites'. The present research examines perceived job satisfaction for a large national sample in 2002. In a model that includes human capital and work context variables, race continues to significantly impact job satisfaction. Sex and race segregation do not impact job satisfaction, but having supportive coworkers does. Such support is more characteristic of women's than men's work relationships in these data and may help account for women's comparable job satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the views of industrial practitioners from Jamaica's hotel, travel and tourism industry on climate change.

The paper uses standard questions to explore the likely impact of climate change on tourism and the kinds of action needed by government and by industry to mitigate these impacts.

It is indicated that practitioners are aware of the growing impact of climate change on their business and the need for a co‐ordinated response.

The paper relates the analysis of climate issues in the Caribbean to the views and experiences of industry leaders.

Presents a series of articles on each of the following topics: digital strategy in the next millennium (Digital strategy – a model for the millennium; Searching for the next competitive edge; The technology link; Value web management opportunities; clash of the Titans: communications companies battle for new ground; and a guide through the maze); retailing and distribution in the digital era (The business case for electronic commerce; superdistribution spells major changes; VF Corp. sews up software operation; IBM seeks to harness digital revolution; Egghead’s bold move to a Web‐based strategy; achieving successful Internet banking; and enterprising uses for IT); and the changing shape of the aviation industry (boom times ahead for air cargo; United Airlines flies high through employee ownership; Asian practices to West at Cathay Pacific; and Ryannair strips to the bone).