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Telephone interviews were conducted with 64 participants who attended an initial systemic consultation meeting within a community‐based psychology service for people with a learning disability. Most participants found the sessions helpful and liked the reflecting conversations, which they said broadened their views on the presenting problems and offered a positive approach to the meeting, as well as enabling as many views as possible to be heard. However, depending on whether they were carers, colleagues or client and family members, participants' views varied on how prepared and comfortable they felt about the format of the meetings. The authors felt that the results lend support to the overall helpfulness of using an initial systemic consultation meeting when working with this client group.

This study examines the information literacy practices of young video bloggers, focusing on the ways in which they construct their cognitive authority through a health-related information creation process.

This study draws upon socially oriented information literacy research and nexus analysis as its methodological framework. Data, including YouTube videos, theme interviews and video diaries, were collected with three Finnish video bloggers and qualitatively analysed using nexus analytical concepts to describe the central elements of social action.

The study shows that video bloggers employ several information practices during the information creation process, including planning, information-seeking, organization, editing and presentation of information. They construct their cognitive authority in relation to their anticipated audience by grounding it on different types of information: experience-based, embodied and scientific. Trustworthiness, emphasized with authenticity and genuineness, and competence, based on experience, expertise and second-hand information, were recognized as key components of credibility in this context.

This study increases the understanding of the complex ways in which young people create information on social media and influence their audiences. The study contributes to information literacy research by offering insights into the under-researched area of information creation. It is among the few studies to examine cognitive authority construction in the information creation process. The notion of authority as constructed through trustworthiness and competence and grounded on different types of information, can be taken into account in practice by information professionals and educators when planning information literacy instruction.

THE topics of the Library Association Conference and the election of the Council of the Association naturally absorb a great deal of attention this month. To deal with the second first: there were few novelties in the nominations, and most of the suggested new Councillors are good people; so that a fairly good Council should result. The unique thing, as we imagine, about the Library Association is the number of vice‐presidents, all of whom have Council privileges. These are not elected by the members but by the Council, and by the retiring Council; they occupy a position analagous to aldermen in town councils, and are not amenable to the choice or desires of the members at large. There are enough of them, too, if they care to be active, to dominate the Council. Fortunately, good men are usually elected, but recently there has been a tendency to elect comparatively young men to what are virtually perpetual seats on the Council, simply, if one may judge from the names, because these men occupy certain library positions. It, therefore; is all the more necessary that the electors see that men who really represent the profession get the seats that remain.

A number of food poverty definitions have been identified by academics and various government organisations globally; however, there exists no government-endorsed definition of food poverty in the United Kingdom (UK), and there remains a gap regarding how relevant current food poverty definitions are in the Northern Ireland (NI)/UK contexts.

Interviews (n = 19) with a range of stakeholders (e.g. policymakers, politicians, community advice centre workers, consumer sub-group representatives, food bank and food redistribution organisation representatives) were conducted to examine (1) the usefulness of a food poverty definition, (2) what a food poverty definition should include and (3) the applicability of an existing definition (Radimer et al., 1992) in the NI/UK context. Data was thematically analysed using QSR NVivo (v.12).

Definition was considered important to increase awareness and understanding. Any consideration of revising the Radimer et al. (1992) definition, or of establishing a new standardised definition, should seek to reduce/remove ambiguity and subjectivity of terminology used (i.e. more clearly defining what the terms “adequate”, “sufficient”, “quality” and “socially acceptable ways” mean in this context).

This research emphasises the importance of appropriately conceptually defining social phenomena such as food poverty, as a first step to constructing and reviewing measurement approaches and ultimately assessing predictors and recommending solutions.

This research addresses the gap relating to stakeholders’ opinion on food poverty definition and contributes recommendations for modifying the Radimer et al. (1992) definition in the NI/UK and present-day contexts.

In this book it was proposed that autistic females and African American autistics are usually not participants in autistic research because they rarely receive an autism diagnosis. If diagnostic services were made more congenial for autistics from these groups, then the prospect of them being diagnosed as autistic and being available to be research participants would increase. To help achieve this outcome, this chapter begins by presenting some typical barriers that autistics encounter when trying to access autism diagnostic services. This is followed by an explanation of some consequences of this exclusion for autistics, their families and the research community. In an attempt to mitigate these consequences, and to increase the pool of potential autistic candidates for research, this chapter concludes with a series of suggestions to improve the public's accessibility to autism diagnostic services as well as suggestions for improving the autism diagnostic process for both children and adults.

The contribution that this chapter makes to the field of autism spectrum research is to provide clinicians with some important concepts that will help autistics feel valued and accepted during the diagnostic process. A potential flow-on effect of this knowledge is that more autistics who have experienced feeling valued and accepted by clinicians will be more inclined to be involved in research.

France is honouring this year the birthday centenary of a man who conferred a benefaction upon the whole world yet died without distinction and in comparative poverty, if not obscurity. When in the early ’fifties of last century governments in Europe were becoming gravely concerned over the rapidly diminishing margin between food demands and supplies, it was Charles Tellier who came to their rescue. Tellier, who was born at Auteuil, Paris, in 1828, had been trained as a civil engineer, but he combined with the practical mind of the craftsman the analytical capacity of the scientist, and was early attracted by the problems associated with the chemical production of cold. The spectacle presented by a vast continent like Europe faced by the prospect of imminent food famine, while countries like Australia, New Zealand and America, particularly the Argentine, had far greater supplies than they knew what to do with stirred his imagination. Inventive genius in all parts of the world had been stimulated by the promise of a rich reward to the inventor of a practical method of preserving not only meat, but other perishable foodstuffs. The Government of the Argentine held out $8,000 as a bait to the ingenious. In Australia, where the tinning of meat was first exploited, new experiments along the same lines were tried. In England, where a Committee of the Society of Arts had been appointed “to consider practical steps in the direction of providing a more ample food supply,” officials were kept busy testing the inventions submitted for their consideration. One suggestion took the shape of the manufacture of what was described as the “Flour of Meat”; another inventor, borrowing his idea from the method of curing English hams, submitted a device for the production of “Australian Mutton Hams,” and still another ingenious person discovered a process for drying meat with sulphur dioxide. Tellier first experimented with air‐tight chambers. But the presence of the elements of decay in the meat itself defeated his designs. Pasteur's pronouncements on the subject of the preexistent presence of organic germs, at once authoritative and decisive, had the effect of diverting his attention to the refrigerator, and by repeated investigations he found that not only flowers but all kinds of perishable goods could be preserved for long periods on being frozen. It was in “The Engine Carre,” an ammonia compression machine, produced by the French engineer Carre, with whom he is said to have been in some way associated, that Tellier found perhaps the most important factor in facilitating the solution of his problem. This engine was completed about 1860. Eight years later Tellier made his first experiment in the shipment of meat under refrigeration. An ammonia compression machine was installed in a vessel, the “City of Rio de Janeiro,” which shipped three hundred kilos of beef from London for Monte Video. The intention was to place a cargo of meat on board at Uruguay for shipment on the homeward journey to France. But twenty‐three days out from London an accident which could not be repaired occurred to the refrigerating apparatus and the meat had to be eaten on board. So it came about that the United States were able to anticipate Tellier in the actual inauguration of a meat trade between the new and the old worlds dependent upon artificially cooled storage during transport. A shipment of chilled beef was made from the United States to this country in 1874.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a general review of “student engagement” with a focus on the measurement of student engagement in UK higher education. A wide variation in how the construct is measured has made it difficult for institutional researchers to compare findings across studies. This study seeks to understand more about the measurement of student engagement by examining the reliability and validity of three national student surveys: National Survey of Student Engagement, National Student Survey and UK Engagement Survey.

Using a narrative review of literature, each survey method is examined to identify the strands of student engagement they can be applied, to determine to what extent survey results can be benchmarked across institutions, and to explore their potential use in institutional led research. Kahu’s (2013) four perspectives of engagement are adopted as a framework for analysis as they represent student engagement as a fluid, multifaceted and, at times, abstract construct.

Findings support the notion that a single instrument cannot examine all facets of this complex construct and that student surveys currently collect information on limited and discrete perspectives of engagement. The use of these three surveys provides a depth and breadth of information about student engagement; however, institutions need to maintain an open dialogue about the construct to ensure its validity, and how to measure and understand it.

Student engagement as a construct continues to evolve and change. This paper adds to the call for institutional researchers to continue to engage in debate about the validity of the construct. The need to maintain essential knowledge of the construct and its many facets is necessary, as is the need to incorporate such knowledge into ongoing work to provide accurate, actionable data to guide improvement and enhancement research.