Search results

This paper aims to outline a participative approach to researching education doctoral students' trajectories that functions both as a form of training in research methodology and as a means of reflection on the doctoral trajectory and what doctoral students have brought to the doctoral process through their experience.

Ten participants formed dyads and acted as both researchers and subjects of research, using narrative accounts and interviews. The collaborative approach aimed to allow “hands‐on” experience of the selected methods, as well as full engagement in negotiating each stage of the project.

Project group meetings and the data generated by participants provided a rich source of learning about methodological issues in education research, in addition to the personal understandings emerging from such a project.

This project reports an approach to “hands‐on” learning of methodological and ethical issues within doctoral development programmes that could be adapted for use on similar programmes. It suggests an alternative to the more common forms of doctoral training (such as exposition, discussion, reading, or simulation) that is of real value to doctoral students in that it enables deep reflection on the journeys that have brought students to doctoral study, whilst at the same time providing a rich resource for methodological learning.

The purpose of this paper is to fill a research and literature gap by examining the nature and impact of hate crime victimisation on police officers, and their responses to it. The research explores victimisation due to the occupational stigma of policing and the personal characteristics and identities of individual officers.

The research design is qualitative, based on 20 in-depth interviews with police officers in one English police force. Thematic analysis was applied to the data.

All participants had experienced hate crime arising from their occupational or personal identities. Initially shocked, officers became desensitized and responded in different ways. These include tolerating and accepting hate crime but also challenging it through communication and the force of law.

This research is based on a small sample. It does not claim to be representative but it is exploratory, aiming to stimulate debate and further research on a contemporary policing issue.

If further research works were to confirm these findings, there are implications for police training, officer welfare and support, supervision and leadership.

The police occupy a problematic position within hate crime literature and UK legislation. This paper opens up debate on an under-researched area and presents the first published study of the hate crime experiences of police officers.

A study examined reading strategies in relation to information-seeking stages, tasks and reading media in an academic setting. Understanding reading practices and needs in the context of information-seeking can refine our understanding of user choices and preferences for information sources (e.g. textbooks, articles, multimedia content) and media (e.g. print and digital tools used for reading). It can also help to examine the changes in reading practices brought about by digital devices and content.

The data were collected via an online questionnaire from a sample of graduate students over the course of two months. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics.

The authors found that all information-seeking stages and all academic tasks were characterised by a combination of “deep” and “surface” reading and a use of both print and electronic resources. Contrary to previous studies that linked digital media to “surface” reading (e.g. skimming, searching for keywords), the participants reported a high number of “deep” reading tactics (e.g. annotating, connecting text to prior knowledge) while using digital resources.

The study relied on a convenience sample of library and information science students, so some findings can be attributed to the sample’s demographics and academic demands. The findings imply that at all stages of information-seeking for all academic tasks, graduate students were engaged in both deep and surface reading using both print and electronic resources.

The findings show that students read print and digital texts, suggesting that it might be premature for academic libraries to part with their print collections. Understanding relationships between academic task, information-seeking and reading can aid students in choosing the right reading resources for their academic tasks, educators in assigning appropriate materials for course projects, libraries in providing appropriate resources to their readers and information retrieval system designers in offering useful features for different reading needs and styles.

The findings indicate a shift in academic work culture and reliance on digital texts for deep and surface reading.

The study produced preliminary support for the development of a unified information-seeking and reading model.

NEXIS and DIALOG both offer full‐text online coverage of the magazine Business Week, while ABI/INFORM Global Edition on CDROM provides abstracts. A comparison of all three systems shows mixed results. DIALOG had the most records for two narrow topics, while NEXIS was superior when the search topic was broader. Although retrieving fewer items than the full‐text systems, ABI/INFORM had a considerable amount of material. With the difficulty of choosing between costly full‐text systems, settling for abstracts on CDROM may be an alternative for the researcher.

“Since films attract an audience of millions, the need and appetite for information about them is enormous.” So said Harold Leonard in his introduction to The Film Index published in 1941. The 1970's has produced more than enough — too much — food to satisfy that appetite. In the past five years the number of reference books, in this context defined as encyclopedias, handbooks, directories, dictionaries, indexes and bibliographies, and the astounding number of volumes on individual directors, complete histories, genre history and analysis, published screenplays, critics' anthologies, biographies of actors and actresses, film theory, film technique and production and nostalgia, that have been published is overwhelming. The problem in film scholarship is not too little material but the senseless duplication of materials that already exist and the embarrassing output of items that are poorly or haphazardly researched, or perhaps should not have been written at all.

Other concentrated milk products are evaporated or condensed milks. These do serve as direct substitutes for the original, simply by the restoration of the original amount of water content. Large shipments of these products are going forward regularly from Canada and the United States to Great Britain. The next logical step in the process is the complete dehydration into powdered form. This has been an expanding industry in recent years. Milk in powdered form occupies only about one‐quarter of the space taken by evaporated milk and approximately one‐eleventh of the volume of the original fluid milk. Experiments are now under way in Canada to make further economies. Dried milk is usually packed in tins or small containers, in loose powder form. Half a ton of milk was recently sent from Ontario to Great Britain in the form of solid blocks, packed in large cartons. If these experiments are successful further important economies in shipping space will result. The drying of eggs has until last year only been incidentally carried on in this continent, and industries using dried eggs have depended upon China for their supply. The cutting off of this source and spectacular demand for military use and overseas shipment have resulted in a tremendous increase in output. In 1939 the United States egg‐drying industry prepared only 10 million pounds of dried egg products. By 1941 this had been increased to 45 million pounds, and it has been estimated that output in 1942 will reach 150 million pounds. Some fear has been expressed that the present expansion in the industry will have severe repercussions, when conditions of normal supply and demand are restored after the war. It should be noted, however, that production of this year's quota will involve operation of the plants twenty‐four hours a day throughout the year and that the industry can go back to a peacetime operation with an eight‐hour day and a four‐month season. On this basis output would be only 17 million pounds per annum, or slightly larger than pre‐war consumption in the United States. Egg drying in Canada has also begun to expand. During 1941 we delivered 15 million dozen eggs to Great Britain. These eggs were shipped in the shell, and owing to shipping delays their condition upon arrival was not always satisfactory. Egg deliveries to Great Britain in 1942 are expected to reach 45 million dozen eggs, and since February 7th all of these have been shipped in the dried form. Although the drying capacity in Canada has been sharply increased it is not yet capable of handling all the eggs available at the period of peak production and the surplus eggs are being packed for future processing. While there has been a substantial growth in the processing of milk and eggs by dehydration, the industry which has received the greatest publicity and aroused most public interest is the dehydration of vegetables. During the World War of 1914–18 a substantial quantity of dehydrated vegetables was prepared and shipped to Europe, primarily for the use of United States armed forces. These were not popular; in general they tasted like anything but vegetables, and the kindest description of their flavour was that it resembled hay. The industry died away at the end of the war almost as rapidly as it had risen. The last few years, however, have seen a revival of interest and of operation in the dehydrated vegetable industry. This revival has, curiously enough, been based upon discoveries made in research for a rival, the quick‐frozen food industry. In the earlier days of the latter industry the same problem of hay‐like flavour arose. Research indicated that this was due to activity of enzymes—those curious biological catalysts present in all living matter without which the chemical changes necessary for its existence could not take place. It was discovered by pioneers in the frozen food industry that a pre‐heating or “blanching” process immediately prior to freezing prevented activity of the enzymes during the period when the food remained frozen. As a result of the lack of chemical change the flavour remained unaffected. It is thus against the background of this research rather than as a result of immediate war demands that the dehydrated vegetable industry has so far had its development. For a number of years the industry in the United States has been slowly growing, and a survey conducted last year by the United States Department of Commerce indicated that fifteen commercial plants produced slightly less than 5 million pounds of dehydrated vegetables in 1940. Nearly two‐thirds of the output was in the form of powders to be used for seasoning, including such highly flavoured vegetables as onions, celery and red peppers. The remainder of the output was either in the form of mixed vegetables which, combined with animal protein and flavourings, make up the now familiar packaged soups. There has also been, however, a relatively substantial volume of production for dehydration and use in the form of the original vegetable. One company in fact has specialised in the production of potato shreds which permit the preparation of mashed potatoes in five minutes. The greater part of the output was purchased by hotels, restaurants and other large organisations where convenience in use was a major factor. The direct sale to individual consumers was only in the preliminary stages. The increased demand for food products in the United States, both for the armed forces and for shipment abroad under “lease‐lend,” has aroused an intense interest in the industry. The United States Department of Agriculture announced at the beginning of June a programme of technical assistance and priorities on materials for food processors desirous of converting their plants. Compared with the fifteen plants producing 5,000,000 pounds in 1940, there are now reported to be 113 companies operating dehydration plants, with an aggregate annual production of 125,000,000 pounds. Potential demand may be measured by the fact that if dehydrated potatoes were served to the men in the United States army only once a week it would require 7 million pounds of finished product per annum of this vegetable alone. The types of dehydrated vegetables most in demand are potatoes, onions, cabbages, carrots, beets and tomatoes. The important factor in all these products is quality. Dehydration is not a process for getting rid of second‐grade products. One successful operator has found that green peas for dehydration should be of approximately the same quality as those used for quick‐freezing, and must be better than the average quality of peas canned. If the product is to be restored to anything like palatable flavour and texture the flavour must be there to begin with. During recent months the Canadian Government has been actively encouraging experimental work in the dehydration of vegetables.

Low productivity in construction is typically blamed on the seemingly complex and chaotic nature of construction, which emerges as the stakeholders do not have an adequate picture of the evolving situation. The ever-increasing volume of situation data owing to the recent advances in IoT devices and reality capture platforms provide a unique opportunity to capture the actual situation data of construction projects accurately at a fraction of the cost compared to manual status tracking and reporting. This paper aims to investigate the concept of a situation picture, challenges in collecting situation data and its benefits.

Empirical data is collected through interviews in California and Finland, and by organizing workshops.

We contribute to literature on managing operational information by defining the concept of a situation picture in the context of construction, specifically from the blue-collar’s perspective during on-site activities. We present the key components of a conceptual information model that represents a situation picture in construction.

The applicability of conceptual information model of situation picture is not tested in practice, but the model will provide a starting point for research to comprehensively integrate social and digital information exchange for improving workflow.

The paper claims that designing and building comprehensive information management infrastructure would contribute to solving the problems of low productivity, quality and safety in construction projects.

Research on situation picture and situation awareness is scarce in the context of construction. The study links various information management technologies and practices to actual construction productivity.