Rebecca Ozanne, Jane L. Ireland, Carol A. Ireland and Abigail Thornton
The purpose of this study is to build on previous literature in this area thus, the views of professionals working with those who report institutional abuse was sought using a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to build on previous literature in this area thus, the views of professionals working with those who report institutional abuse was sought using a Delphi method.
Design/methodology/approach
Professionals working with those who report institutional abuse, such as psychologists, social workers and personal injury lawyers, were invited to engage in the Delphi study. Sixteen professionals completed the final round (with four rounds in total). This method was used to gain professional consensus on the considered impacts of institutional child abuse and what factors influence impacts.
Findings
Eight superordinate themes were developed, as follows: institutional abuse has lasting negative effects on well-being, functioning and behaviour; loss of trust in others and the system is a potential outcome of institutional abuse; negative impacts on future life chances; negative impacts of institutional abuse are exacerbated by numerous factors; protective factors reduced negative impacts; psychological intervention is useful for survivors; positive and negative impacts of disclosure – the response of others as important; and keep impacts individualised.
Practical implications
The need for an individualised approach when working with those reporting institutional abuse was a salient finding.
Originality/value
Institutional abuse is known to result in several negative impacts, although research into this area is limited with a need to better understand what may protect or exacerbate impacts.
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Philip Birch, Rebecca Ozanne and Jane Ireland
The role of the media in supporting an understanding of the social world is well documented. The representation of homosexuals in the media can therefore impact on homophobia…
Abstract
Purpose
The role of the media in supporting an understanding of the social world is well documented. The representation of homosexuals in the media can therefore impact on homophobia within society. The purpose of this paper is to examine how homosexuals are portrayed in the media generally, before examining and comparing newspaper reports of homosexual aggression with heterosexual aggression.
Design/methodology/approach
Utilising a new and innovative research methodology, an integrated grounded behavioural linguistic inquiry (IGBLI) approach, four daily newspapers in circulation within the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia are examined.
Findings
While there are similarities in the way print media report on these aggressive incidents, the differences which emerge from the findings are of interest which require further, more in-depth study.
Practical implications
To extend the methodology of IGBLI to other forms of media content in order to further validate the approach. To reduce the differences between LGBTI news reports and heterosexual news reports. To hold the media to account for the ways in which they express their content. To encourage users of the media, in particular print media, to be critical of what they read.
Originality/value
Typically, analysis of media utilises the research method of content analysis. This paper adopts a new and innovative research method, an IGBLI approach, which incorporates a behavioural assessment in the form of a SORC.
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Carol Ireland, Rebecca Ozanne and Jane Ireland
The purpose of this paper is to consider the current knowledge in regard to females who engage in sexually harmful behaviour (HSB).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider the current knowledge in regard to females who engage in sexually harmful behaviour (HSB).
Design/methodology/approach
This is a brief paper, reviewing current literature.
Findings
This paper argues the continual limitations in fully understanding this population. However, it suggests the importance of progressing to discuss patterns of offending as opposed to typologies.
Practical implications
This argues the importance of effective formulation and consideration of patterns when understanding HSB in females.
Originality/value
This is a current brief review of the literature, summarising key thinking in this area, and some suggested ways forward for further progression.
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Yara Levtova, Irma Melunovic, Caroline Louise Mead and Jane L. Ireland
This preliminary investigation aims to examine the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients and staff within a high secure service.
Abstract
Purpose
This preliminary investigation aims to examine the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients and staff within a high secure service.
Design/methodology/approach
To discern the connection between COVID-19-related distress and multiple factors, the study involved 31 patients and 34 staff who completed assessments evaluating coping strategies, resilience, emotional reactivity, ward atmosphere and work-related aspects.
Findings
Results demonstrated that around a third of staff (31.2%) experienced COVID-19-related distress levels that met the clinical cut-off for possible post-traumatic stress disorder. Emotional reactivity, staff shortages, secondary traumatic stress and coping strategies were all positively correlated with COVID-19-related-distress. Resilience was negatively associated with distress, thus acting as a potential mitigating factor. In comparison, the prevalence of distress among patients was low (3.2%).
Practical implications
The authors postulate that increased staff burdens during the pandemic may have led to long-term distress, while their efforts to maintain minimal service disruption potentially shielded patients from psychological impacts, possibly lead to staff “problem-focused coping burnout”. This highlights the need for in-depth research on the enduring impacts of pandemics, focusing on mechanisms that intensify or alleviate distress. Future studies should focus on identifying effective coping strategies for crisis situations, such as staff shortages, and strategies for post-crisis staff support.
Originality/value
The authors postulate that the added burdens on staff during the pandemic might have contributed to their distress. Nonetheless, staff might have inadvertently safeguarded patients from the pandemic’s psychological ramifications by providing a “service of little disruption”, potentially leading to “problem-focused coping burnout”. These findings underscore the imperative for further research capturing the enduring impacts of pandemics, particularly scrutinising factors that illuminate the mechanisms through which distress is either intensified or alleviated across different groups. An avenue worth exploring is identifying effective coping styles for pandemics.
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Bodo Lang, Joya Kemper, Rebecca Dolan and Gavin Northey
The purpose of this paper is to explore why and how sharing economy users switch from consumer (e.g. Airbnb guest) to provider (e.g. Airbnb host), and how this helps enrich…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore why and how sharing economy users switch from consumer (e.g. Airbnb guest) to provider (e.g. Airbnb host), and how this helps enrich self-determination theory.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted an exploratory study with users who had been consumers (i.e. Airbnb guests) and had switched to being providers (i.e. Airbnb hosts).
Findings
Consumers switch to being providers across four phases: “catalysts”, “enablers”, “drivers” and “glue”. The authors identify various extrinsic and intrinsic motivations unique to the switch and map these against motivators postulated by self-determination theory.
Research limitations/implications
The authors propose a four-phase process through which consumers become providers. The present study enriches self-determination theory by showing how users' psychosocial needs are addressed through a variety of intrinsic and extrinsic factors that are unique to the role switch. The authors further show how the importance of the three key psychosocial self-determination needs varies through the switch process, thus providing a more nuanced understanding of users' drive for self-determination.
Practical implications
This study offers several recommendations to help sharing economy platforms improve their processes and communication to encourage a greater number of consumers to switch roles and become providers. These recommendations address two aspects: (1) encouraging consumers to switch roles and become providers (i.e. acquisition) and following this (2) encouraging providers to continue to perform that role (i.e. retention).
Originality/value
Much research has investigated why users become consumers (e.g. Airbnb guests) or providers (e.g. Airbnb hosts) in the sharing economy. However, research to date has not fully embraced the two-sided nature of the sharing economy. Therefore, this is the first paper to explore why and how consumers switch roles and become providers in the sharing economy, and how this helps enrich self-determination theory.
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Emily M. Moscato and Julie L. Ozanne
Food rituals are an ever present part of consumers’ lives that have practical implications for well-being. This paper aims to explore how food and its relationship to pleasure…
Abstract
Purpose
Food rituals are an ever present part of consumers’ lives that have practical implications for well-being. This paper aims to explore how food and its relationship to pleasure evolve, as women navigate social norms around gender and aging.
Design/methodology/approach
Ethnographic data were collected using in-depth interviews and participant observations of members of the Red Hat Society (RHS) across 27 months. This approach provided a more nuanced perspective on how food experiences shape consumption rituals and communal ties over time.
Findings
Older women in the RHS eat rebelliously when they break social norms of gender and aging by indulging together in food and drink. Their rituals of rebellious eating have implications on well-being, heightening their experiential pleasure of food and conviviality and forging social support and a sense of community. The dark side of personal indulgence is explored within a larger framework of food well-being.
Originality/value
This study shows how older women challenge social expectations around age and gender through food pleasure rituals. The concept of rebellious eating is introduced to conceptualize how these older women rethink aging and indulgence within a supportive community of consumption and integrate the concepts into their personal narratives.
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Leonie Lynch, Maurice Patterson and Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin
This paper aims to consider the visual literacy mobilized by consumers in their use of brand aesthetics to construct and communicate a curated self.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to consider the visual literacy mobilized by consumers in their use of brand aesthetics to construct and communicate a curated self.
Design/methodology/approach
The research surveyed a range of visual material from Instagram. Specifically, the goal was to use “compositional interpretation”, an approach to visual analysis that is not methodologically explicit but which, in itself, draws upon the visual literacy of the researcher to provide a descriptive analysis of the formal visual quality of images as distinct from their symbolic resonances. The research also incorporates 10 phenomenological-type interviews with consumers. Consistent with a phenomenological approach, informants were selected because they have “lived” the experience under investigation, in this case requiring them to be keen consumers of the Orla Kiely brand.
Findings
Findings indicate that consumers deploy their visual literacy in strategic visualization (imaginatively planning and coordinating artifacts with other objects in their collection, positioning and using them as part of an overall visual repertoire), composition (becoming active producers of images) and emergent design (turning design objects into display pieces, repurposing design objects or simply borrowing brand aesthetics to create designed objects of their own).
Research limitations/implications
This research has implications for the understanding of visual literacy within consumer culture. Engaging comprehensively with the visual compositions of consumers, this research moves beyond brand symbolism, semiotics or concepts of social status to examine the self-conscious creation of a curated self. The achievement of such a curated self depends on visual literacy and the deployment of abstract design language by consumers in the pursuit of both aesthetic satisfaction and social communication.
Practical implications
This research has implications for brand designers and managers in terms of how they might control or manage the use of brand aesthetics by consumers.
Originality/value
To date, there has been very little consumer research that explores the nature of visual literacy and even less that offers an empirical investigation of this concept within the context of brand aesthetics. The research moves beyond brand symbolism, semiotics and social status to consider the deployment of abstract visual language in communicating the curated self.
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Marketing as a concept pays a great deal of attention to the individual market transactions, ignoring the impact of marketing practices on society at a macro level. The paper…
Abstract
Marketing as a concept pays a great deal of attention to the individual market transactions, ignoring the impact of marketing practices on society at a macro level. The paper argues that, in a multicultural marketplace, marketers and consumers of different ethnic backgrounds co‐exist, interact and adapt to each other. In doing so, consumers act as skilled navigators who frequently engage in culture swapping to sample the many tastes, themes and sounds of different cultures. Marketing facilitates this culture swapping and contributes towards tolerance and acceptance of lifestyle among consumers. However, traditional racial or ethnic segmentation could become problematic due to the fact that consumers no longer conform either individually or as a group to any one specific segment or category. The paper is based on an ethnographic study of ethnic minority and mainstream consumers in the UK.
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The purpose of this paper is to review the 1985-1991 project called “The Consumer Behavior Odyssey”, including a retrospective assessment of its context and role in influencing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the 1985-1991 project called “The Consumer Behavior Odyssey”, including a retrospective assessment of its context and role in influencing consumer research paradigms.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on personal recollections, introspective fieldnotes from the Odyssey and various publications and videos that emerged from the project. It also reflects on several subsequent “inside” and “outside” accounts of the project and its impact.
Findings
The paper concludes that the Odyssey was a critical event within a nexus of other critical events that helped precipitate what is now widely called Consumer Culture Theory. It was a highly visible project that acted as a lightning rod that attracted both supporters and opponents at the time, but that ultimately helped carve out a place for interpretive, qualitative, visual and ethnographic consumer research within business schools.
Originality/value
Although there were a number of methodological and research outputs from the Odyssey during the 1980s and early 1990s and there have been several recent “outside” appraisals of its influence since then, there has been only one subsequent “inside” account of its ontological and epistemological impact − a 2011 video made for the 50th anniversary of the major funding organization for the project, the Marketing Science Institute. This paper offers a more extensive appraisal by one of the project’s leaders.