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The purpose of the paper is to discuss the “Q-Step in the Community” programme, part of the Q-Step Centre based in the Sociology Department at Manchester Metropolitan University, designed to help address the skills gap in quantitative methods (QM) that is evident across parts of the UK higher-education sector. “Q-Step in the Community” is a data-driven work-based learning programme that works in partnership with local organisations to provide placement opportunities for final year undergraduates and postgraduates. Students conduct a quantitative research project, which is typically identified by the placement provider.

The authors use quantitative and qualitative feedback from students and placement providers, along with our own reflections on the process to evaluate the placement programme. Data were collected through a focus group and email interviews with placement providers, along with a questionnaire, which was distributed to “Q-Step in the Community” alumni.

Data-driven work-based learning opportunities allow students to develop and demonstrate their quantitative skills and support networking opportunities whilst also developing valuable soft-skills experience of the workplace that develops their career-readiness. In addition, those opportunities provide valuable research for placement providers, which support their sustainability and enhance their service delivery.

The research focusses solely on one programme at one university offering quantitative data driven work-based learning opportunities at undergraduate and post-graduate level. It is not possible to make valid comparisons between those who do a placement with those who do not.

Views of key stakeholders in the process have been sought for this research, which can be useful to consider for others considering developing similar programmes for their students.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of employer-delayed deposits to defined contribution plans on plan participant wealth. The history of regulatory oversight on the obligations of employers to remit deposits to defined contribution plans on behalf of employees is discussed. In light of these regulations, the paper discusses and examines situations in which employers may legally delay the deposit of employee contributions to a defined contribution plan and how the existence of various calendar anomalies may impact the returns of plan participants.

Simulated equity portfolios over the period 1985-2014 are created to determine the economic significance of possible delays in plan deposits on the accumulated wealth of plan participants.

The findings suggest that in situations where employees are paid monthly at the end of the month, it is always to their benefit to have their funds deposited as soon as possible. However, for employees paid weekly at the end of the week, a slight delay (one to three days) in the deposit of funds by the employer may actually be beneficial for the employee, particularly if the employee invests heavily in small and mid-cap stocks.

This is the first paper to explicitly study the impact of an employer’s timing of deposits to a defined contribution plan on the accumulated wealth of plan participants, and is thus the primary contribution of the paper.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the overlooked relationship between politics and the performance of anomaly-based investment strategies.

Monthly long-short portfolios are formed based on relative mispricing scores according to the Stambaugh et al. (2012, 2015) relative mispricing measure. Portfolio performance is examined throughout various presidential terms. The design also introduces economic policy uncertainty (EPU) as a possible explanatory variable for portfolio performance.

The analysis reveals that anomaly-based returns are higher under Republican administrations than they are under Democratic administrations. Moreover, the results show that the impact of EPU on the relationship between the political party affiliation of the president and future anomaly-based returns are driven by the election and post-election years.

The examination of returns on a long-short portfolio may be of particular value to investment companies, such as hedge funds, who regularly employ this type of strategy.

While the impact of presidential terms on raw equity returns has been well examined, the paper is the first to examine the impact of presidential terms on the return of an anomaly-based investment strategy. EPU is also introduced as an important contributing factor.

This chapter outlines methodological difficulties and ethical dilemmas encountered during my fieldwork at a high-poverty, high-minority U.S. inner-city school. Using a qualitative research design informed by the “new” sociology of childhood and constructivist grounded theory, I conducted child-centered research at the school for four months, including participant observations and interviews with 50 students. This chapter argues that good ethnographic research not only depends on solid research design but also requires researchers to be flexible, adaptable, and diplomatic. Especially regarding the “least adult” role, the dilemma of objectivity, lying in interviews, and the ethical predicament of students sharing sensitive information, I argue that ethnographic studies often require the researcher to act more like a diplomat maneuvering the stormy waters of contradictory interests than the objective observer described in the methodological literature. First-hand accounts of research exploring children’s own perspectives are scarce. Particularly difficulties and dilemmas encountered in the field are often mentioned only in passing, if they are mentioned at all. Novice researchers thus struggle to find information to guide their own endeavors and may set themselves up for frustration if they expect their research to be as predictable as the methodological literature suggests. The paucity of discussion of real-life difficulties encountered in the field also hinders scholarly dialog and obstructs the advancement of methodological and ethical questions surrounding research with children. This chapter hopes to help fill this gap.

Corporate governance has become a core topic in management research and business practice. Recent debates like – environmental responsibility, sustainability, ethics, corporate control, generation, protection and distribution of wealth, the role of the board and senior executives in setting standards for performance management, and stakeholder relationship management – have strong links to organisational trust. However, management literature has been relatively silent on how various corporate governance configurations and perspectives potentially shape trust relations within the organisation, especially in Africa. Thus, this chapter reviews corporate governance through the lens of the institutional logics perspective evident in western capitalism and develops a framework connecting various governance configurations to organisational trust. Doing so provides new directions for those seeking to develop further research in corporate governance, institutional logics and organisational trust.

In the past, conversion of a printed text to Braille has been a slow, painstaking process. Trained transcriptionists, using a Braille Writer, manually translated each character or group of characters into its appropriate Braille symbol. Using this method, the transcription of large text can take literally thousands of human‐hours and cost an exorbitant amount of money.

This article aims to highlight the importance of a complete and accurate medical record as it pertains to potential risk exposure in the outpatient physical therapy profession.

Basic charting rules, correction and alteration recommendations, documentation of telephone conversations, informed consent, exculpatory release forms and incident reports are discussed. Basic risk management strategies are reviewed that may reduce outpatient physical therapy practitioners' malpractice exposure.

The authors contend that quality and thorough documentation is as important as the quality of the care that is delivered to patients, since medical records are legal documents and serve as valuable evidence as to what transpired between patients and the healthcare providers.

Practical documentation strategies are described in a manner that will inform physical therapists of their legal obligations relating to patient care.

When it comes to establishing a computing environment that genuinely accommodates the range of human abilities, librarians are both cognizant of needs and capable of fulfilling those needs. They are cognizant of needs because almost everyone uses some sort of technology—glasses, adjustable chairs, computer wrist pads, Braille printers—to adjust a computing environment to his or her particular ability range. They are capable of fulfilling those needs because, even if they know nothing about making computers accessible to people with disabilities, they know how to obtain essential knowledge about their libraries: budget, needs of their clientele, current and planned computing systems, and a range of other crucial factors.