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Purpose – This chapter reflects on selected issues raised by the emotions involved in the social relations of qualitative research. We use experiences from two separate studies to explore the role of emotion and affect in the embodied, face-to-face encounter of the interview; the ‘translation’ of interpretations of emotional responses from one cultural context into another; the reflexivity of the researcher and the researched and the ethical implications of this form of research.

Methodology – The studies, one doctoral research and one funded by a Leverhulme grant, took a qualitative approach, employing individual semi-structured interviews with young people in Zambia and women in their fifties in Swindon, UK.

Findings – The chapter argues that emotions within the interview are bound up with the potential meanings and outcomes of the interview to both the researcher and the interviewee. Emotions affect what is said and unsaid in the interview; what is communicated and hidden and how the material is interpreted.

Originality/Value – The chapter brings together experiences from conducting highly emotive research in majority and minority world contexts. It focuses on similarities in the dilemmas posed to researchers by the emotions involved in the social relations of research, regardless of location.

The previous article in this series (RDM November/December) examined techniques designed to search out areas of the country that might have potential for new stores. This article looks more closely at finding the best site available within a chosen area. It discusses store turnover forecasting techniques, and also considers the question of assessing viability in product‐dominated markets.

Many retailers, conscious of the increasing difficulty of finding good, viable sites for stores, have recently been considering the large array of store location techniques now available to them. The success of the two seminars on store location organised by RMDP in February 1983 and June 1984, bear witness to this concern. However, these retailers are likely to find it difficult to assess the efficacy and suitability of the bewildering range of techniques offered. This article, and three to follow, attempt briefly to guide the interested but wary retailer through the technical maze.

The first article in this series explained why store location decisions are becoming more difficult. This article, and the next two, look at the pros and cons of various techniques that are now available to help retailers make such decisions. The three articles are presented in the sequence a retailer might follow as part of an ‘ideal’ store location strategy. This article looks at techniques aimed at searching out areas of the country that might have potential for new stores; these are referred to as search techniques. The next article discusses techniques that will forecast the likely turnover of a store on a particular site selected within the area of identified potential; these are referred to as viability techniques. The fourth and final article in the series will, as part of a consideration of evaluation of existing stores, look at techniques concerned with the effect of localised design, siting and perception issues on store performance; we can call these micro assessment techniques. The first part of this article will act as useful background for discussion of all three levels of technique application.

The last article in this series discussed ways of assessing the viability of a store on a specific site. The techniques discussed in that article are used to determine how the general locational characteristics of the potential trade areas of the site will affect sales at a new outlet. However, a store's performance can be strongly influenced not only by such general trade‐area characteristics but also by micro‐level features of the site. For example, whatever the number of potential customers in the locality, if an outlet has unattractive and dingy surroundings, lacks viability, or has poor local access, it will probably attract little business. In the first section of this article, therefore, the authors examine ways of estimating the nature and significance of such micro‐level site features. This takes us down to the third level in the “search‐viability‐micro” strategy suggested in article 2 (RDM, Nov/Dec 1984, p. 41). In the second section the authors turn to the evaluation, not of potential new outlets, but of existing outlets. Given the massive investment that major retailers have tied up in existing stores, as compared to that put into each additional store, it is remarkable that so little work has done on methods of evaluating existing stores. In the authors' view, both the estimation of the effects of micro‐level factors and the evaluation of existing outlets are grossly under‐researched areas.

This study aims to explore the perceptions of staff in four teams regarding the implementation of psychologically informed environments (PIE) across a community service and three hostels supporting individuals facing severe and multiple disadvantage.

Using a pre-post design, the PIEs Assessment and Self-Development for Services (known as the Pizazz) was completed by staff before the implementation of PIEs and at a six-month follow-up. A narrative review of the results and thematic analysis of the qualitative data are presented.

The majority of the Pizazz elements were rated as improved following PIE implementation. Thematic analysis developed three themes influencing staff members’ ability to develop a PIE: Complexities of Our and Wider Systems; Ready-made or Baked from Scratch; and Reflective and Responsive Staff.

A planned one-year follow-up was obstructed by the coronavirus pandemic, limiting understanding of longer-term impact. Having only gathered data from staff members, the results cannot corroborate staff members’ perceptions. Further research could explore other stakeholder perspectives, as well as the impact of PIE implementation on staff perception of resources, and of a possible ceiling effect for hostels trying to develop PIE.

To the authors’ best of knowledge, this is the first UK study to use the Pizazz to evaluate the implementation of PIE.

This research sheds light on behavioral change by demonstrating the transformative power of a brand on the process of eating behavioral change. The selected brand is Three Times a Day (a culinary blog whose mission is to encourage a healthier diet). This study aims to identify food-related behavioral changes as a result of consumers’ relationship with this brand and identify antecedents to such changes.

A netnography of the brand online community and 14 individual in-depth interviews were conducted.

Netnography results identify four categories of behavioral changes emerging from the relationship with the brand (e.g. choosing healthier/more varied foods, developing an interest in cooking and adopting a healthier lifestyle). Analysis of the individual interviews substantiate the role of brand attachment as a driver of positive change and identify three antecedents: brand-self connection (through past, actual and ideal self), brand exposure and satisfaction of individual needs (i.e. autonomy, competence and relatedness).

Results enrich the literature on behavioral change and highlight the positive role of a brand in the context of improving eating habits. Findings extend the understanding of the consequences of attachment beyond its influence at the attitudinal level by focusing on concrete consumer behavior.

It is recognized that despite good intentions, individuals keep making poor food choices. This important issue is associated with several diseases and increasing social costs. This research explores how to influence consumers in adopting better eating habits.

This study is one of the first to examine the power of a food-related brand to enhance positive eating practices and improve diet.

In terms of the concept of broken home as a juvenile delinquency risk factor, whilst Nigeria and Ghana are culturally different from western nations (Gyekye, 1996; Hofstede, 1980; Smith, 2004), parental death (PDE) and parental divorce (PDI) have been previously taken-for-granted as one factor, that is ‘broken home’. This paper aims to deconstruct the singular model of ‘broken home’ and propose a binary model – the parental death and parental divorce hypotheses, with unique variables inherent in Nigerian/Ghanaian context.

It principally deploys the application of Goffman’s (1967) theory of stigma, anthropological insights on burial rites and other social facts (Gyekye, 1996; Mazzucato et al., 2006; Smith, 2004) to tease out diversity and complexity of lives across cultures, which specifically represent a binary model of broken home in Nigeria/Ghana. It slightly appraises post-colonial insights on decolonization (Agozino, 2003; Said, 1994) to interrogate both marginalized and mainstream literature.

Thus far, analyses have challenged the homogenization of the concept broken home in existing literature. Qualitatively unlike in the ‘West’, analyses have identified the varying meanings/consequences of parental divorce and parental death in Nigeria/Ghana.

Unlike existing data, this paper has contrasted the differential impacts of parental death and parental divorce with more refined variables (e.g. the sociocultural penalties of divorce such as stigma in terms of parental divorce and other social facts such as burial ceremonies, kinship nurturing, in relation to parental death), which helped to fill in the missing gap in comparative criminology literature.