Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Society and community not elsewhere classified'

This research concerns neglected affective, relational, material, and processual dimensions of amateur crafts practice in an arts-for-health context. Existing studies on the social impacts of the participatory arts are prone to blur the borders between advocacy and research, and are vulnerable to accusations of ‘policy-based evidence making’ (Belfiore and Bennett, 2007, p.138). Researchers have relied predominantly on interview material and surveys, and there is a lack of finegrained, long-term, ethnographic work based on participant observation. The distinctive potentials of making in this context, furthermore, have barely been investigated. This thesis addresses these deficits through a sustained ethnographic study of two wellbeing-oriented crafts groups supported by Arts for Health Cornwall (AFHC). One group was based in the community, the other in primary care. Observation produces novel understandings of the potential benefits of crafting for health as emergent properties of particular locations, relationships, and practices organized in distinctive ways around creative making. Firstly, as a counterweight to normative views of amateur crafts creativity as soothing and distracting, this study highlights a range of transformative affects including frustration, creative ambition, and enchantment. Secondly, countering an atomistic, stable depiction of such affects, this study describes them as fluid aspects of making processes. Thirdly, these unfolding processes are seen to be inseparable from the intersubjective (peer-to-peer and participant-facilitator) dimensions of creative groups. Lastly, this in vivo perspective problematizes a view of materials as an inert substratum upon which makers exercise their creative powers, and highlights the relevance of a ‘vital materialism’ (Bennett, 2010) for understanding the potential benefits of manual creativity. Sustained observation also produces a situated, spatial account of the extended networks of community belonging produced by the activities of such groups. Fieldwork is contextualized within a wider field using interviews with nine UK arts for health organizations. Consideration is also given to the influence of contemporary discourses of wellbeing, agency, and creativity on policy making in the area of arts for health. Findings have implications for good practice in the field, and for further research to inform political leadership concerning the role of the arts in health. These implications are drawn out in relation to the potential future contribution of the arts within a UK health economy undergoing rapid, crisis-driven transformation.

This study examines the creation and professionalisation of a recognisable English couture industry in the mid-twentieth century and in particular the role designer collaboration played within this process. The focal point is the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers, a design group established as a wartime measure in order to preserve and protect a number of London’s made-to-measure dress houses and to promote the creative aspirations of the wider British fashion industry. The focus on this specific design group and collaborative practice, rather than the individual couturiers, offers an exceptional case study of designers working in association and the impact this can have on design practice. A number of central themes emerge that focus on the networks and mediated representations that supported this field of design. In dealing with these themes this study recognises that the Incorporated Society’s formation and operation did not occur in a vacuum but within a specific industrial, political, economic and social infrastructure. It therefore explores the networks and narratives that were used to sustain its specific form of luxury fashion production throughout a particularly turbulent period. Today London is acknowledged, alongside Paris, New York and Milan, as one of the world’s major fashion cities and this thesis aims to achieve a better understanding of the role couturier-collaboration played in the early development of this recognition. Through the analysis of an extensive range of previously unconsidered primary material it questions whether and how, through the process of collaboration, the London couturiers established unprecedented and much needed cohesion for British design talent and the exact nature of their role within the construction and understanding of London as an internationally recognised fashion centre. The period under consideration allows not only an exploration of the creation of a London couture industry but also the cultural politics of design practice throughout a difficult period of economic depression, war and post-war reconstruction. In so doing, it explores the wider significance of the Incorporated Society’s elite made-to-measure dressmakers both for and beyond the discipline of Design History.

Over the past decade, and particularly since the publication of The National Plan for Music Education (DfE, 2011), there has been increasing opportunity for community musicians in England to work with young people with challenging behaviour in Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) and in Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (EBD) Units. This study identifies and discusses six key elements that influence community music delivery in these settings. These elements are: what the children bring, organizing structures, ideas and materials, focus and energy, reflection and reflexivity and the intentions of the leader. These elements emerged from the data collected through the study. This study combined action research and grounded theory. It employed a number of data collection methods, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, focus group work and a literature review. The environment of PRUs and EBD Units are based on formal schooling but are both volatile and academically ineffective (Taylor, 2012). Community musicians, who frequently work outside the curriculum, need insights and understandings beyond traditional educational practice if they are to be successful in engaging children in these environments. Community music practice addresses not only musical but also personal and social development. This, and the nature of PRUs, and of the children within them, makes the work complex. Through understanding the role all six elements can play in shaping the child’s experience, the community musician can use this knowledge to develop programmes that address these children’s complex needs, allow them to place themselves at the centre of their own learning and encourage their ownership of their own creative expression. This can give them a sense of meaning for their own often troubled histories and may offer them a pathway to reconstructing their own self concept away from conferred negative identities as excluded children towards seeing themselves as learners and musicians.

There is an on-going debate among health professionals, policy-makers and politicians, as to the optimal way of delivering sexual health services to young people. There is as yet, no consensus on their best patterns of organisation or configuration. This study uses qualitative and quantitative research methods, to explore both the views of young people accessing sexual health services, expressed through in-depth interview, and variations in client satisfaction with different characteristics of service delivery, expressed through completion of a questionnaire. The key research questions are:  How does young people’s satisfaction with sexual health services vary with the age-dedication of the service; that is, whether it serves young people only, or all ages?  How does young people’s satisfaction with sexual health services vary with the integration of the service; that is, whether family planning and genito-urinary services are offered separately, or together?  How does young people’s satisfaction with sexual health services vary with the location of the service; that is, in community or hospital based services? In the qualitative component, in-depth interviews were conducted with 25 young people recruited from a purposively selected sample of young people’s services. In the survey, a total sample of 1166 was achieved. Of these, 36% were attending an integrated contraceptive and STI service and 64% were attending a more traditional ‘separate’ service. 48% attended a service dedicated to young people and 52% an all-age service. 50% attended a hospital-based service and 50% a service located in the community. Of the total sample, 22% were male and 78% female. The analysis has been done not on a comparison of services in their entirety, but on a comparison of key features of their organisation, that is, whether they are provided separately as contraceptive and STI sessions or services, or whether these aspects of sexual health provision are integrated in sessions or services (integration); on whether they are run exclusively for young people or for all ages (dedication); and on whether they are located in the community or in a hospital setting (location). Recommendations are made for future service development and delivery and implications for policy are discussed.

This thesis presents a retrospective critique of the social and political construction of 'informal care' within community care policy from the period of the late 1970s to the mid 1990s. The thesis considers the question of the degree of 'choice' available to informal carers to say 'no' to caring, or aspects of caring, within the reforms' positioning of informal care as the first line of support for adult dependants. The critique focuses on subjectivity, difference, agency and choice. A theoretical and methodological synthesis is developed between feminist post-structuralism, feminist critiques of mainstream social policy, and feminist theory and research, within which a qualitative in-depth interview study with informal carers is situated. The critique is then expanded through the development of a 'Q' Methodology study with a larger cohort of informal carers. The research identified gendered generational differences between the carers, and a 'burden' of care imposed as an outcome of consecutive governments' attempts to residualise welfare. The older carers' levels of agency and choice were severely curtailed. However, the younger female carers were more able to resist the drive of the community care reforms, their counter discourses being based on a new emergent notion of 'rights'. The direction of community care policy was found to be out of step with how the carers within this study perceived their responsibilities and 'obligations'. The thesis argues that whilst post-modernism may have constrained the capacity of governments and reconstituted our understanding of 'care', it has not done so to the extent that we are no longer prepared to make demands for 'care' from and by the state.

The current global sustainability crisis is a cultural crisis (Bokova, 2013; NASA, 2018). This crisis is due largely to the negative effects created by the amorphous nature of neoliberalism (Gittins, 2010; Latouche, 2010a; Washington, 2015). The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2011) outlined seventeen goals sought to rectify this crisis. The practical realisation of these goals has proven elusive to those seeking social change as they navigate negative human behaviours in local social contexts. This research explored adult bullying behaviours as one way to examine the clash between neoliberal and sustainable systems and the dysfunctionalities found in this social dynamic at a local community level. Cross-case study research methodology generated qualitative data from economically focussed developments in two communities in regional Australia. The presence in each case study of social interactions between individuals advocating for the perpetuation of neoliberalism and people seeking sustainability aims guided the selection of cases for this research. This first case context was a community (Arendelle community) living, and co-existing, near a non-towered aerodrome. Historically a holiday destination, the community had a range of socio-economic groups and encompassed a number of nature reserves. The case begins in 2006 with the introduction of a regional aviation company moving into the area for the purpose of implementing a portion of an international aviation contract. The second case (Gumnut Landcare) was a semi-rural community near forest and protected natural areas. Evident in the daily life of the community was a high level of understanding and implementation of sustainability practices including many forms of sustainable eco-centric lifestyle. The area also had a European dairy farming history. This case began in 2001 with the initial negotiations to purchase a parcel of land for a community site development and the desire for a special interest group to develop much of the land for an 18-hole golf course. The cross-case analysis allowed the examination of issues that represented not only the comparison of adult bullying by those advocating neoliberal aims in each case but current topical concerns relating the impacts on elements of sustainability domains and achieving sustainability aims. This methodology and associated methods were suitable for a critical social constructionist form of interpretivist research. The data collection instruments included in-depth interviews (seven in the first case and six in the second); continual personal communication with key individuals in each case (a long-term RA committee member in Arendelle case and long-term permanent employee of Gumnut Landcare); documentary analysis of public, organisational and historical records; and researcher observations. This research contributed to the extension of our understanding of cross-case study research through the discovery of interconnected units of analysis. This strengthened the value of case study methodology in social-ecological research. A key concept that emerged in this research but was absent in the literature on social change towards sustainability, was the need for an understanding of human behaviours considered detrimental to achieving sustainability aims, in particular, adult bullying, and the skills to alleviate those behaviours. The research extended, therefore, on the theoretical understanding of adult bullying in the social-ecological contexts of sustainability at a local community level. Firstly, it extended on the literature that examines bullying in corporate settings by constructing a normalised pattern of bullying behaviour for business development at the community level. Secondly, three categories of social connections between bystanders who utilised bullying behaviours to support individual neoliberalists emerged in each case—minions, mates and linchpins. A deeper understanding of the perpetuation of this social normalisation of bullying transpired through the surfacing of the linchpin as a new type of bystander pivotal in linking the bullying events in both cases and these cases to the broader neoliberal system. The research contributed to greater theoretical clarity around the barriers to implementation of social change towards sustainability at the local community level. It filled a gap in the literature by providing a critical understanding of human behaviours detrimental to change towards sustainability, such as adult bullying behaviours, and their use to implement neoliberal aims. This included a heightened understanding of how community residents in both cases failed to identify or acknowledge the behaviours they experienced as bullying. The community residents’ lack of understanding of how bullying was normalised in the local context meant it was difficult for them to respond in ways that supported sustainable alternatives. This conundrum was exacerbated with the identification that some community members also lacked awareness that many of their everyday actions supported sustainability. This research provided a framework for future research into the social-ecological context of adult bullying behaviours in local community settings, particularly as they are manifested in the behaviours of those implementing neoliberal aims. Future research needs to extend on two knowledge bases in local communities. The first is local community identification and responses to alleviating neoliberal bullying. The second is a greater ability to identify, understand and safeguard sustainable behaviours at the community level. One avenue of future research identified was the development of community sustainability frameworks (CSFs) that incorporate these knowledge bases. These CSFs would need to be developed to coincide with the increased recognition that social change towards sustainability requires a transdisciplinary and in some communities a supradisciplinary approach to policy, research, and practice at all social levels.

Typically they are known as ‘smarks’, collectively they are known as the Internet Wrestling Community (IWC). This study of the mostly internet-based texts of the IWC shows that members of that informal alliance largely conform to the norms of fan culture and behaviour described in previous studies of fans in other entertainment genres. Celebrity is shown to be a product of publicity, promotion and fanaticism, and audiences connect with stars through involvement with the characters they portray and they identify with actualities as presented in the media. Fan culture involves obsession to know everything about the stars, worship and moral judgement. However, it is contended in this dissertation that there are factors that distinguish the IWC from other large fan groups. These arise in part from the unique format of pro-wrestling as a blend of theatrical and sporting product, and in part from the convergent technological ground that enables such a widely-disbursed, anarchic and yet cohesive body to exist and exert influence. It is argued that the collective intelligence of the IWC members who produce, filter and remediate all manner of source material from gossip, rumour and speculation, to news, to secret wrestling ‘insider’ information has forced the dominant industry player, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to revaluate its production strategies. The role of the IWC in the breaking of kayfabe—the industry code of silence on the illusory aspect of wrestling—is highlighted. Using textual analysis technique this study focuses on the career rise and tragic downfall of former WWE performer Chris Benoit. It is contended that this wrestling veteran became a significant marketing image of the WWE’s global media empire as a direct result of the influence of the smarks of the IWC.

Research into the use of information by health care professionals has generally been conducted in countries dominated by the biomedical model. In these contexts, illness is considered to have a scientifically identifiable physical cause, and treatment practices within the formal health care sector are prescribed and managed in accordance with this definition. Yet there are also contexts where other belief systems inform and guide the way that people think about their health. In comparison to the biomedical model, these contexts have contributed very little to our understanding of how health professionals develop their knowledge. This research investigates how primary health care workers (PHCWs) in one such context, Papua New Guinea (PNG), develop their knowledge about the health services they provide. In order to discover and understand the differing views of these PHCWs, 69 semi-structured interviews were conducted in three culturally and geographically diverse regions of PNG. In explaining the diagnostic and treatment practices they use, these participants provided insights into not only how PHCWs engage with information but also how it informs their professional practice. These data were analysed, interpreted and discussed using a framework consisting of four, primary but interconnecting aspects: the context in which information was provided, the interactions with the sources of information, the processes by which information was understood, and the outcomes realized as a result of the information being used. Findings indicated that the majority of participants in this study acknowledged, if not incorporated, information pertaining to biomedicine, Christianity and Indigenous belief systems into their diagnostic and treatment practices. Even when these belief systems clearly contradicted each other, PHCWs did not in general feel the need to make a conscious choice between them. From their comments it would appear that four factors contributed to this ability to incorporate diverse and often conflicting ideas into the way that patients were cared for. First, all of the belief systems were considered legitimate by at least one group of people connected to the community in which the PHCW worked. Second, although varying in degrees of availability and accessibility, members of these groups were able to disseminate information pertaining to the belief system they supported. Third, the PHCW had no particular affiliation with any one of these groups but instead regularly interacted with a range of different people. Lastly, the PHCW worked in situations where health practices were not generally well supervised by their employers and therefore they were relatively free to choose between various diagnostic and treatment practices. The qualitative interpretive approach adopted in this thesis contributes to the field of human information behavior by affirming that conflict is in the eye of the beholder. When a number of belief systems coexist and all are considered legitimate, information about them is freely available, and the recipients actions are neither constrained by their own dogma, nor imposed upon by others, individuals may quite comfortably embrace diverse beliefs. These findings may also contribute to a better understanding of health management practices in developing countries by suggesting that health professionals are not merely personifications of a biomedical model. Instead, the study demonstrates that multiple belief systems can be combined by PHCWs, and that in turn this benefits the formal health care sector through increased treatment options that are both appropriate and effective in such circumstances.

"Shut the Gate" was a project initiated and sponsored by the Beef Cattle sub-Committee of the Mackay and District Agricultural, Pastoral and Industrial Association Inc., in collaboration with Central Queensland University. Its goal was to research, write and publish an attractive, engaging and informative account of the history of cattle showing in Mackay, with particular emphasis on the relationship between the regional industry and the 123 year old annual Mackay Show. While the project throws considerable light on the influence that cattle showing has had on the development ofthe beef industry, and the important role it plays in generating and maintaining a positive awareness of the industry among town folk, it is essentially about people. The book celebrates the trials, tribulations and triumphs of those who breed, raise, and compete with beef cattle in the Mackay district. "Shut the Gate" was a commissioned work, with the Beef Cattle sub-Committee its primary sponsor. The essential brief was to prepare 'a readable social history' for possible publication. This in effect meant that the book needed to be written in a style accessible to its anticipated target audience, such as participants in the beef industry, rural primary producers, regular patrons of the Mackay Show, and local history enthusiasts. Its content and tone therefore, reflects this audience. It is a work ofacademic scholarship presented in the form of a textually accessible local history that is not only informative but also a pleasurable experience for the intended reader. The book is introduced by a dissertation that reflects on the research and writing process.

The study aimed to understand and advance the dynamics that influence psychological aggression. Psychological aggression can be defined as, verbal and non-verbal communication with the intent to harm another person mentally or emotionally, and/or control another person. In our society, the occurrence of psychological aggression in relationships is far more tolerated then physical aggression, but the effects can be more long term and harmful. The study hypothesized that an individual’s level of differentiation of self--a person’s ability to differentiate between feeling and thinking in times of stress--and their gender have a role in the severity of psychological aggression. The study was approved by IRB and using an online survey through MTurk asked participants about experiencing and perpetrating psychological aggression in their romantic relationships. The study had 192 participates in the multiple regression analyses, who provided some support that the level of differentiation of self and severity of psychological aggression, experiencing and perpetrating, have a negative significant relationship. Gender was found to not impact the relationship between differentiation of self and severity of psychological aggression. Clinical implications, limitations, and future directions for research were addressed.

The thesis proposes and defends a maxim which can serve as a foundation and guideline for professional ethics in nursing, the maxim that nurses should act so far as possible to promote patient's self-determination. The thesis is informed by philosophical ethics and by knowledge of professional nursing practice.

The prevalence of social media in political campaigns are changing the face of politics in the United States and abroad. The rapid pace at which this change is occurring demands inquiry into the previously unexplored area of unconventional political campaign messaging practices on social media. Investigation of Donald Trump’s use of tweets as rhetorical strategy in the discursive space of Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign revealed a bypass of traditional media and its source verification processes. This circumventing of mainstream media channels facilitated Trump’s deployment of an unchecked ‘broken system’ narrative alleging government corruption

and a rigged system. Trump’s tweet discourses tapped into existing feelings of disenfranchisement and disaffection felt by a self-identified politically marginalized segment of society. This study

investigates how social media use in political campaigns can serve as a public sphere for contestation of social and political norms. An interdisciplinary theoretical frame comprised of Feenberg’s critical theory of technology, McLuhan’s media ecology, Fraser’s counterpublic spheres, and Iser’s implied reader offer new understandings about the power of anti-establishment discourses and a hybrid discursive space to destabilize governing institutions and redefine social and political identities. Study of Trump’s tweets as rhetorical strategy granted insights into the social and political capacity of alternative truth to undermine the political process. Further, it uncovered the power of social media to awaken and leverage existing political identities for personal political gain.

Background: Falls and fall-related injury among older people are a major public health burden. Exercise-based fall prevention programmes are effective in reducing falls in older community-dwelling people. However, this effectiveness is hampered by low participation and adherence. Digital technologies are a novel and potentially effective method for delivering tailored fall prevention exercise programmes to older people. Aims and objectives: This thesis aims to evaluate the effectiveness, acceptability and cost-effectiveness of technology-driven fall prevention programmes in older community-dwelling people. The following research questions were examined: Are eHealth-delivered exercise programmes effective at improving balance in people aged 65 years and older living in the community compared to a control? Is a home-based balance exercise programme delivered through a tablet-based technology acceptable to older people living in the community? Is an e-Health balance exercise programme a cost-effective way to reduce falls and injurious falls in community-living older people compared to usual care? Methods: A series of related studies were conducted to answer these questions, including: a systematic review with meta-analysis, a qualitative study, and a health economic evaluation. The systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated randomised controlled trials of eHealth-delivered exercise programmes for community-dwelling people aged 65 years and over, published in English. The primary outcomes were static and dynamic balance. Secondary outcomes included fall risk and fear of falling. The standardised mean differences (SMDs, Hedges’s g) were calculated with 95% confidence intervals from random effects meta-analyses. The qualitative study recruited 50 participants from StandingTall, a large randomised controlled trial which delivered a home-based fall prevention programme via a tablet-computer. Participants were selected using purposive sampling and to ensure maximum variability. Data was collected via one-on-one interviews by qualified research staff at one of three different time points (1 month, 6 months and 12 months) over 12 months. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, verified for accuracy and then analysed thematically. The economic evaluation was a within-trial evaluation of StandingTall. Five hundred and three people aged 70 years or over participated. Cost-effectiveness was measured as the incremental cost per fall, and per injurious fall, prevented. General linear models were used with a gamma distribution for costs and a Poisson regression for rates of falls and injurious falls. Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratios (ICERs) were calculated to assess the additional expenditure required to generate an additional unit of benefit. One-way sensitivity analysis and sub-group analyses were performed. Results: The systematic review and meta-analysis identified nine trials of 498 participants. Eight trials measured static balance, with the pooled effect indicating that eHealth-delivered exercise programmes have a significant effect on static balance (eight trials; SMD = 0.40; 95% CI 0.14 to 0.67). All nine trials measured dynamic balance to find there was no effect on dynamic balance (nine trials; SMD=0.22; 95% CI -0.09 to 0.54). Three trials measured fall risk to find there was no evidence of an effect of eHealth-delivered exercise programmes on fall risk compared to control (SMD=0.28, 95% CI -0.06 to 0.63; I2 = 42.9%, p = 0.173). Three trials measured fear of falling to find there was no evidence of an effect of eHealth-delivered exercise programmes on fear of falling compared to control (SMD = -0.07, 95 % CI -0.34 to 0.20; I2 = 0.0%, p = 0.950). The qualitative study identified eight themes, which fall into two categories: experiences of using StandingTall and the design of StandingTall. Overall, participants appreciated the flexibility of StandingTall’s tablet-based online delivery, and described an improvement in physical awareness and confidence with everyday activities. Participants also reported various challenges with the technology, and determined that computer literacy is essential for successful engagement. Despite this participants found the overall design of StandingTall as user-friendly, clear, and easy-to-understand. The economic evaluation found the total programme delivery and care resource cost was $8,321 (standard deviation, SD 18,958) to intervention participants and $6,829 (SD 15,019) to control participants. The incremental cost per fall prevented was $4,785 and per injurious fall prevented was $6,585. Discussion and conclusion: Falls present a major age-related health challenge for society, and one which is likely to grow in significance as life expectancy increases. This body of research has provided preliminary evidence to demonstrate that balance exercise programmes delivered using technology are an effective, cost-effective and acceptable way of improving balance in older people. This, in combination with the ubiquitous availability of technology, could allow rapid scale-up and implementation of eHealth fall prevention programmes to large populations.

"Research of a wide range of primary sources informs this work, including hitherto unstudied local union records, oral testimony, contemporary newspapers, government and employer reports. Conclusions reached in this dissertation are that while the founders of the local trade union movement shared a vision of improving the lot of workers in their employment and in the wider social context, and they endeavoured to establish effective structures and organisation to this end, their efforts were of mixed success. They succeeded eminently in improving and protecting the employment conditions of workers to contemporary expectations through effective exploitation of political and institutional channels and through competent and conservative local leadership. However, the additional and loftier goal of creating a better life for workers outside the workplace through local combined union action were much less successful, foiled not only by overwhelming economic difficulties, but also by a local sense of working-class consciousness which was muted by the particular social and cultural context of Rockhampton." -- abstract

 In health care the concept of risk has evolved on a medical and epidemiological platform (Hennekens & Buring 1987; Heyman 1998; Jacobs 2000) but despite use in nursing as early as Nightingale (1952) it has not been developed theoretically from a nursing perspective (Spiers 2000). At a time when contemporary health policy, managers and clinical practitioners are increasingly focusing on 'at risk' and `vulnerable' groups in society (Queensland Health 1993; Baum 1998) the terms risk and vulnerability continue to  be recognised as nebulous (Appleton 1994), and conceptualised differently in epidemiological, clinical and individual terms (Spiers 2000; Jacobs 2000). Acknowledging these differences and clarifying these concepts has relevance for nursing practice and research (Rose & Killien 1983), in particular the development of common understandings has the potential to develop nursing knowledge, direct nursing research and ultimately develop the practice of nursing (Norris 1982; Kim 1999; Jacobs 2000). 

This study was motivated by the need to understand and account for a Child Health Nurses' (CHNs') concept of risk within contemporary child health practice so as to develop the knowledge base of child health nursing in relation to risk and to encourage reflection by child health nurse practitioners. Additionally this knowledge could lead to common meanings and shared understandings among CHNs, and ultimately improved practice. For the purposes of this study risk will be recognised as a term having both quantitative and qualitative dimensions with epidemiological, clinical and individual attributes which, when linked to nursing assessment directs the planning and implementation of preventive health practices.  

"Investigates [Queensland] government documents relating to family inclusion and disability service provision using content analysis.... [and] explores the experiences of adult siblings of people with profound disability living in group home supported accommodation"--Abstract.

This thesis examines the self-reports of a cohort of adolescents participating in a two-year active citizenship program in the form of a Youth Advisory Council. The adolescents' reports are compared to the elements of four identified domains of global competence: knowledge and understanding, cognitive and socio-emotional skills, values and attitudes, and action. The findings are then examined in order to explore the potential of adolescent-focused, active citizenship programs in developing global competence.

Skin cancer screening clinics were introduced into a number of towns throughout Queensland as part of the Melanoma Screening Trial (MST), a study investigating the efficacy of screening for melanoma. The MST requires 60% of these towns' populations aged over 30 years to be screened for

melanoma within a three year intervention phase. The aim of this case study is to assess the relationship between Rogers' (1995) diffusion of innovations and the health promotion strategies implemented to encourage attendance at skin cancer screening clinics.

Data were obtained from a number of sources, including administrative files, progress reports, interviews and focus groups and were positioned within a comparative theory/practice matrix. Pattern matching logic was used to

assess the relationship between the health promotion strategies and the theoretical construct of diffusion of innovations.

All components of diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 1995) were addressed by the health promotion strategies encouraging attendance at the skin cancer screening clinics. The delivery of the skin cancer screening clinics was in accordance with principles identified by past diffusion research. The skin cancer screening clinics conformed to most predictors of diffusion success and were delivered within a "real" environment, as suggested by past community -based interventions. A number of changes to existing health promotion strategies and the addition of some new strategies have been suggested to improve the rate of diffusion of skin cancer screening clinics in

the future.

This study utilises the age-old strategy of community conferencing in a case study design to evaluate the effectiveness of using the strategy to reduce school bullying. The community conferencing strategy is founded on the assumption that an individual's emotions are the most effective regulator of his/her behaviour(s).

The literature review describes how community conferencing has been used in various contexts in the past and how it is currently used by such organisations as the Queensland Juvenile Justice Department. In the case study, a community conference was conducted with a student bully, his family, peers, the victim and his family, and relevant other educational authorities. The offending student had been previously excluded from school for a period of eighteen months and was in the re-entry phase when another bullying incident occurred. It was at this stage that the education authorities decided to use community conferencing as a means of reducing the reoccurrence of the bullying behaviour in this particular student.

In the case study design, multiple data types were used to gather as much data from as many sources as possible that related to the case. Short, relaxed, semi -structured interviews were conducted with the victim, offender supporters, and neutral education authorities. Observations of the conference were recorded unobtrusively by a third party. Various official records of the conference were kept and analysed. Finally a participant' satisfaction questionnaire was completed by those who took part.

Findings of the study revealed that four months after the conference the victim felt that the conference made a positive difference to how safe and supported he feels at school. The victim also reported that the bully's behaviour toward him had improved and he reported that he had more confidence to handle a similar situation should another arise in the future. The present study recommends that some changes be made to the community conference procedure but that generally conferencing should be included in the range of strategies used by schools in their anti -bullying policies.

The Thesis explores the life situations of the three Mackay-based groups: Aboriginal, Torres Strait and South Sea Islander through oral history research and the lived experience of an Elder from each of these groups. Using a combination of oral and written approaches, the project seeks to document ongoing interactions between the three groups from the 1930s and assess their implications for culture, identity and mobility

Mediation, as defined in this study, is a dispute resolution process for dealing with disagreements between community members and differs from other forms of conflict resolution such as arbitration, conciliation and adjudication. Mediation is a relatively new field of professional endeavour, consequently, community mediators are few and no current accredited course exists in the vocational education and training sector.

This study aimed to develop a curriculum for training community mediators which individuals of various professions could undertake through the vocational education and training sector in order to become accredited mediators.

An initial review of the literature identified existing mediator competencies. Following this review, the first phase of the study was to survey practising community mediators to obtain their views on which additional competencies mediators should possess.

In the second phase of the study, various curriculum models were reviewed and one model selected which fitted the contextual constraints of the vocational education and training sector. The Competency Based Training model for curriculum development was selected to develop a curriculum which incorporated the list of competencies elucidated in the first phase of the study.

A curriculum suitable for teaching community mediation skills to trainee mediators through a course offered through the vocational education and training sector is presented in the fifth chapter.

This study is significant in that it attempts to objectify what it is that mediators do by way of establishing a collection of mediator competencies pertinent to community mediation. The challenge was to undertake this task in an environment in which mediation as a skill, was considered malleable; a skill which requires fine adjustment to fit the various contexts in which mediation is practised.

Finally, this study also highlighted the need for further research into mediation. Issues such as 'hard' versus 'sot mediation and the development of specific competencies related to the practice of mediation within specific contexts, for example, divorce mediation and land right mediation, are discussed.