INTRODUCTION Lee Palmer Wandel In Essay XII, Book II of his Essais, first published in, Michel de Montaigne posed the question 'Que sçay-je? ...

Concerns have been expressed about adult behaviour at children’s sporting events in New Zealand. As a consequence, covert observation was identified as the optimal research method to be used in studies designed to record the nature and prevalence of adult sideline behaviour at children’s team sporting events. This paper explores whether the concerns raised by the ethics committee about the use of this controversial method, particularly in relation to the lack of informed consent, the use of deception, and researcher safety, (...) were effectively managed. This is achieved by reflecting on the conduct and findings of the research and by drawing on the perspectives of research assistants who carried out the covert observation. The authors argue that in the context of these studies, the ends have justified the means and with careful attention to the design of the study the complex ethical tensions arising from the use of this method can be managed. (shrink)

The expansion of ethics review, beyond its origins in medical research, is the subject of growing critical analysis internationally, especially from social science researchers. Our study builds on this analysis by considering ethics review specifically within tertiary-based educational research. As a foundation for a larger study, we explore the reporting of ethics review within articles from a snapshot of education journals. A cross-sectional review considered 125 articles from 24 journals spanning medical and nurse education, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, (...) and educational technology. Among similar types of research our findings highlight variation in institutional ethical review processes and outcomes. Despite most journals providing guidelines for reporting ethics review, adherence to these guidelines by authors or editors was not always evident, but more likely in health-related education journals. We argue that identified areas of variation may reflect the differing influence and proximity of biomedical values. This influence has been under examined in tertiary-based educational research but may contribute to inequitable learning, researching and publishing experiences, potentially adding to negative sentiment about ethics review. (shrink)

Background. The increased number of clinical trials taking place in developing countries and the complexity of trial protocols mandate that local ethics review committees reviewing them have the capacity to ensure that they are conducted to the highest ethical standards.Methods. The Kenya AIDS Vaccine Initiative Institute of Clinical Research and the Kenyan National Council for Science and Technology embarked on an exercise to enhance the capacity of ERCs in Kenya to review such protocols. This process involved conducting an audit of (...) all ERCs in the country, and performing training needs assessments to identify knowledge and capacity gaps. Information obtained was used to develop training materials for ERC members at workshops conducted in different parts of the country.Results. Five accredited and 13 non-accredited ERCs were identified. Four of the accredited ERCs were located in the capital city of Kenya, Nairobi. The most common challenges cited by participants during the needs assessments were excess workload, and a lack of co-ordination and/or communication between the ERCs. Subsequently, 140 ERC members from 17 institutions across the country were trained as follows: 36 from institutions in the western part of Kenya, 38 from institutions in the south-eastern coastal region, 38 from the eastern region and 44 from Nairobi.Conclusion. The KAVI-ICR and the NCST have developed training modules for training ERC members in Kenya and are in the process of developing a manual to train members. The Kenyan experience may be used to enhance the capacity of ERCs in the East African region. (shrink)

Historical studies may become classics for the wrong reasons, as did Henry Thode's Francis of Assisi or Michelet's Joan of Arc, which we now regard as cultural icons in their own right, emblems of specific elements of the cultures of the era in which they were written. We do not, however, read them for the insight they provide into their declared subjects, nor are their conclusions those of current scholarship. Other studies become classics for the right reasons. The year 1999 (...) marks the eightieth anniversary of the publication of Johan Huizinga's Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen: Studie over levens- en gedachtenvormen der veertiende en vijftiende eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden, “The Autumn [or Harvest, or Waning, or Decline, or Evening] of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life and Thought in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in France and the Netherlands [or the Low Countries, or the Burgundian Low Countries].”. (shrink)

The aim of this cross-sectional study is to investigate the role of psychological inflexibility in the relationship between anxiety and depression and emotional eating in a sample of 123 inpatient Italian adult individuals with obesity. Participants completed the Anxiety and Depression subscales of the Psychological General Well-Being Inventory, the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire, and the Emotional Eating subscale of the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire to assess anxiety and depression, psychological inflexibility, and emotional eating, respectively. Results showed that the indirect effect (...) of PGWBI-A on DEBQ-EE through AAQ-II was significant [b = −0.0155; SE = 0.076; 95% BC-CI ]. Similarly, the indirect effect of PGWBI-D on DEBQ-EE through AAQ-II was significant [b = −0.0383; SE = 0.0207; 95% BC-CI ]. These findings may help to plan and develop specific psychological interventions aimed at addressing emotional eating through targeting psychological inflexibility to be included in obesity treatment programs. (shrink)

Height preferences reflecting positive assortative mating for height—wherein an individual’s own height positively predicts the preferred height of their mate—have been observed in several distinct human populations and are thought to increase reproductive fitness. However, the extent to which assortative preferences for height differ strategically for short-term versus long-term relationship partners, as they do for numerous other indices of mate quality, remains unclear. We explore this possibility in a large representative sample of over 500 men and women aged 15–77 from (...) Canada, Cuba, Norway and the United States. Participants’ own heights were measured, and they indicated their height preferences for a long-term and short-term mate using graphic stimuli containing metric indices. Replicating the “male-taller norm,” participants on average preferred taller-than-average male mates, and shorter-than-average female mates. Positive assortative preferences for height were observed across sexes and samples, however the strength of these height preferences varied with relationship context for men, and not for women. Taller men preferred relatively shorter women for short-term relationships than for long-term relationships, indicating stronger assortative preferences for height in a long-term context. These results provide preliminary evidence that, in addition to mate preferences for other physical traits related to mate quality such as masculinity in the body, face, and voice, assortative preferences for height do vary as a function of expected relationship length, but this was surprisingly only observed in preferences for female height. (shrink)

While the need to protect vulnerable research participants is universal, conceptual challenges with the notion of vulnerability may result in the under or over-protection of participants. Ethics review bodies making assumptions about who is vulnerable and in what circumstance can be viewed as paternalistic if they do not consider participant viewpoints. Our study focuses on participant vulnerability in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research. We aim to illuminate students’ views on participant vulnerability to contribute to critical analysis of the (...) role and processes of ethics review. Additionally, we aim to highlight the importance of seeking the views of participant communities, especially in research environments beyond ethics review’s medical origins. Thirty-four students from a health-related faculty at a university in Aotearoa New Zealand, participated in five focus groups. Participants discussed factors affecting their potential participation in research drawing upon a series of vignettes based on examples of published SoTL projects. Themes, generated using reflexive thematic analysis, built a participant-informed picture of vulnerability. Findings indicate that students do not generally consider themselves vulnerable and instead consider participation in SoTL research through an agentic lens. Students expect that participation will be voluntary, not negatively impact their grades, and not single them out so that others could judge them. Our study also highlights the value students place on relationships with one another and teaching staff and the implications these have for SoTL research participation and future professional practice. This research challenges research ethics committees to think further about vulnerability in the context of SoTL whilst highlighting the importance of providing opportunities for research participants more broadly to explore and vocalize their views as members of participant communities. (shrink)

The voices and visions experienced by Emanuel Swedenborg remain a topic of much debate. The present article offers a reconsideration of these experiences in relation to changes in psychiatric practice. First, the phenomenology of Swedenborg's experiences is reviewed through an examination of his writings. The varying conceptualizations of these experiences by Swedenborg and his contemporaries, and by psychiatrists of later generations, are examined. We show how attempts by 19th- and 20th-century psychiatrists to explain Swedenborg's condition as the result of (...) either schizophrenia or epilepsy are unable to account for his experiences. We then demonstrate that the re-emergence of the 19th-century concept of `hallucinations in the sane' offers an alternative way to understand Swedenborg's experiences outside typical discourses of mental illness. Finally we argue that Swedenborg's experiences should be understood as exemplifying phenomena which we term `hallucinations without mental disorder', and investigate how conceiving of Swedenborg in this way can inform future research into the experience and clinical significance of hallucinations. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin is a persistent but elusive presence in many of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s writings, and the relationship between Lacoue-Labarthe and Benjamin is accordingly both significan...

This article places Hannah Arendt’s fundamental view of the instrumentality of violence in dialogue with Walter Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ in order to demonstrate the importance for each of a notion of ‘mere life’ or ‘life itself’ to an understanding of the agency of violence in modernity. Arendt’s critique of vitalism is most fully developed in The Human Condition, where she describes an entanglement of the instrumental activity of homo faber with life and labour in the work of Bergson, (...) Nietzsche and Marx. I suggest that Bergson’s treatment of life as creative evolution unexpectedly yields an accurate description of politics as spontaneous, unpredictable motion that Arendt takes as typical of modernity. Since Arendt also credits Bergson with a decisive influence on what she takes to be a growing commitment to the life-enhancing, creative potential of violence in the oppositional movements of the 1960s, which she explores in her late essay, On Violence, I trace out the continuity between Arendt’s earlier account of homo faber and her later critique of postmodern oppositional violence. (shrink)