Participation of future pharmacists in a professional development certificate scheme; the paradox of personal identity

The white paper ‘Pharmacy in England’ advocates establishing a new pharmacy regulator, building leadership and integrating undergraduate education.[1] Students must morph into competent pharmacists with the skills, expertise and confidence to lead the profession to 2020 and beyond.[2] One way individuals are encouraged to ‘professionalise’ is through participation in personal/professional development schemes. The British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (BPSA) and the College of Pharmacy Practice have operated a professional development certificate (PDC) scheme since 2001. The scheme rewards students with a joint certificate for evidence of participation in five accredited activities in one academic year. Although the scheme is relevant to development of students, less than 2% of BPSA members take part annually. We wanted to understand the reasons for the low uptake. Our primary objectives were to examine the portrayal of the scheme and to investigate what it signifies to individuals. We describe our attempts to apply social marketing techniques[3] to the PDC, and we use ‘logical levels of change’[4] to highlight a paradox with personal identity.

Assessing the impact of the 'Decoupling' reform of the common agricultural policy on Irish farmers' off-farm labour market participation decisions

This paper assesses the impact of the 'decoupling' reform of the Common Agricultural Policy on the labour allocation decisions of Irish farmers. The agricultural household decision-making model provides the conceptual and theoretical framework to examine the interaction between government subsidies and farmers' time allocation decisions. The relationship postulated is that 'decoupling' of agricultural support from production would probably result in a decline in the return to farm labour but it would also lead to an increase in household wealth. The effect of these factors on how farmers allocate their time is tested empirically using labour participation and labour supply models. The models developed are sufficiently general for application elsewhere. The main findings for the Irish situation are that the decoupling of direct payments is likely to increase the probability of farmers participating in the off-farm employment market and that the amount of time allocated to off-farm work will increase.

A revised Tobit procedure for mitigating bias in the presence of non-zero censoring with an application to milk-market participation in the Ethiopian highlands

Fixed transactions costs that prohibit exchange engender bias in supply analysis due to censoring of the sample observations. The associated bias in conventional regression procedures applied to censored data and the construction of robust methods for mitigating bias have been preoccupations of applied economists since Tobin [Econometrica 26 (1958) 24]. This literature assumes that the true point of censoring in the data is zero and, when this is not the case, imparts a bias to parameter estimates of the censored regression model. We conjecture that this bias can be significant; affirm this from experiments; and suggest techniques for mitigating this bias using Bayesian procedures. The bias-mitigating procedures are based on modifications of the key step that facilitates Bayesian estimation of the censored regression model; are easy to implement; work well in both small and large samples; and lead to significantly improved inference in the censored regression model. These findings are important in light of the widespread use of the zero-censored Tobit regression and we investigate their consequences using data on milk-market participation in the Ethiopian highlands. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Developing children and young people’s participation in strategic processes: the experience of the Children’s Fund Initiative

The extent of children’s and young people’s participation activities has increased considerably among statutory, voluntary and community sector organisations across the UK in recent years. The Children’s Fund, a major government initiative launched in 2000, represents a systematic drive towards promoting children and young people’s participation in planning, implementing and evaluating preventative services within all 149 local authority areas in England. Based on research carried out by the National Evaluation of the Children’s Fund, this paper explores the experience of Children’s Fund partnerships of engaging children and young people in strategic processes.

Fora, networks and public examinations: the role and significance of public participation in the new regional plan for South East England

This paper overviews the main conceptual frameworks for understanding participatory approaches to land use planning and explores their utility in analysing the experience of a recent regional planning exercise in South East England. In particular it examines the contribution of recent ‘New Institutionalist’ ideas to our understanding of participatory processes and the implications for practice of using them to build strategies of public involvement in policy-making and implementation.

British pharmacy professionals’ beliefs and participation in continuing professional development: a review of the literature.

Objectives Continuing professional development (CPD) has potential to be useful in pharmacy revalidation but past uptake and attitudes to CPD in Great Britain (GB) need to be mapped. This review examines published literature to chart the participation and beliefs of pharmacy professionals towards CPD in GB in a decade that had seen a formal transition from continuing education to CPD. Methods A comprehensive review of the published literature was conducted to identify studies of the uptake of, or attitudes towards, CPD cross different sectors of pharmacy in GB from 2000 to 2010. Key findings Twenty-two studies were included and analysed, including 13 research papers, six conference papers, two news items reporting survey outcomes and one commissioned study. Eight barriers to CPD were identified as: time, financial costs and resource issues, understanding of CPD, facilitation and support for CPD, motivation and interest in CPD, attitudes towards compulsory CPD, system constraints, and technical problems. Pharmacy professionals on the whole agreed with the principle of engaging with CPD but there was little evidence to suggest widespread and wholehearted acceptance and uptake of CPD, essential for revalidation. Conclusions If CPD is to succeed, people's beliefs and attitudes must be addressed by recognising and modifying perceived barriers through a combination of regulatory, professional, work-related and personal channels. A number of recommendations are made. Direct experience of effective CPD in the absence of perceived barriers could impact on personal development, career development and patient benefit thus strengthening personal beliefs in the value of CPD in an iterative manner.

British pharmacy professionals' beliefs and participation in continuing professional development: a review of the literature

Objectives:  Continuing professional development (CPD) has potential to be useful in pharmacy revalidation but past uptake and attitudes to CPD in Great Britain (GB) need to be mapped. This review examines published literature to chart the participation and beliefs of pharmacy professionals towards CPD in GB in a decade that had seen a formal transition from continuing education to CPD. Methods:  A comprehensive review of the published literature was conducted to identify studies of the uptake of, or attitudes towards, CPD cross different sectors of pharmacy in GB from 2000 to 2010. Key findings:  Twenty-two studies were included and analysed, including 13 research papers, six conference papers, two news items reporting survey outcomes and one commissioned study. Eight barriers to CPD were identified as: time, financial costs and resource issues, understanding of CPD, facilitation and support for CPD, motivation and interest in CPD, attitudes towards compulsory CPD, system constraints, and technical problems. Pharmacy professionals on the whole agreed with the principle of engaging with CPD but there was little evidence to suggest widespread and wholehearted acceptance and uptake of CPD, essential for revalidation. Conclusions:  If CPD is to succeed, people's beliefs and attitudes must be addressed by recognising and modifying perceived barriers through a combination of regulatory, professional, work-related and personal channels. A number of recommendations are made. Direct experience of effective CPD in the absence of perceived barriers could impact on personal development, career development and patient benefit thus strengthening personal beliefs in the value of CPD in an iterative manner.

The use of public participation and economic appraisal for public involvement in large-scale hydropower projects: Case study of the Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project

Gaining public acceptance is one of the main issues with large-scale low-carbon projects such as hydropower development. It has been recommended by the World Commission on Dams that to gain public acceptance, publicinvolvement is necessary in the decision-making process (WCD, 2000). As financially-significant actors in the planning and implementation of large-scale hydropowerprojects in developing country contexts, the paper examines the ways in which publicinvolvement may be influenced by international financial institutions. Using the casestudy of the NamTheun2HydropowerProject in Laos, the paper analyses how publicinvolvement facilitated by the Asian Development Bank had a bearing on procedural and distributional justice. The paper analyses the extent of publicparticipation and the assessment of full social and environmental costs of the project in the Cost-Benefit Analysis conducted during the projectappraisal stage. It is argued that while efforts were made to involve the public, there were several factors that influenced procedural and distributional justice: the late contribution of the Asian Development Bank in the projectappraisal stage; and the issue of non-market values and discount rate to calculate the full social and environmental costs.

Tobit estiamtion with unknown point of censoring with an application to milk market participation in the Ethiopian highlands

Data augmentation is a powerful technique for estimating models with latent or missing data, but applications in agricultural economics have thus far been few. This paper showcases the technique in an application to data on milk market participation in the Ethiopian highlands. There, a key impediment to economic development is an apparently low rate of market participation. Consequently, economic interest centers on the “locations” of nonparticipants in relation to the market and their “reservation values” across covariates. These quantities are of policy interest because they provide measures of the additional inputs necessary in order for nonparticipants to enter the market. One quantity of primary interest is the minimum amount of surplus milk (the “minimum efficient scale of operations”) that the household must acquire before market participation becomes feasible. We estimate this quantity through routine application of data augmentation and Gibbs sampling applied to a random-censored Tobit regression. Incorporating random censoring affects markedly the marketable-surplus requirements of the household, but only slightly the covariates requirements estimates and, generally, leads to more plausible policy estimates than the estimates obtained from the zero-censored formulation

The role of the consumer-citizen in environmental protest in the 1990s

This paper links market‐based ‘protest’ strategies, as used recently by environmental protest groups and other sociations, to citizenship theory, seeking to open a debate about the role of the consumer‐citizen. It is suggested that such consumer‐citizenship, whereby protest and political action are encouraged through market mechanisms, and limited through state action, is an important feature of late‐modernity. The paper seeks to illustrate how advanced capitalist societies are producing reworked forms of rights relationships. This is discussed within the context of the rhetoric of ‘active’ citizenship as used in UK politics and through examples of recent environmental protests and other consumer‐citizen strategies.

The persistent challenge of encouraging public participation in the low-carbon transition

In order to address the growing urgency of issues around environmental and resource limits, there is a clear need to develop policies that promote changes in behavior and the ways in which society both views and consumes goods and services. However, there is an argument to suggest that, in order to develop effective policies in this area, we need to move beyond a narrow understanding of ‘how individuals behave’ in order to cultivate a more nuanced approach that encompasses behavioral influences in different societies, contexts and settings. In this opinion article we therefore draw on a range of our own recent comparative research studies in order to provide fresh insights into the continued problem of how to engage people individually and collectively in establishing more sustainable, low-carbon societies.

Beyond difference: female participation in the Brazilian film revival of the 1990s

In this chapter, I will focus on the female participation in what became known as ‘The Retomada do Cinema Brasileiro’, or the Brazilian Film Revival, by thinking beyond differences of gender, class, age and ethnicity. I will first re-consider the Retomada phenomenon against the backdrop of its historical time, so as to evaluate whether the production boom of the period translated into a creative peak, and, if so, how much of this carried onto the present day. I will then look at the female participation in this phenomenon not just in terms of numerical growth of women film directors, admittedly impressive, but only partially reflective of the drastic changes in the modes of production and address effected by the neoliberal policies introduced in the country in the mid 1990s. I will argue that the most decisive contribution brought about by the rise of women in Brazilian filmmaking has been the spread of team work and shared authorship, as opposed to a mere aspiration to the auteur pantheon, as determined by a notoriously male-oriented tradition. Granted, films focusing on female victimisation were rife during the Retomada period and persist to this day, and they have been, and continue to be, invaluable for the understanding of women’s struggles in the country. However, rather than resorting to feminist readings of representational strategies in these films, I will draw attention to other, presentational aesthetic experiments, open to the documentary contingent and the unpredictable real, which, I argue, suspend the pedagogical character of representational narratives. In order to demonstrate that new theoretical tools are needed to understand the gender powers at play in contemporary world cinema, I will, to conclude, analyse an excerpt of the film, Delicate Crime (Crime delicado, Beto Brant, 2006), where team work comes out as a particularly effective female, and feminist, procedure.