Knowledge, risk perceptions and condom usage in male sex workers from three Australian cities

The study identifies factors associated with knowledge and perception of risk of HIV/AIDS, as well as attitudes to and usage of condoms by a sample of male sex workers (MSW). One hundred and eighty-five male sex workers completed a self-reported questionnaire, including knowledge about HIV transmission, attitudes to condom use and perceptions and personal susceptibility to HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk, and a two-week diary recording use of condom during commercial sex encounters. The findings reveal that condom use was found in 77.7% of the encounters with clients and the majority of the respondents perceived themselves to be at no risk for HIV because of sex work. Independent sex workers from Melbourne and workers who owned their place of residence used condoms in a significant lower proportion. Generally speaking, knowledge about the risks associated with AIDS was high, with respondents showing lower knowledge about the risks associated with unprotected receptive or active oral sex. Participants held a positive attitude to condom use; most considered the provisions of condoms to be their responsibility rather than clients; and they were more worried about contracting an STI than HIV. Those who scored higher on the knowledge scale had more positive attitudes to condom use and those who had a more positive attitude to condom use recorded a perceived lower risk of contracting STI but not HIV. The study discusses the relevance of these findings for public health risk reduction and sexual health education campaigns.

The relationship between investigative interviewing experience and open-ended question usage

We present three studies examining the role of prior job experience in interviewing and interviewers’ ability to learn open-ended questions during a training program. We predicted a negative relationship such that more experienced interviewers would perform worse after training than less experienced interviewers, and that (irrespective of baseline performance) the more experienced interviewers would improve the least during training. These predictions were made for two reasons. First, specific questions are commonly used in the workplace (i.e. open-ended questioning constitutes new learning). Second, experience in the use of specific questions potentially interferes with newly learned open-ended questions. Overall, our predictions were supported across different participant samples (including police officers specialized in child abuse investigation and social workers from the child protection area), time delays, and modes of training. The results highlight the need for investment in ongoing investigative interviewing training commencing early during professionals’ careers, prior to the establishment of long-term habits in the use of specific questions.

Improving child investigative interviewer performance through computer-based learning activities

The current study adopted a pre- versus post-training design and a standardised measure of performance to evaluate the effectiveness of a series of online computerbased learning activities designed to encourage open-ended question usage among investigative interviewers of children. Participants included 61 social workers, police and psychologists. The learning activities, organised into 12 modules of approximately 3 hours duration each, focused purely on the skill of eliciting a disclosure of sexual abuse and a narrative account of the offence from a young child. Results revealed a significant improvement in interview performance from pre-training to immediate post-training. For the 25 participants who also completed a follow-up assessment three to six months after completing the learning activities, performance was found to be maintained. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Affirming emergent practices in educational technology: the politics of usage

Drawing on de Certeau's characterisation of everyday practice as reuse, this paper focuses on the micropolitics of mobile touch-screen devices (MTSD) usage, and how emergent practices - appropriations and (re)deployments - interface with institutionalised notions of learning. The recontextualisation of technological artefacts into formal education settings can (and often does) result in a 'domestication' or 'schooling' of technology, bringing with it familiar power relations and patterns of success. However, the indeterminacy of technology allows for potentially subversive practices, for surreptitious appropriation and re-deployment of devices, processes and texts, and for 'counterplay' that challenges the ways that schooling is traditionally done. This paper discusses three examples of MTSD usage that highlight the productive role of users as creators of their own contexts for learning. The examples include young children's home usage of iPads, an early year teacher's use of iPads in her classroom, and a young child's account of his use of an iPad app at school. The paper is framed by a discussion of the possibilities opened up by practice-based approaches (such as that of de Certeau) for change-oriented research that seeks to affirm emergent and/or marginalised practices; to trouble tacit assumptions about schooling; and, to understand the relation between everyday practices and the institutionalised ground that they transform.