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There has been much talk in sociological circles of bodies as 'projects' or 'choices,' but surprisingly little examination of how these projects and choices are experienced. Consumer culture has been described as heralding a new era in body-self relations, but few have explored the experience of body-self relations. Body-self relations emerged as central to understanding in this study of the experience of the body at different ages (20-30, 45-55 and 70+ years), demonstrating the utility of empirical investigations in this area. This paper describes an orientation to the body that was common to the sample of 20 young people (aged 20-30 years) interviewed as part of this study. This orientation informed their health-related behaviours such as diet and exercise, but some participants found it to be problematic. Their voices demonstrate that bodily 'choices' may actually be experienced as irrational and even psychopathological compulsions. This experiential perspective suggests that normality may be continuous with pathology, and that differences are of degree rather than kind. The findings have implications for the treatment and prevention of eating disorders and obesity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the structuring of places and time influence Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patient and carer experiences of health services. Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with diabetes, chronic heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as well as family carers (N = 19). Content analysis was undertaken. Participants report that each element of the time spent in Aboriginal Medical Services is seen as more valuable and worthwhile than in mainstream health services, from social and health sharing experiences in the waiting room to health care in clinical places; and that users feel they can rely on sufficient time and respectful care in their clinical consultation. Purposeful design of both physical and temporal aspects of health services is called for. We suggest re-introducing opportunities for spatiotemporal design in health care that have been limited by the segmented 'person as illness' design features of Australia's current mainstream health system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper tells of the social constructs surrounding young children with learning difficulties in their home, 'special' early education setting and 'inclusive' or mainstream early education setting in England. The exploratory study focused on how three- to four-year-old children made sense of their environments and how their identities were constructed by different parties in the different contexts. Ethnographic case studies were conducted using semi-structured and informal interviews with parents and practitioners, documentary analysis, fieldnotes, and live and video observations. Shared constructions across the contexts for each child were common, with constructions of them being happy and making progress pervasive across the children and settings. Differences in constructions across settings indicated that qualities could shine or negative constructions be tempered, thus showing the role of the environment and the culture of inclusion in socially constructing children with special needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of the study reported in this paper was to look at the use of qualitative methodology in ergonomics research and practice. Qualitative methodology itself was chosen as a compatible approach to explore these aims, with ergonomics being seen as a socially situated practice. Semi-structured interviews were carried out using a prompt sheet which developed iteratively during the study. A four stage sampling procedure was used to gain access to 21 interviewees. These stages were (1) spreading the net (purposive sampling), (2) following up leads (snowball sampling), (3) focussing (intensity sampling), and (4) analysis sampling to seek out extreme/deviant cases. A total of 12 academics and 9 practitioners were interviewed from all areas of ergonomics, including cognitive (psychology), product design, engineering, human and health sciences, organisational management and sociology. The findings are represented by a model showing the interactions between multiple dimensions, including academia/practice, qualitative/quantitative and the internal and external environments of ergonomics. There was considerable interest in expanding the ergonomics toolbox to include qualitative methodology. However concerns were raised about a perceived lack of knowledge with respect to the process, which could be addressed through education and reflective practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent attempts to develop symbolic interactionist methodologies have sought to treat the interview as an object of sociological enquiry as well as a research instrument. But their accounts in terms of interactional rules and presentation of selves are primarily concerned with reactions to interviews, and the display of the interview setting in talk is treated as a resource rather than as a topic for investigation. Since such a reliance on the availability of phenomena is also a feature of the `natural attitude', lay and sociological usages of the interview share striking similarities. More specifically, both employ the documentary method of interpretation and, in order to claim a correspondence between theft accounts and some external reality, use remedies to counter misunderstandings. On the basis of tapes of selection interviews, the paper examines the competences and policies routinely adopted to provide for the contexting of talk as interview talk. Given that talk serves to display its setting (this is its reflexive character), talk becomes interview talk as members' managed accomplishment of a knowable context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No research results are any better than the quality of the data. As scientists, survey researchers must share the problems of measuring, understanding, and controlling bias in their data. The potential sources of bias in survey research are many and varied. They may appear at any one or all of the several stages of the data gathering process. For example, they may occur in the selection of the sample, in the development of measuring instruments, in securing the responses of the persons in the sample, in the respondents replies, in the recording of the responses, and in processing the recorded responses. Even beyond the data collection process, bias may occur, as in the misapplication of statistics and in the interpretation of data. Progress has been made toward identifying and controlling sources of bias in some of these stages of the research process. Perhaps most progress has been made in the sampling stage and in the statistical application stage. Much advance has been made also in the reduction of error at the instrumentation stage. However, considerable work remains to be done on the problems of error control, especially biasing error, at all stages of the research between instrumentation and statistical analysis. This includes getting full response from the sample, accurate answers to the questions asked, and accurate recording and processing of responses. The accumulation of bias from these and other possible sources may be referred to as total or aggregate bias. The total bias may then be divided for analytical purposes into the following types: (1) sampling bias, (2) instrumentation bias, (3) non-response bias, (4) respondent bias, (5) interviewer bias, and (6) processing bias. This paper is an effort to deal with the problem of respondent bias in survey research. That respondent bias is a potent force in diminishing the validity and reliability of results from survey research is well recognized. The recognition of this condition has led to an enormous amount of activity aimed at isolating factors which determine this weakness of research results. These studies, by and large, have dealt with the problem of determining the direction of respondent bias, its magnitude, the speearle variables which produce respondent bias, and the effect of such bias on research results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]