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Employment up but what kind of jobs are responsible?

Breaking down the 1.9 million increase in employment.

The post Employment up but what kind of jobs are responsible? appeared first on Full Fact.

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The Conversation
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First UK 'fixing room' could be turning point in approach to treating addicts

Injecting in public is associated with nuisance and more frequent overdose deaths. Diego Cervo/shutterstock.com

If drug users cannot be dissuaded from taking drugs, is it better to help ensure their drug-taking is as safe as possible? This is the harm-minimisation approach that Glasgow City Council is taking with its proposal to open a facility for heroin users. This safer drug consumption facility, sometimes referred to in the press as a “fixing room” would provide clean needles, safe spaces and medical supervision alongside advice, treatment referral and a number of other facilities. In some cases, where current treatments were unsuccessful, users may be offered medical-grade heroin, diamorphine.

This not uncontroversial idea is aimed at a small but vulnerable group of drug users who inject drugs in public places. Street use causes problems for the wider community, such as discarded needles, but also poses great risks to users, who face increased risk of infection, blood-borne viruses or overdose. Glasgow council’s proposal arrives following a significant increase in HIV infections and drug-related deaths among addicts.

The Glasgow proposal would be the first facility to open in the UK, although as part of a King’s College London research study, limited trials in 2007 involved giving heroin to addicts in special clinics in London, Darlington and Brighton. Drug consumption rooms have been introduced in ten other countries including Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Australia and Canada.

All are supervised by trained staff and have a number of rules and regulations about who can access them and what behaviour and practices are allowed. Often these are set up near to known drug markets, so drug users can take their recently purchased drugs in a clean, safe environment – rather than injecting in alleys, parks, stairwells or public toilets.

Drugs policy expert Professor Neil McKeganey has expressed concerns about the proposal, doubting that it would reduce rates of heroin use and heroin-related deaths. He claims there is no evidence that the facility would work. Certainly a lack of evidence was the reason successive UK governments have rejected the idea, most recently in 2006. However, the experience of countries where such facilities are allowed has shown that they have been successful in reducing HIV infections, drug overdoses and issues surrounding public injecting and discarded needles.

While there is often public opposition to drug consumption rooms, studies that have evaluated their use in other countries conclude that they are cost effective, often reach the most vulnerable drug users and lead to less public nuisance. Initial public resistance towards them was found to fall once they had opened.

For drug consumption rooms to be successful, a key group of people that must be persuaded are the drug users themselves. We conducted a study of attitudes towards safer consumption facilities among current or former injecting drug users, mainly heroin users. We found they were largely in favour and would make use of them if one were to open nearby. They were also willing to abide by the rules that using such a facility would require – such as no drug sharing.

While the respondents gave various reasons for public injecting, the majority who had injected in public places in the previous month did so out of necessity – despite only around a third being homeless – and would rather have an alternative. Some felt injecting in public was degrading, while others did not wish to be seen by children.

One aspect that drug users were not in favour of, however, were rules forbidding injecting in the neck or groin – rules common to these sorts of facilities in other countries.

Those users with a long history of injecting and who use public places are at high risk of death from overdose – and it is these high-risk users that are being targeted, as they stand to benefit most from the facilities provided by drug consumption rooms.

So studies have shown that safe consumption facilities can succeed in reaching long-term drug users who have had no previous contact with treatment services, and can be effective in getting some users of the facility into treatment programmes. A centre such as the one proposed in Glasgow, which still requires legal approval, would need to be monitored – and should be only one part of a strategy to address problem drug taking. But if it reduces the harms of public injecting, reduces HIV infection rates, overdoses and deaths among some of society’s most vulnerable people, then it may be that the time has come to trial a different approach.

The Conversation

Georgia Butler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

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Manifesto report: Europe

In this section Manifesto clash: EU referendums Introduction Our European Union membership is a divisive topic; it was when we entered in 1973, and has remained the case ever since the membership referendum two years later. Ironically, according to the EU’s own research in 2011, “the vast majority of Britons (82%) said that they knew […]

The post Manifesto report: Europe appeared first on Full Fact.

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C4 Fact Check
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FactCheck: how many black Americans are killed by the police?

Ferguson was ablaze last night after it emerged that a policeman who shot dead a black teenager will not be charged. Is Michael Brown's killing an isolated case? READ MORE

FullFact
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Testing the claims on SATs

The post Testing the claims on SATs appeared first on Full Fact.

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FullFact
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Minimum wage prosecutions are rare

The majority of employers pay arrears after receiving a formal notice of underpayment.

The post Minimum wage prosecutions are rare appeared first on Full Fact.

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Case 370 – Child booster seat unavailable at cinema

A cinema chain told a customer booster seats for children were not available due to health and safety reasons. READ MORE

FullFact
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Those “eight million foreigners” living in the UK

The number of foreign-born people in the UK has probably passed eight million, but that's not the same as the number of non-UK nationals. Just ask Boris.

The post Those “eight million foreigners” living in the UK appeared first on Full Fact.

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C4 Fact Check
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FactCheck: is Scotland giving the Queen a pay cut?

Will the Queen really lose millions if the Scottish Government takes over the Crown Estate assets north of the border? Errr... no. READ MORE

FullFact
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Has the UK created more jobs than the rest of the EU?

It's true that Britain has seen a larger net increase in employment than the rest of the EU combined, and that Yorkshire has seen a larger net increase in employment than France. But a bit more context is needed to interpret this properly.

The post Has the UK created more jobs than the rest of the EU? appeared first on Full Fact.

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C4 Fact Check
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FactCheck Q&A: who will save the NHS?

All the main parties say the NHS will be safe in their hands. But how will they plug what experts say is a £30bn funding gap? READ MORE

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Women on the bench

The Lord Chief Justice spoke recently about the importance of diversity among the judges of England and Wales. We've looked into the statistics he cited.

The post Women on the bench appeared first on Full Fact.

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Election 2015: Taxes and cost of living

Most of the government’s tax revenue comes from income tax, national Insurance and VAT. In 2015/16, UK taxpayers don’t have to pay tax on the first £10,600 of your income (the tax-free allowance). After that, tax is charged at: basic rate of 20% on income up to £31,785, higher rate of 40% on income between […]

The post Election 2015: Taxes and cost of living appeared first on Full Fact.

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Study author responds to headline "Road from rags to riches can lead to an early death"

Articles in The Times(£) and Daily Telegraph on Tuesday 14th July reported that new research had shown that “the stress… READ MORE

NHS Choices: Behind the Headlines
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Facebook and Twitter could be used to help people quit smoking

"Using social media to kick the [smoking] habit means you're 'TWICE as likely to succeed'," the Mail Online reports. A study of a Canadian social media campaign aimed at helping young people quit smoking found it was twice as successful as telephone helplines.

The Break It Off (BIO) campaign compared stopping smoking to getting out of a toxic relationship with a terrible boyfriend or girlfriend, and allowed participants to share their progress on Facebook.

Researchers compared the effectiveness of the BIO campaign with anti-smoking telephone helplines. They conducted a trial involving 238 participants aged 19 to 29 who used one of the two methods to stop smoking. After three months, 32% of BIO participants and 14% of the Smokers' Helpline users had quit the habit for 30 days.

But the analysis was only performed on people who completed a survey and not on all of the participants in the study. This and numerous other biases make the results less reliable.

Still, the arguments made by the researchers are persuasive. Many young people do not have access to a landline, so may be unlikely to use telephone helplines, but most young people in developed nations have a smartphone.

This means anti-smoking campaigns aimed at young people may be more effective if they're delivered via social media rather than traditional media formats, such as print and television.  

Where did the story come from?

The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Waterloo, the University of Toronto, and the Canadian Cancer Society, and was funded by research grants from the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute.

It was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal, Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

The Mail Online reported this story accurately, outlining the worldwide smoking problem and the potential strength of social media in reaching this target audience. But the story did not explain that the results were biased or point out any of the study's limitations.  

What kind of research was this?

This quasi-experimental study aimed to examine the effect of the Break It Off (BIO) social media campaign to help young adults stop smoking, comparing it with the Canadian Smokers' Helpline.

While this study design is appropriate, a randomised control trial would be better as participants would randomly be assigned to groups, reducing the chance of any possible bias.

Any internet-based research is prone to confounding factors, and in this case there were issues with low study recruitment and high loss to follow-up.

What did the research involve?

The study included young adult smokers aged 19 to 29 years from a number of Canadian provinces. Participants took part in one of two interventions aimed at smoking cessation: the Break It Off (BIO) campaign and the Canadian Smokers' Helpline.

The BIO campaign was run by the Canadian Cancer Society, and aimed to provide support and encourage young adults to "break up" with their smoking addiction. Participants were recruited to use the campaign's website between February and September 2012.

The site guided users through the challenging stages of ending an unhealthy relationship with smoking and provided information on quit methods. Visitors could upload a video of their "break-up with smoking" experience, as well as announce their "break-up status" to friends via Facebook. Three months after registration, participants were emailed a link to an online follow-up survey.

BIO participants received a $10 iTunes redemption code as an incentive for registering and another $15 iTunes redemption code when they completed the follow-up survey.

The researchers compared the campaign to the use of the Canadian Smokers' Helpline before September 2011. This is a telephone-based smoking cessation service. It is an established intervention, and provides smokers who want to quit with information, self-help materials, referrals to other resources, tailored motivational counselling, and proactive follow-up counselling.

The helpline was promoted in the media and through referrals from health organisations and professionals. The follow-up survey was conducted via telephone interview between October 2010 and September 2011.

At follow-up, participants were questioned on the following:

  • smoking status
  • cigarette consumption
  • heaviness of smoking (number of cigarettes smoked per day and time of first cigarette in the morning)
  • intention to quit
  • use of any cessation aid
  • whether they had taken at least one action towards quitting

Seven and 30-day abstinence rates were measured at three-month follow-up for both groups. The helpline participants provided the date of the last cigarette they smoked to determine abstinence at three months based on a seven-month follow-up.

Quit rates were based on those participants who completed the follow-up surveys. For both treatment groups, respondents who completed the follow-up survey but did not provide answers to the prevalence questions were considered to be smokers.

Participants were analysed on an intention-to-treat principle. This means participants were analysed in the groups they had been allocated to, regardless of whether they received or adhered to this intervention. 

What were the basic results?

A total of 238 participants completed the study and were included in the analysis. Follow-up rates were low – 34% for the BIO group and 52% for the helpline.

Differences were found between the groups at the start of the study: users of the helpline were more likely to be female, white and have received a high school education or less.

More participants in the helpline group intended to quit in the next 30 days (81% versus 70%) and were much more likely to be daily smokers (82% versus 59%). BIO users had significantly higher seven-day and 30-day quit rates compared with users of the helpline.

The seven-day quit rate for BIO (47%) was more than double that of the helpline (15%) after controlling for confounding factors such as education, ethnicity, and daily or occasional cigarette use. Quit rates at 30 days were 32% for BIO and 14% for the helpline.

BIO participants were more likely to make a quit attempt during the three-month intervention period (91%) compared with helpline participants (79%). Participants in both groups cut down the number of cigarettes smoked – 89% of BIO participants versus 79% in the helpline group.

Having a post-secondary education or higher and only smoking occasionally was found to be associated with an increased odds of quitting smoking.  

How did the researchers interpret the results?

The researchers concluded that, "A large number of young adults prefer a forum such as BIO for help to quit smoking in comparison to traditional quitline services.

"The reach of the campaign and findings on quitting success indicate that a multi-component digital and social media campaign offers a promising opportunity to promote smoking cessation." 

Conclusion

This quasi-experimental study compared the effects of two smoking cessation interventions. The study reported that the use of social media and multi-component digital interventions is more effective in promoting smoking cessation than traditional quitline services.

However, the researchers based their findings solely on the people who completed the final surveys, which will bias the results. This study has a number of other limitations, including the non-random assignment to study group, small sample size, and large loss to follow-up.

The studies were also performed at different time points, which may have affected the results, and some of the BIO participants may also have used the Smokers' Helpline and vice versa. The BIO participants also received incentives for participation, adding more potential for bias.

A very specific target group was included in the study. While this does reduce generalisability, young adults in Canada have the highest rate of smoking, but their use of cessation services is low.

The results of this study are promising and address a major public health issue. A much larger-scale trial needs to be carried out with a longer follow-up period, random allocation, and sub-group analysis for all possible social media and digital platforms to assess which are the most effective in aiding smoking cessation.

As the researchers discuss, smartphone ownership is expected to reach five billion people by 2025. Campaigns based on smartphone use, including social media, are likely to reach a wide audience, as well as be more cost effective.

Links To The Headlines

Could Facebook or Twitter help you quit smoking? Using social media to kick the habit means you're 'TWICE as likely to succeed'. Mail Online, June 10 2015

Links To Science

Baskerville NB, Azagba S, Norman C, et al. Effect of a Digital Social Media Campaign on Young Adult Smoking Cessation. Nicotine and Tobacco Research. Published online June 4 2015

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FullFact
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Factchecking Prime Minister’s Questions

Tweets by @FullFact >

The post Factchecking Prime Minister’s Questions appeared first on Full Fact.

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Case 365 – Students banned from attending school on their last day

A media article carried a story of a school banning sixth year students from attending on their last day, citing health and safety. READ MORE

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Response to headlines on the doping scandal: "sport's dirtiest secret"

Articles in The Sunday Times (£), The Daily Telegraph, The Times (£), The Independent, The Guardian and The Scotsman on Sunday 3rd and Monday… READ MORE

The Conversation
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Trump vs Clinton is a chance to think more clearly about gender and leadership

With a woman closer than ever to the presidency of the United States, the 2016 campaign has become a fierce arena for negotiating gender perceptions – and it’s been a revealing spectacle, especially in the campaign’s final months and weeks.

Trump’s now notorious lament that Clinton has neither the right “look” nor the “stamina” of a leader implies not only that she isn’t masculine enough to be president, but in fact not male enough. Such gender-charged statements demonstrate the cultural norm that leadership is considered primarily – if not exclusively – a male role.

This is not speculation; statistics illustrate how gender bias affects leader appointments across sectors. A gender gap in positions of power endures in business and politics, despite evidence that the gender of individual corporate officers makes no difference to the financial performance of major companies, but including women on boards improves performance, and that leaders’ individual behaviour differs only minimally between the genders.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than three times as many women with college degrees in the labor force as there were in 1970 – and yet the number of women in the most powerful (and top earning) executive ranks has remained low. According to the non-profit organisation Catalyst, in 2011 women occupied only 14.1% of executive officer positions, 16.1% of board seats, 7.6% of top earner positions and 3.8% of CEO positions.

The picture is marginally better but nonetheless similar when it comes to political leadership. Women currently hold 20 of 100 seats in the US Senate, and 84 of 435 in the US House of Representatives. The disproportional underrepresentation of women in these ranks is further evidence of the enduring power of unconscious gender bias and an unwillingness among the wider public to acknowledge the systemic nature of the glass ceiling.

Indeed the Clinton–Trump election has forced the issue of gender in leadership and stirred up heated opinions. Many onlookers are now questioning why these symbolic systems endure.

Mistaken assumptions

One rather oversimplified way to explore this question is to look at the traits attributed to women and men through gender socialization. An example is the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), a tool developed by Sandra Lipsitz Bem in the 1970s to measure “androgyny”, or the balance of masculine and female traits. It assesses subjects against traits classified as stereotypically feminine, masculine, or neutral. While the BSRI has some serious theoretical and psychometric flaws, it’s still widely used to measure gender traits as defined by our predominant cultural expectations.

Traits the BSRI assigns as measures of masculinity help demonstrate how the choices in language used by the media in fact reinforces gender expectations, and how this sort of talk helps perpetuate the gendered perceptions of leadership that keep women lower down the ladder.

Two of the items the BSRI assigns to the masculine category are “acts as a leader” and “has leadership abilities”. Further items include traits such as ambitious, assertive, autonomous, bold, charismatic, competitive, confident, decisive, independent, influential and resilient.

Any female candidate who adopts these qualities would be breaching gender expectations, meaning she may be widely rejected as a leader, even though her behaviour matched expectations of good leadership. Her deviating from traditionally feminine attributed behavior means voters might well be subconsciously put off by the incongruence.

Conversely, any candidate (female or male) described with BSRI items associated with femininity – affectionate, childlike, gentle, gullible, romantic, sensitive, shy, or yielding – would certainly not fit the trait expectations of a president.

Clinton has long been attacked for being not feminine enough (unlikeable) and simultaneously too feminine (shrill), not masculine enough (too cautious) and simultaneously too masculine (provocative). Trump has been criticised mainly for his supposedly hypermasculine qualities – for being ruthless, bullying, dastardly, macho, even misogynistic.

But encouragingly, the potential for change is there.

In the more than 100 interviews they cite in their book The Athena Doctrine, John Gerzema and Michael D'Antonio explored which socially desirable traits of femininity and masculinity were most strongly associated with leadership.

They found that ten of the top leadership-related attributes were considered feminine, six masculine, and one gender-neutral. On the feminine side, a leader should be, for example: expressive, reasonable, loyal, flexible, patient, passionate, empathetic, and selfless, and on the masculine side decisive, resilient, analytic, independent, aggressive, proud.

Both womanly and manly

One of the major problems with these trait approaches is the implication that, once attributes have been labelled as either feminine or masculine, they become mutually exclusive. This is wrongheaded; the point should be that if expectations of female and male leaders are really going to change, both women and men need to develop a balanced approach to leadership, one that combines and integrates “feminine” and “masculine” behaviors.

In my own research, I talk about to the phenomenon of “gender-integrative leadership behaviour”. My theory is that leaders who can authentically integrate traditionally “feminine” and “masculine” leader behaviors are perceived as the most competent and desirable, regardless of their gender. Communication expert Sabrina Pasztor agrees, arguing that effective leaders must switch between feminine and masculine styles of communicating.

Some of the reporting of Clinton and Trump’s debate performances shows this “blending” of attributes at work. Much of the media praised Clinton for her “appropriately feminine” comportment: patience, empathy, composure. But she also won some praise for displaying some “masculine” traits – she was “resilient”, “brave”, “tough and disciplined”.

The language used to evaluate Trump, on the other hand, tended far more towards the masculine end of the spectrum, with sympathetic reviews lauding his boldness and assertiveness – and critical ones condemning his aggressiveness.

Trump with his over-the-top masculinity and over-emotionality (overly feminine!) has given a voice to many voters’ deep anger at their presumably corrupt, entrenched government. Clinton, with her tempered femininity, has attempted to meld the caring reasoning of an involved government with the assertive strength of a world power. Although she has received scant credit and still faces quite damning accusations, this integrative style will serve her well should she be elected, whereas Trump’s hypermasculine style could alienate him.

Whichever candidate becomes the most powerful person in the world will inevitably be measured against predominantly masculine expectations. But there are also signs that we are slowly starting to accept the idea that leadership is not the automatic province of men – and that some traditionally “feminine” qualities might make our leaders a lot better.

The Conversation

Kae Reynolds does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

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GP opening hours—five years of pledges

The government has been criticised by health minister Liz Kendall for not meeting a promise on GP opening hours.

The post GP opening hours—five years of pledges appeared first on Full Fact.

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