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Background: In Australia and internationally, there is concern about the growing proportion of women giving birth by caesarean section. There is evidence of increased risk of placenta accreta and percreta in subsequent pregnancies as well as decreased fertility; and significant resource implications. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of continuity of midwifery care have reported reduced caesareans and other interventions in labour, as well as increased maternal satisfaction, with no statistically significant differences in perinatal morbidity or mortality. RCTs conducted in the UK and in Australia have largely measured the effect of teams of care providers (commonly 6-12 midwives) with very few testing caseload (one-to-one) midwifery care. This study aims to determine whether caseload (one-to-one) midwifery care for women at low risk of medical complications decreases the proportion of women delivering by caesarean section compared with women receiving 'standard' care. This paper presents the trial protocol in detail. Methods/design: A two-arm RCT design will be used. Women who are identified at low medical risk will be recruited from the antenatal booking clinics of a tertiary women's hospital in Melbourne, Australia. Baseline data will be collected, then women randomised to caseload midwifery or standard low risk care. Women allocated to the caseload intervention will receive antenatal, intrapartum and postpartum care from a designated primary midwife with one or two antenatal visits conducted by a 'back-up' midwife. The midwives will collaborate with obstetricians and other health professionals as necessary. If the woman has an extended labour, or if the primary midwife is unavailable, care will be provided by the back-up midwife. For women allocated to standard care, options include midwifery-led care with varying levels of continuity, junior obstetric care and community based general medical practitioner care. Data will be collected at recruitment (self administered survey) and at 2 and 6 months postpartum by postal survey. Medical/obstetric outcomes will be abstracted from the medical record. The sample size of 2008 was calculated to identify a decrease in caesarean birth from 19 to 14% and detect a range of other significant clinical differences. Comprehensive process and economic evaluations will be conducted. Trial registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN012607000073404. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Australia had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world in the late nineteenth century, although this exceptional position subsequently eroded over time. This paper compares national income and sectoral labour productivity in Australia and the UK between 1861 and 1948 to uncover the underlying sources of Australia's high income and the reasons for its subsequent relative decline. We find that the country's higher per capita income was due primarily to higher labour productivity, because labour force participation, although higher in Australia than in the USA, was lower than in the UK. Australia had a substantial labour productivity lead in agriculture throughout the period, due to the importance of high value-added, non-arable farming, and a smaller lead in industry before World War I. The early productivity lead in industry was largely based on the importance of mining, and disappeared as manufacturing became more important. There was little productivity difference in services. These results reaffirm the importance of Australia's successful exploitation of its natural resource endowments in explaining the country's high initial income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After years of problems with the Child Support Scheme in Britain, the Government has decided to attempt reform again, less than four years after a previous major change was implemented in 2003. The author evaluates these reform proposals, drawing upon his experience in leading a recent major review of child support policy in Australia. While many of the reform measures offer a sensible way forward for child support policy, Britain risks going backwards in terms of community acceptance of the child support obligation. The Government needs to consider the likely impact of its policy settings on private agreements about child support. Ways are proposed both to protect the Treasury and to promote the wellbeing of children by adopting different policy settings that ensure the resident parent has an incentive to bargain for the level of child support required by the new formula. The new formula itself is evaluated in the light of the international research on the costs of children. Ways are also suggested for developing a co-ordinated approach across government to the provision of support services for parents who do not live together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of public problems has a lasting influence on implementation in a given policy subsystem. National and sociopolitical contexts influence issue definition differently across nations. However, the degree to which nation-specific issue definition takes place has been insufficiently explored. In recent years, the growing incidence of autism has led to a quest for causal factors. One hypothesis posits that the use of mercury in vaccines may be a culprit. This paper examines the definition of the mercury and autism issue in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Insights into the comparative elements of issue definition are suggested by the case. These insights are of particular importance to administrators, as agencies are deeply involved as objects and actors in the process of issue definition and are often responsible for implementing new and redefined policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The broadening out of environmental assessment to also consider social and economic dimensions poses some unique challenges, not the least of which is understanding exactly what such a process might entail. This paper outlines the spectrum of possibilities and explores the issue of when and how environmental, social and economic considerations can be integrated in sustainability assessment. The integration issue is also relevant to the practice of strategic environmental assessments (SEA).A new way of conceptualising these types of assessment is put forward based on: (i) what is being assessed — the "question" that is being asked; and (ii) what approach is being used — the type of assessment selected from the spectrum of possibilities. The latter ranges from impact minimisation for each of the three sustainability pillars through to sustainability considered as an integrated concept. The combination of the question and assessment approach determines the level, extent and timing of integration of environmental, social and economic considerations that can be achieved. Additional thought needs to be given to who is performing the integration role as well as the nature of a particular proposal or its setting. This approach to thinking about SEA and sustainability assessment is illustrated with examples from Australia and the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the development of the corporate web site as a medium for sustainability reporting. Drawing upon survey data of corporate web sites in Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom and the experiences of six companies, it seeks to identify how issues of accessibility and functionality of the web site affect web based sustainability reporting. The study highlights the diversity of approaches to sustainability reporting on the internet and identifies a number of hurdles faced by managers responsible for sustainability reporting. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the process of review, design, and delivery of a course in modern embedded systems, an international collaborative teaching project involving the University of New South Wales (Australia), Manchester University, and Imperial College, London University (United Kingdom). This project, being the first of its kind anywhere in the world, provides a learning environment that replicates the current industrial practice in embedded systems design in an easy and comprehensible setting, an environment where the processor, dedicated coprocessors, and software are all integrated to create a functional system such as used in sophisticated electronic devices, including mobile phones, Web phones, televisions, digital cameras, and personal digital assistants. Such collaborations are important in both reducing development costs in developing up-to-date, and increasingly sophisticated, courses and in addressing pedagogical issues that are common between computer and electrical engineering programs in all academic institutions. To assist students' learning experience, the course is supported with purpose built state-of-the-art programmable hardware and software development platforms, carefully planned laboratory experiments, lecture notes, weekly online quizzes, tutorials, and a companion CD-ROM as a learning tool. Since the introduction of this complete package, students' satisfaction, assessment results, and skills obtained through evaluation and assessment methods have improved markedly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consistent with the "looking back, moving forward" conference theme, in this paper we undertake a critical, research-based appraisal of the current, arguably neglected state of adult education in Australia in 2010, and proceed to paint a picture of how a different and potentially more positive future might be realised. Firstly, we emphasise situations (including states and territories) in Australia in which adult education is seen to be lacking or missing for particular groups of adults. Secondly we emphasise research evidence confirming the demonstrable value of learning for purposes other than those that are immediately vocational. We identify links between lifelong and lifewide learning on one hand, and health and wellbeing on the other. Part of the paper involves international comparisons with other forms of adult learning that Australia might learn from, adapt or borrow. We make particular reference to research underpinning the recent Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning by NIACE in the United Kingdom. Our first main conclusion has to do with equity. Adult and community education (ACE) in Australia is currently seen to be least available or accessible to those Australians with the most limited and most negative experiences of school education, but the most need to learn in non-vocational domains. These groups include older Australians, some men and women, people not in paid work, and rural, isolated and Indigenous people. Our second main conclusion is that, to realise adult learning's future potential, we need changes to government policies, research and practice that acknowledge and actively support the broader nature and value of learning for life across all age groups. To paraphrase research from Belgium by Sfard (2008), based around Beck's (1986) exploration of reflexive modernity, the adult education function of ACE is in dire straits, unless education is seen as being much more valuable than the sum of individual vocational competencies, and particularly unless it is also recognised, valued and supported as one of many valuable outcomes of social, lifelong and lifewide learning throughout the community.

In this paper we review fifty years of articles published in Australian Journal of Adult Learning in its various iterations. We examine the different roles of the journal: to illuminate the history and trends of adult education authors; to be the flagship of the adult education profession in Australia; to reflect on significant national events; and to mirror the changing knowledge base of the discipline. We analyse the authorship of the articles over fifty years, and determine patterns in contribution to the journal by gender, location, institutional affiliation and author numbers. We also examine key themes that have surfaced in the writings on adult education. The articles published in the journal are significant because they are primary sources of the day, unfettered by the perspectives, viewpoints and standards of later periods. Our paper serves as a useful looking glass through which we might be able to view more clearly the shifting research interests of the past and the challenges in the future for the adult and community learning sector. (Contains 11 figures and 6 tables.)

The purpose of this paper is to outline government online training practice. We searched individual research domains of the human-dimensions of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), information and communications technologies (ICT) and instructional design for evidence of either corporate sector or government training practices. We overlapped these domains to investigate primary research outcomes. Corporate sector and government employees encounter barriers to their adoption of web-mediated training. One such barrier is a lack of enthusiasm, possibly due to ineffective instructional design, which in turn affects motivation towards online learning. Although the Australian Government offers training incentives to the general community, a negative attitude towards online training persists in the community, particularly throughout the government sector. Adoption of effective ICT training tools is a critical issue for the corporate sector and government agencies worldwide. This paper presents a compelling case for courseware designers to develop sound instructional design principles to enhance web-mediated learning programmes. (Contains 2 tables.)

Higher education has undergone considerable expansion in recent decades in a number of OECD countries. Expansion has been especially dramatic in the UK where aggregate student numbers have doubled in 20 years. However, over the same period, funding per student has halved in real terms. In the UK as well as in other countries, most notably Australia, innovation to diversify the funding base has taken place. This has included a limited role for fee contributions. This paper makes the case for much greater reliance on fee contributions from students, accompanied by a greater availability of income contingent loans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into, and discussions on, the relationships between teaching and research activities in universities and other tertiary education institutions have been gathering momentum for a number of decades in many parts of the world. The foci of these researches and discussions have varied greatly. At one end of the spectrum are the publications which were the result of large-scale projects, generally commissioned by a national body or an institution; these projects often had a broad focus. At the other end are the products of pursuits by an individual with a personal interest in the field, exploring a specific aspect of practice. This paper initially explores some key publications based on commissioned projects in the US, UK and Australia in order to gain a "big picture" view of the teaching-research (TR) connection, then looks at TR relevant discussions emanating from the work of prominent scholars, and finally provides an insight into strategic initiatives for promoting TR connections at an institutional level. The paper provides evidence for the widening of discussion base for TR connections, while narrowing the discussion focus to student engagement, in different parts of the world.

The differences in internal mobility between national populations are large and complex in origin. In studying them we must use comparable indicators. This paper discusses how measures of migration intensity at the national level should be constructed, drawing on analyses of residential mobility in Australia and Britain. We argue for the tailoring of intensity measures to observation plan and to age-time plan, and for removing the effects of mortality and external migration on census-based measures. We propose simple estimation of infant migrants, a standard stopping-age in calculating gross measures of migration, and argue for the use of a common population for computing age-standardized measures of migration and a common mortality schedule for computing migration expectancies. We conclude with recommendations for developing comparable cross-national measures of migration intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Calls have been made to rethink the mental health support currently available for young people. This study aims to help re-focus and reduce the inaccessibility of mental health services by offering an adapted version of a theoretically-driven, evidence-based, guided psychosocial intervention known as 'Groups 4 Health' (G4H). To date, the G4H intervention has mainly been trialled in Australia, with promising positive effects on social connection, mental health and well-being. The present study examines the feasibility of running a randomised controlled trial when delivering the G4H intervention for young people in the UK. Methods: The TOGETHER study is a feasibility randomised controlled trial of an adapted version of the G4H intervention. Participants are aged 16–25, currently experiencing mental health difficulties and recruited from mental health services. The target sample size is 30, with 15 in each trial arm. Participants are randomly allocated to either G4H plus treatment as usual, or treatment as usual alone. The primary outcomes of interest are the feasibility of recruitment, randomisation, data collection and retention to the study at 10 and 14 week follow up, as well as the acceptability, and accessibility of the study protocol and G4H intervention. Discussion: The results of this study will indicate if further optimisation is required to improve the feasibility, acceptability and accessibility of the intervention and study protocol procedures as perceived by end users and practitioners. This offers a significant opportunity to support the local and national demand for accessible, innovative, and effective psychosocial youth mental health support. Trial registration: ISRCTN registry (ISRCTN12505807). Registration date: 11/04/2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predictive genetic testing can provide information about whether or not someone will develop or is likely to develop a specific condition at a later stage in life. Economic evaluation can assess the value of money for such testing. Studies on the economic evaluation of predictive genetic testing have been carried out in a variety of settings, and this research aims to conduct a scoping review of findings from these studies. We searched the PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane databases with combined search terms, from 2019 to 2022. Relevant studies from 2013 to 2019 in a previous systematic review were also included. The study followed the recommended stages for undertaking a scoping review. A total of 53 studies were included, including 33 studies from the previous review and 20 studies from the search of databases. A significant number of studies focused on the US, UK, and Australia (34%, 23%, and 11%). The most frequently included health conditions were cancer and cardiovascular diseases (68% and 19%). Over half of the studies compared predictive genetic testing with no genetic testing, and the majority of them concluded that at least some type of genetic testing was cost-effective compared to no testing (94%). Some studies stated that predictive genetic testing is becoming more cost-effective with the trend of lowering genetic testing costs. Studies on predictive genetic testing covered various health conditions, particularly cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Most studies indicated that predictive genetic testing is cost-effective compared to no testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the previous literature on the online safety of children and youth under "the 4Cs risk framework" concerning contact, content, conduct, and contract risks. It then conducts a comparative study of Australia, Canada, and the UK, comparing their institutions, governance, and government-led programs. Relevant research in Childhood Education Studies is insufficient both in quantity and quality. To minimize the four major online risks for children and youth in cyberspace, it is necessary to maintain a regulatory approach to the online exposure of children under the age of 13. Moreover, the global society should respond together to these online risks with "multi-level" policymaking under a "multi-stakeholder approach". At the international level, multilateral discussion within the OECD and under UN subsidiaries should continue to lead international cooperation. At the domestic level, a special agency in charge of online safety for children and youth should be established in each country, encompassing all relevant stakeholders, including educators and digital firms. At the school and family levels, both parents and teachers need to work together in facilitating digital literacy education, providing proper guidelines for the online activities of children and youth, and helping them to become more satisfied and productive users in the digital era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the construction of identities in Australia and the United Kingdom. The authors use the Narrative Policy Framework to analyze the creation of characters, plotlines, and policy morals in relation to the crisis. Three identities are examined: the "dutiful citizen," the "supermum," and the "unvaccinated." The article highlights the impact of these narratives on individuals and society, emphasizing the importance of qualitative analysis in understanding the broader implications of pandemic narratives. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the relationship between job insecurity and the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the experiences of the UK and Australia as case studies. It argues that job insecurity during the pandemic was not solely due to the struggle to maintain employment, but also a result of the dominance of finance within neoliberal governance. The fiscal support measures implemented by these countries relied heavily on financial instruments, exacerbating vulnerabilities and inequalities. The article also discusses the impact of financialisation and neoliberalism on job security, the fragility of the financial system, and the unequal distribution of government support. It concludes by calling for further research on the impact of financialisation on job security and the need for more comprehensive government interventions. [Extracted from the article]

This interdisciplinary paper discusses the meaning of open, critical, communal, and discursive learning spaces in higher education. It draws on recent research (Marshalsey, 2017) that illuminates the relationship between sensory affect and learning in studio education. It focuses on the extension and development of new learning configurations in the design studio, augmented by technology enhanced learning. Sensory affect is a form of feedback that can be used by learners to analyse and interpret the impact of the learning environment around them. This study used sensory affect as a lens through which to understand students' experiences of practice-based learning in Communication Design spaces in two distinct higher education settings in the United Kingdom and Australia. The evolution of specialist design studio learning spaces, from physical studios to a blend of virtual and online educational environments, has led to significant debate about how to design, use and evaluate learning spaces for practice-based design disciplines. The paper uses the methods process model, based on participatory design tools (Marshalsey, 2017; Sanders & Stappers, 2008). The MPM supports students and educators to qualitatively interpret and critique their learning spaces more explicitly within their design education.

In March 2004, Stephen Ball and others presented a symposium at the conference of the British Educational Research Association (BERA) on the necessity of theory in educational research. Like Ball, I have observed that theory, not just social theory, is a difficult space and one that divides researchers (those comfortable with theory and those less so), within educational research. It is an aspect of educational research training that rarely receives the attention essential for "quality" educational research. In the context of the contemporary research assessment exercises, it is worth reflecting on the relationship between research informed by social theory and expectations of quality and impact. In this paper I revisit the argument made by Ball and others for the necessity of theory, and discuss its role in framing research questions, informing analysis, and promoting reflexivity on the significance and relevance of research. I illustrate this process by discussing the ways theory can assist in the generation of research agendas and questions. I conclude the paper with an example of how a team of educational researchers from Australia, UK and New Zealand have made use of social theory to inform an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project investigating the recontextualisation of health knowledge in schools. (Contains 1 endnote.)

Teachers across the circumpolar north often share similar experiences working in small communities in remote areas with distinctive cultures and livelihoods. However, teacher education programmes tend to be universal, ignoring an ecological understanding of teaching. This paper describes the findings from a desktop study investigating the specific demands made of teachers working in rural schools and the implications for teacher education in supporting them to develop the necessary self-efficacy for this role. The results indicate that attention to specific teaching and teacher competences is required but that this must be undertaken with an awareness of the importance of place-based education.

Examines industry-specific hypotheses of the determinants of intra-industry trade in the context of Australia-Great Britain trade. Horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade (IIT) models; High incidence of IIT in technology-intensive industries; Scope for two-way exchanges of quality-differentiated products trade.

This article reports that Australia's flourishing immigration-historiography is well served by studies related to immigration and settlement patterns in colonial Australia. The proportion of emigrants assisted by Australia's colonial governments between 1831 and 1860 was 56 per cent; during the peak years between 1848 and 1859. Intricate and intriguing patterns of mobility have emerged which imply complex motivational stimuli. Not least of the new perspectives which have recently emerged to emphasize such complexities, is research into the mobility and settlement of specific groups of women including female convicts, convicts' wives, distressed needlewomen, emigrant gentlewomen, and English and Irish orphans. For the roughly half who were private travellers, unassisted by officialdom, the picture remains somewhat misty. But for those who were selected for government assistance to emigrate, historians possess a range of sources which, until now, have remained largely untapped. In this paper one aim is to explore the socio-demographic origins of government-assisted emigrants from the Great Britain to Australia before 1860 and to demonstrate the extent to which sources originating in Australia can open a window on the lives and accomplishments of Great Britain labouring classes.

This paper focuses on the problems of measurement of progressivity in taxation and public expenditure. The problem has attracted the attention of several writers. Among the important contributions to this field are those of Dalton (1955), Slitor (1948), Musgrave and Thin (1948) and Bracewell-Milnes (1971). The major weakness of the existing literature is that it does not distinguish between the effects of changes in average tax rates and in progressivity on the distribution of income. One of the aims of this paper is to show how the distributional effect of taxation is influenced by changes in the average tax rate while progressivity is held constant and vice versa. Further the method enables one to study the contribution of individual taxes and expenditure items to the overall progressivity of the fiscal system of taxation and public expenditure. Finally, the methods developed are applied to the empirical investigation of fiscal operations in four developed countries -- Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. In this paper a new measure of tax progressivity has been introduced. This measure helps to distinguish between different effects of taxation on income distribution. In particular, it has helped to show clearly that the reduction in income distribution resulting from taxation depends not only on the degree of tax progressivity, as is commonly believed, but also on average tax rate. We have also analysed the effects of various taxes and items of public expenditure at different levels of Government. This empirical analysis has been done for four developed countries, namely Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the U.S.A. It would be interesting for future research to extend the empirical analysis to other developed and developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the theoretical level, the paper has two aims: to develop a three-country migration model and to incorporate British emigration schemes of the 1920s into it. The model is tested on data of U.K. emigration to Canada, the U.S.A. and Australia from 1920 to 1936. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a test of S.M. Lipect's thesis that Americans are less respectful or accepting of authority than people from Canada and from the other English-speaking democracies; Australia, and Great Britain. We use data from World Values Survey, 1981-83, to compare adult samples from the four populations, with separate analyses for English Canada and French Canada. Twenty-one dependent variables are employed, measuring beliefs about authority in general, civil dissent and disobedience, authority in the workplace, confidence in social institutions and obedience in children. The English-Canadian-American comparisons consistently disconfirm Lipect's hypothesis, with English Canadians either being less accepting of authority than Americans or showing no significant differences. The results comparing Americans with the other samples are less consistent but also indicate that Americans are not the least accepting of authority. Contrary to Lipect's thesis, Australians are not especially lots in respect for authority, either; nor are the British exceptionally high. Some support is found for Lipect's suggestion that French Canadians are relatively low in acceptance of authority. These results hold both with and without controls for ten social background factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Supermarkets are the primary source of food for many people yet their full potential as a setting to encourage healthy dietary-related behaviours remains underutilised. Sharing the experiences from research groups who have worked with supermarket chains to evaluate strategies that promote healthy eating could improve the efficiency of building such relationships and enhance the design quality of future research studies. Methods: A collective case study approach was used to synthesise experiences of engaging and sustaining research collaborations with national supermarket chains to test the effectiveness of health-focused in-store interventions. The collective narrative covers studies conducted in three high-income countries: Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Results: We have distilled our experiences and lessons learned into six recommendations for conducting high quality public health research with commercial supermarket chains. These include: (i) using personal contacts, knowledge of supermarket activities and engaging executive management to establish a partnership and allowing time to build trust; (ii) using scientifically robust study designs with appropriate sample size calculations; (iii) formalising data exchange arrangements and allocating adequate resource for data extraction and re-categorisation; (iv) assessing effects at individual/households level where possible; (v) designing a mixed-methods process evaluation to measure intervention fidelity, dose and unintended consequences; and (vi) ensuring scientific independence through formal contract agreements. Conclusions: Our collective experiences of working in non-financial partnerships with national supermarket chains could be useful for other research groups looking to develop and implement supermarket studies in an efficient manner. Further evidence from real-life supermarket interventions is necessary to identify sustainable strategies that can improve population diet and maintain necessary commercial outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how organizational experience influences social enterprise responses to impact assessment practices. Limited attention has been paid to why organizations resist or challenge impact assessment practices or how prior experience with impact assessment may shape organizational responses. The study draws on interviews with practitioners involved in social enterprise–impact investor dyads in Australia and the United Kingdom. The findings reveal that social enterprises enact either combative or collaborative responses in their relationships with impact investors based on past experiences with impact assessment. The study shows how more experienced social enterprises reach a state of impact lock-in —where they become committed to particular approaches to understanding, measuring, and reporting impact. The article contributes to the literature on impact assessment and impact investment by showing how organizational experience shapes divergent reactions to the demands imposed by impact investors, creating complementary forces of institutionalization and contestation of impact assessment practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals vary in their ability to tolerate uncertainty. High intolerance of uncertainty (the tendency to react negatively to uncertain situations) is a known risk factor for mental health problems. In the current study we examined the degree to which intolerance of uncertainty predicted depression and anxiety symptoms and their interrelations across the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined these associations across three time points (May 2020 – April 2021) in an international sample of adults (N = 2087, Mean age = 41.13) from three countries (UK, USA, Australia) with varying degrees of COVID-19 risk. We found that individuals with high and moderate levels of intolerance of uncertainty reported reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms over time. However, symptom levels remained significantly elevated compared to individuals with low intolerance of uncertainty. Individuals with low intolerance of uncertainty had low and stable levels of depression and anxiety across the course of the study. Network analyses further revealed that the relationships between depression and anxiety symptoms became stronger over time among individuals with high intolerance of uncertainty and identified that feeling afraid showed the strongest association with intolerance of uncertainty. Our findings are consistent with previous work identifying intolerance of uncertainty as an important risk factor for mental health problems, especially in times marked by actual health, economic and social uncertainty. The results highlight the need to explore ways to foster resilience among individuals who struggle to tolerate uncertainty, as ongoing and future geopolitical, climate and health threats will likely lead to continued exposure to significant uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper focuses on delineating and scoping international Women's Sheds, a movement that has emerged within the past decade, mainly in Australia, Ireland and the UK. It addresses two main research questions. Firstly, what is the origin, distribution, nature and intent of Women's Sheds internationally to March 2021? Secondly, how might Women's Sheds be located within a typology inclusive of Men's Sheds and a range of community development models? We employed a systematic search via the internet in 2020-21, followed up by attempted email or phone contact to publicly reported Women's Sheds and like organisations internationally. In the process, we created a publicly shareable blog including a database of 122 existing, previously active, developing or planned Women's Sheds and like organisations to 13 March 2021. We identify four nations where self-identified Women's Sheds have operated or commenced within the past decade: Australia (61), the UK (30), Ireland (28) and New Zealand (3), particularly during the five years between 2014 and 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic seriously curtailed this previous momentum and development after March 2020. We identify some similarities but also important differences between Women's and Men's Sheds. We propose a typology that accounts not only for the different ways in which Women's Sheds operate and women participate within their communities but also the different ways in which they locally collaborate (or not) with Men's Sheds in different countries. We conclude that Women's Sheds have largely been created by women in order to claim the shed as a positive female gendered space, in order to create an alternative community of women's hands-on practice. Sheds have operated or commenced within the past decade: Australia (61), the UK (30), Ireland (28) and New Zealand (3), particularly during the five years between 2014 and 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic seriously curtailed this previous momentum and development after March 2020. We identify some similarities but also important differences between Women's and Men's Sheds. We propose a typology that accounts not only for the different ways in which Women's Sheds operate and women participate within their communities but also the different ways in which they locally collaborate (or not) with Men's Sheds in different countries. We conclude that Women's Sheds have largely been created by women in order to claim the shed as a positive female gendered space, in order to create an alternative community of women's hands-on practice.