Search

IntroductionAir pollution harms health across the life course. Children are at particular risk of adverse effects during development, which may impact on health in later life. Interventions that improve air quality are therefore urgently needed not only to improve public health now, but to prevent longer-term increased vulnerability to chronic disease. Low Emission Zones are a public health policy intervention aimed at reducing traffic-derived contributions to urban air pollution, but evidence that they deliver clear health benefits is lacking. We established a natural experiment design study (CHILL: Children’s Health in London and Luton) to evaluate the impacts of the introduction of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) on children’s health.Methods and analysisCHILL is a prospective two-arm parallel longitudinal cohort study of children aged 6-9 years, attending primary schools in Central London (the focus of the first phase of the ULEZ) and Luton (a comparator site). The primary goal of the study is to examine the impact of changes in annual air pollutant exposures as oxides of nitrogen, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter less than 2.5microns and 10microns (NOx, NO2, PM2.5, PM10 respectively) across the two sites on lung growth, measured as forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC), over four consecutive years. Secondary outcomes being investigated include a range of respiratory health indicators as well as inequality and health economic measures.Ethics and disseminationEthics approval has been given by Queen Mary University of London Research Ethics Committee (ref 2018/08). Dissemination will target audiences through a variety of channels, including research papers, conference and media presentations, web summaries and social media. CHILL is funded by National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Public Health Research (Ref 16/139/09) with additional funding by Natural Environment Research Council, NIHR CLAHRC North Thames, NIHR ARC North Thames, and the Mayor of London. ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04695093Strengths and limitations of this studyStrengthsCHILL uses a prospective parallel cohort design, allowing robust conclusions to be drawn on the impact of the ULEZ - a major city-wide air quality mitigation strategy - on air quality and children’s respiratory health.CHILL study cohorts include children from large and ethnically diverse populations living in urban areas characterised by poor air quality.LimitationsAttrition of study cohort population over time, although this has been accounted for in the original design of the study.Potential diminution of the ULEZ air pollution signal due to pre-compliance with ULEZ restrictions in the run up to the introduction of the scheme in Central London on the 8th April 2019, and minor impacts of other pollution mitigation measures.Added complexity of accounting for effects of COVID-19 and related lockdowns on traffic flows, air quality and children’s health.

Project management (PM) researchers have traditionally used quantitative methods in their research due to the origins of this practice-based discipline in defence and engineering. Although qualitative methods are starting to be used in PM research, most of the qualitative research reported tends to use case studies. Recently, there has been a call for PM researchers to use more novel methods to increase the variety of methods used by the researcher in the field contributing to its further development (Drouin, Muller and Sankaran 2013; Cameron, Sankaran and Scales 2015). A review of papers presented at the International Research Network on Organizing by Projects (IRNOP) conference in Berlin in 2009 showed a surprising trend that papers presented at these conferences used more qualitative methods in comparison with articles published in key PM journals. This paper analyses articles published over the past six years in a comparatively new PM journal, since its inception, to explore whether the new journal has motivated PM researchers to overcome their methodological inertia and broaden the variety of research methods they use. A mixed methods prevalence study was undertaken on articles published in the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business (IJMPiB) from 2008 to 2014 (n=265). The findings point to methodological inertia in the majority of research but also an unusually high proportion of the use of mixed methods. Future research is needed to add finer granularity to the analysis.

Mixed methods research is being touted as the third methodological movement which is characterised by a growing body of theoretical and methodological frameworks and a body of cross disciplinary literature. Prominent mixed methodologists/authorities have championed the movement, which has strong footholds in the fields of education, health and nursing, and the social and behavioural sciences. The establishment of mixed method specific journals, research texts and courses and a growth in popularity among research funding bodies all indicate the growing trend in the adoption of mixed methods. Mixed methods research is being used and reported within business and management fields, despite the positivist traditions attached to certain business and management disciplines. This paper has used a retrospective content analysis of journal articles from three ranked journals from the field of project management: International Journal of Project Management (IJPM), the Project Management Journal (PMJ) and the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management (IEEE_TEM). The aim of the study is to determine the prevalence rates of mixed methods in project management and to investigate the quality of mixed methods research within this field. Implications for further research are discussed, along with some guidelines to justify and describe how mixed methods have been used in project management research papers.