Identifying barriers to help-seeking: a qualitative analysis of students' preparedness to seek help from tutors

A qualitative study based on the first-hand accounts of students in higher education was conducted Participants were encouraged to explain, in their own terms, their own help-seeking behaviour. The focus for their explanations was 'help-seeking from academic staff'. The aim of the study was to construct a culturally sensitive account of barriers to help-seeking in a student population. The discussion focuses on how studies of this kind might complement and extend what is already known about help-seeking m the extant literature.     

A developmental study of recognition of pictures and nouns

Children at four age levels (4, 6, 8, and 10 years) were given continuous recognition tasks using concrete noun, abstract noun, and pictorial stimuli in a 4 × 3 factorial design. Pictures were recognized significantly better than concrete and abstract nouns at the 4- and 6-year age levels and significantly better than abstract nouns at the 8- and 10-year age levels. This supported Paivio's contention that pictures are easier to remember than words because of a greater possibility of dual encoding, while Rohwer's contention that there is a shift in recognition memory development received no support. There were no significant differences between recognition of concrete and abstract nouns at any age level, which opposed the findings from adult studies and suggested that Paivio's theoretical orientation would have to be extended in order to account for developmental data. Recognition for both concrete and abstract nouns was found to be linear and increasing significantly with age, but no age trends for picture recognition were found.     

Breaking gendered boundaries? Exploring constructions of counter-normative body hair practices in Āotearoa/New Zealand using story completion

ABSTRACT

Do women with body hair continue to evoke disgust? Are men without body hair read only as athletes and/or gay? To explore contemporary sense-making practices around apparently counter-normative gendered body hair practice, we developed a two-stem story completion task. We collected stories from 161 undergraduate students (129 women and 32 men) about David, who had decided to start removing body hair, and Jane, who had decided to stop removing body hair. We analysed the data thematically within a constructionist framework, resulting in three themes: secrecy and shame; the personal benefits of going against the grain; and the personal is political. The personal benefits theme included four distinct (gendered) subthemes: increased heterosexual attractiveness; increased sporting prowess; removal of a hassle; and liberation from conformity. These story data gave access to familiar but also somewhat different accounts than those collected through typical self-report measures.