Janet Smithson

Janet Smithson
University of Exeter | UoE · Department of Psychology

Doctor of Psychology

About

128
Publications
113,281
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Introduction
Besides my Exeter university role I a part time Principal Researcher working on the EU project ManagiDiTH, setting up a Master programme on managing the transformation to digital health. I provide freelance research consultancy and methods training. Qualitative research methods. Cross online research, Discourse, Narrative and Conversation Analysis. Equality, diversity and social justice issues. Ehealth and online interaction.

Publications

Publications (128)
Article
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Objectives Mindfulness-based supervision (MBS) is a vital support for teachers of mindfulness-based programmes (MBPs), and good practice guidance requires mindfulness teachers to have at least 4 hr of MBS a year. Despite this, underpinning theory and research on MBS is sparse. This study explores the perspectives of supervisors and supervisees to i...
Article
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Notions of home are deeply rooted in how we understand our interrelational selves and where we fit in to the world around us. This qualitative research explored how young people, their families and staff on a United Kingdom (UK) psychiatric adolescent inpatient unit constructed meaning around the notion of home within the unit. Admissions on such u...
Poster
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Analysis of narratives from 3 participants who have aphasia. We present three 'I poems' which overlay the plot for each interviewee
Article
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Aim: To explore the experiences of musculoskeletal (MSk) physiotherapy independent prescribing in primary care from the perspectives of physiotherapists and General Practitioners (GPs) and identify the implications these have for contemporary physiotherapy practice in primary care. Background: Legislative change in the United Kingdom (UK) in 201...
Article
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Objectives Self-compassion is the ability to be kind to oneself in adversity. This multidimensional construct is typically assessed by the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS). In Chinese samples, there have been inconsistent psychometric findings that impede cross-cultural research. This study aimed to explore the factor structure of the Chinese version (S...
Article
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Background: Siblings of people with anorexia nervosa (AN) have been found to experience strong emotions, changing family roles and poorer wellbeing as a consequence of experiencing the effects of the illness on their sibling and family system. These factors, combined with genetic influences, may put siblings at an increased risk of developing eati...
Article
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This research set out to investigate displaced women’s resilience and growth relationally, including relationships between displaced women and their children and how growth might extend to those working with displaced women. A unique relational, narrative and ethnographic approach demonstrated how processes of ‘reciprocal growth’ were constructed....
Article
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Peer relationship difficulties in adolescents with acquired brain injury (ABI) are under-recognized and targets for intervention are unclear. From a social constructionist position, this study aimed to engage with stakeholders to develop a collaborative understanding of peer relationship difficulties in adolescents with ABI and seek consultation on...
Preprint
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Background Siblings of people with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) have been found to experience strong emotions, changing family roles and poorer wellbeing as a consequence of witnessing the illness. These factors, combined with genetic influences, may put siblings at an increased risk of developing eating disorder psychopathology. This research aims to exp...
Article
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Objectives Recent research has suggested that Chinese individuals from a collectivist culture may have a different understanding of self-compassion, which could differentially contribute to mental health. This study aimed to obtain an in-depth insight into Chinese adults’ understanding of self-compassion. Methods Four online focus groups in Chines...
Article
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Domestic violence (DV) victims face significant barriers to accessing healthcare. This is particularly concerning in cases of brain injury (BI), which is difficult to diagnose and risks severe long-term consequences for DV victims. Police may be able to identify head injury (HI) and signpost victims to healthcare. This research investigated potenti...
Chapter
This chapter summarises the empirical chapters, drawing out specific aspects of each chapter, including a distinction between the use of traditional methods to study new technologies and the development of innovative techniques to study evolving communication formats. I show how the studies included exemplify some key challenges in this area of usi...
Article
This paper presents some of the findings of our Mapping Paths to Family Justice research with regard to out-of-court settlements in financial cases, considering what parties and practitioners respectively bring to the process of dispute resolution, and how outcomes are influenced by practitioners’ and parties’ contributions. Practitioners play an i...
Article
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There has been recent emphasis on the assessment of competence in psychotherapy training courses to improve evidence‐based practice and outcomes for clients. The Systemic Practice Scale (SPS) was developed as a structured way of evaluating systemic practice. There is, however, little research on the impact and experience of competence measures, par...
Article
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Purpose Orthorexia nervosa (ON) is a proposed new eating disorder, used to describe a pathological obsession with healthy or ‘clean’ eating. Although some quantitative research has been carried out in ON, very little qualitative work has been published to date to explore individual experiences of ON. Thus, this study aimed to explore individuals’ p...
Article
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This research investigated the psychoanalytic idea of containment in the context of NHS staff responses to a person diagnosed with personality disorder. The aim was to identify what, if any, containment was provided by staff for someone diagnosed with personality disorder by recording staff responses to an assessment and analysing the discourse. Th...
Article
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Introduction Paediatric acquired brain injury is a leading cause of mortality in children in the UK. Improved treatment during the acute phase has led to increased survival rates, although with life-long morbidity in terms of social and emotional functioning. This is the protocol for a feasibility randomised controlled trial with an embedded qualit...
Article
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We used discourse analysis to study how mediators and parties negotiate competing priorities and values during the family mediation process. We drew on understandings of practical morality, specifically the concept of a moral order, to study UK mediation session talk. Our analysis highlighted the contradictory moral orders drawn on by parties and m...
Chapter
his book considers how access to justice is affected by restrictions to legal aid budgets and increasingly prescriptive service guidelines, which are a controversial and hotly contested part of the contemporary global legal landscape.
Chapter
Chapter 4 showed that for people experiencing relationship breakdown, their awareness and understanding of dispute resolution options was often serendipitous, in terms of what information they discovered before making a decision to approach a professional and which professional they consulted. In this chapter we examine the process of choosing to a...
Chapter
As outlined in Chapter 1, neoliberal policy developments concerning family dispute resolution have emphasised the importance of parties resolving their dispute out of court, ideally by mediation, but have demonstrated little concern with the content or quality of resolutions, beyond asserting that agreements reached between the parties themselves a...
Chapter
As outlined in Chapter 2, within the neoliberal policy framework, the exercise of autonomy through freedom of choice is a key justification for abandoning more traditional and welfarist approaches to many matters, including family dispute resolution. But at the same time, as we have noted, people with family law disputes are encouraged in various w...
Chapter
Our three-year empirical study Mapping Paths to Family Justice was conducted in 2011–2014 and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (grant number ES/I031812/1). In 2009–10 when the Mapping Paths to Family Justice project was conceived, there was a widespread perception that the family justice system was in crisis, with diminishi...
Chapter
In the previous chapter we gave a brief explanation of the three FDRs which are the focus of this book: solicitor negotiations, mediation and collaborative law. This chapter traces the history of each FDR in England and Wales, including professional membership, training, organisations and regulation, developments in practice, and findings of previo...
Chapter
The original aim of this study was to create an evidence base about the experiences and outcomes of family dispute resolution in order to inform future policy development. In the background was the ongoing neoliberal transformation of family justice, which had seen an increasing emphasis on private responsibility for the resolution of family disput...
Chapter
This chapter considers the outcomes of FDR in normative terms – the question of whether settlements are just. There are a number of different ways of approaching this question. First, are settlements just from the perspective of the parties? This requires consideration of the norms or conceptions of a ‘fair’ outcome brought into the process by the...
Chapter
This chapter sets out our findings in relation to parties’ experiences of each FDR process, as well as the comparative assessments of FDRs made by parties who had experienced more than one process. Thirty-two of the parties interviewed had experienced only mediation, 27 had experienced only solicitor negotiation, and 25 had experienced both of thes...
Article
The family justice system in England and Wales has undergone radical change over the past 20 years. A significant part of this shifting landscape has been an increasing emphasis on settling private family disputes out of court, which has been embraced by policy-makers, judges and practitioners alike and is promoted as an unqualified good. Mapping P...
Article
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Working in groups is increasingly regarded as fruitful for the process of analyzing qualitative data. It has been reported to build research skills, make the analytic process visible, reduce inequalities and social distance particularly between researchers and participants, and broaden and intensify engagement with the material. This article contri...
Article
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This paper contributes to debates in the broad area of generational differences at work. Specifically, we locate this study within the literature of the work values and expectations of the ‘Millennial generation’, also known as ‘GenMe’. Much has been made in the media and popular practitioner literature about how the latest generation of workers ha...
Article
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In this special issue we focus on the work and influence of Sue Lewis, one of the Community, Work and Family Journal's two founding editors. In launching this journal Sue, together with Carolyn Kagan, aimed to encourage debate and critical examination of, and reflection on, existing perspectives, frameworks and practices (Kagan & Lewis, 2015). They...
Chapter
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In this chapter, I consider the use of a discourse analytic approach to studying online forums for young people who self-harm. Diagnosis of self-harm is increasing substantially, especially among children and young people — a recent report states that there has been a threefold increase in UK teenagers who self-harm in the last decade (World Health...
Article
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In the context of a Professional Doctorate in Psychoanalytic Research, we examined how a group of psychoanalytic therapists responded to the ethos and methods of qualitative research. Although experienced therapy practitioners, the students were mostly new to qualitative research. We were interested in the extent to which students found psychoanaly...
Article
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We used Discursive Psychology to study the claims and arguments which occur when ‘the child’s best interests’ is produced as a resource in family mediation settings. Analysis draws on data from three pairs of separated or separating parents attempting to resolve child contact or residency disputes through mediation. Our analysis focuses on the tend...
Chapter
Family justice requires not only a legal framework within which personal obligations are regulated over the life course, but also a justice system which can deliver legal information, advice and support at times of change of status or family stress, together with mechanisms for negotiation, dispute management and resolution, with adjudication as th...
Chapter
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Background: public participation and engagement Aspirations to increase ‘user involvement’ in the planning, provision and evaluation of public services have been a consistent feature on the political agenda in the UK. The Labour government that left office in 2010 aimed to increase public participation and engagement in a broad range of services, a...
Chapter
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This chapter gives an overview of policy and practice for public participation and engagement in England and Wales, and explores the rationale for adopting a participative approach to research. It describes the process used for involving older people in the Grey and Pleasant Land project and some of the challenges that this raised. We review the li...
Article
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This paper explores the use of focus group methodology as part of a life course approach building on Julia Brannen’s pioneering work in these two areas. Much life course research uses individual interviews, including biographical interview techniques. It is less usual to find focus groups used within the life course perspective. This paper draws on...
Article
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This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to explore how six people talked about their difficulties before and after a dementia diagnosis. Participants' accounts of their memory problems were analysed in terms of the verbal Markers of Assimilation of Problematic Voices Scale. This analysis indicated that after diagnosis some participan...
Article
Dispersed stakeholders could use the Internet to discuss issues of concern in rural ageing but the best methods for long-term online focus groups were unclear. We explored use of webcasts, discussion forums, Twitter, and email to facilitate inter-regional inter-sectoral stakeholder discussion. Synchronicity and scheduling seemed important to get pr...
Article
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This paper investigates the motivations and online behaviour of the users of Mumsnet, a UK online parenting community. The Mumsnet discussion forum is characterised by its difference to other mothering websites in its language use, its celebration of confrontational, opinionated and well-informed debate, its tolerance of aggression and swearing and...
Article
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Abstract: Drawing on data from a recent national and follow-up study exploring attitudes towards binding pre-nuptial agreements at a time when the Law Commission was considering law reform, this article considers what might be gained and lost in family law terms by their introduction. Looking at the tensions between providing autonomy to agree arr...
Article
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In this article we study how members of an interdisciplinary research team use an online forum for communicating about their research project. We use the concepts of “community of practice” and “connectivity” to consider the online interaction within a wider question of how people from different academic traditions “do” interdisciplinarity. The onl...
Article
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Background Online communities are known to break down barriers between supposed experts and non-experts and to promote collaborative learning and radical trust' among members. Young people who self-harm report difficulties in communicating with health professionals, and vice versa. AimWe sought to bring these two groups together online to see how w...
Article
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The chapter adopts a thematic approach. It considers the range of resources available for working parents in the seven national contexts each with different levels of public and private support, working hours and childcare. It provides a systematic overview of the types and sources of support for working parents. It demonstrates how different worki...
Chapter
The chapter takes biographical case approach and compares selected cases of mothers from Bulgaria, Norway, Portugal and the UK. In order to give 'thick descriptions' of cases several layers of empirical context are brought to bear on the analysis of individual cases. Special attention is paid to the transition to motherhood in relation to other lif...
Chapter
Introduction As the average age of the birth of the first child has increased significantly for women in most European countries, and the transition period between youth and adulthood for many has been prolonged, the transition to motherhood must be seen in relation to other life course trajectories and discussed with reference to social class and...
Chapter
Introduction This chapter considers the range of resources available for working parents in different national contexts. We draw on material from countries with different levels of public and private support, working hours and childcare, to provide a systematic overview and some cross-national comparisons of types and sources of constraint and supp...
Article
This book takes a gendered life course perspective, analysing and comparing the biographies of men and women employed in similar public and private sector organisations across seven European countries (Bulgaria, Norway, Portugal Sweden, The Netherlands, Slovenia and the UK) who become working parents. Based on an innovative multi-layered contextual...
Article
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There is increasing interest in online collaborative learning tools in health education, to reduce costs, and to offer alternative communication opportunities. Patients and students often have extensive experience of using the Internet for health information and support, and many health organisations are increasingly trying out online tools, while...
Article
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Within a context of concern about inappropriate advice-giving online, we examined how young people who self-harm behave online, and how professionals might engage with them. We use Discourse Analysis to focus on participant interactions (posts)from a forum's crisis/support rooms, and highlight the prevalence of disclaimers, hedges, questions and ta...
Article
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Managers are key actors shaping employees’ capabilities to utilize work–life policies. However, most research on managers’ implementation of these policies has been conducted in liberal welfare states and ignores the impact of institutional context. In this study, we situate managers within specific workplace and national layers of context. We inve...
Article
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Aims and method To explore what young people who self-harm think about online self-harm discussion forums. SharpTalk was set up to facilitate shared learning between health professionals and young people who self-harm.We extracted themes and illustrative statements from the online discussion and asked participants to rate statements. Results Of 77...
Article
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The internet is widely used for health information and support, often by vulnerable people. Internet-based research raises both familiar and new ethical problems for researchers and ethics committees. While guidelines for internet-based research are available, it is unclear to what extent ethics committees use these. Experience of gaining research...
Article
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In this article we investigate the nature of problem presentation and responses on an online forum for young people who self-harm. Previous studies have raised concerns about the peer encouragement of self-harming behaviours in online forums, and this analysis considers the nature of peer interaction on a specific forum, ‘ SharpTalk’. This was a re...
Article
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In this article we explore how young adults became members and sustained membership in an online self-harm support forum, SharpTalk. We take a discursive approach to consider resources young people used to establish themselves, how others responded to their attempts, and how membership categories were developed and applied. Participants displayed e...
Article
Full-text available
Managers are key actors shaping employees' capabilities to utilize work life policies. However, most research on managers' implementation of these policies has been conducted in liberal welfare states and ignores the impact of institutional context. In this study, we situate managers within specific workplace and national layers of context. We inve...
Article
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Researchers using forums and online focus groups need to ensure they are safe and need tools to make best use of the data. We explored the use of metrics that would allow better forum management and more effective analysis of participant contributions. To report retrospectively calculated metrics from self-harm discussion forums and to assess wheth...
Article
Full-text available
In this article we investigate the nature of problem presentation and responses on an online forum for young people who self-harm. Previous studies have raised concerns about the peer encouragement of self-harming behaviours in online forums, and this analysis considers the nature of peer interaction on a specific forum, ‘SharpTalk’. This was a res...
Article
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This article describes a qualitative synthesis of published research on cancer patients' experiences of complementary therapies. We conducted a systematic search for qualitative studies on this subject published between 1998 and 2007. Twenty-six refereed journal articles met the inclusion criteria. These 26 articles were repeatedly read by the rese...
Article
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This review considers barriers to, and facilitators of, success for interventions to reduce unintentional injury to children in the home through supply and/or installation of home safety equipment, and looks at risk assessments. A systematic review of qualitative research. Bibliographic databases were searched for studies on interventions to reduce...
Article
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The use of complementary therapies by people with cancer is commonplace. In a recent synthesis of 26 qualitative studies of patients' experiences of complementary therapy use after a diagnosis of cancer, the emergent theme of 'polarization' was the most notable barrier to a positive experience of complementary therapies. In this paper, we explore t...
Chapter
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Recent studies have shown that British women, especially mothers of young children, spend a particularly large amount of time online. Many are logging on to parenting websites. This chapter investigates Mumsnet, a large British parenting site, and evaluates how members use and conceptualise the site. A combined method of a questionnaire survey with...
Chapter
This chapter discusses the UK private sector finance organisation which claims to have moved beyond the work-life policy implementation to address organisational culture change. A drive for culture change stems from the need to develop a single organisational culture and identity following mergers and acquisitions. The workplace policies and practi...
Chapter
Introduction There is now abundant evidence that work–family policies without systemic change in work structures, cultures and practices have limited impact on employees or organisations (Lewis, 1997, 2001; Rapoport et al, 2002). Contemporary organisations are undergoing dramatic changes in response to new forms of competition in the global context...
Article
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This paper investigates how differences in national and organisational welfare policies and in cultural norms on national, organisational, and familial levels influence work� family reconciliation for mothers. Drawing on case study and interview data gathered through a large European study of parenthood and organisations, we compare experiences of...
Article
Introduction Managing paid work and family life is a major challenge for many European workers. Growing numbers of women with children are remaining in paid employment albeit with a diverse range of working time regimes and different levels of state support across Europe for reconciling work and family (Fagnani, Houriet-Ségard and Bédouin, 2004). I...
Technical Report
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This project extends understanding of the changing contexts in which young parents negotiate the transition to parenthood, based on policy analysis and an international literature review in eight European states and empirical work in seven countries. The overall objective was to examine qualitatively how young European women and men negotiate mothe...