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The Rise of Professional Society lays out a stimulating and controversial framework for the study of British society, challenging accepted paradigms based on class analysis. Perkins argues that the non-capitalist \"professional class\" represents a new principle of social organization based on trained expertise and meritocracy, a \"forgotten middle class\" conveniently overlooked by classical social theorists. 'A true magnum opus. No social historian can afford not to read it.' – Asa Briggs 'Accessible to the general reader, indispensable to the scholar and a solid achievement of synthesis and clarity.' – The Observer

Background Burnout and the intention to leave the profession are frequently studied outcomes in healthcare settings that have not been investigated together and across different health professions before. This study aimed to examine work-related explanatory factors or predictors of burnout and the intention to leave the profession among health professionals in general, and nurses and physicians in particular. Methods Cross-sectional survey data of 1840 employees of six public hospitals and rehabilitation clinics recorded in 2015/16 in German-speaking Switzerland were used. Multiple logistic and stepwise linear regression analyses were performed to estimate the relative risks (odds ratios) and standardized effects (beta coefficients) of different workloads and work-related stressors on these outcomes and to study any possible mediation between them. Results On average, one in twelve health professionals showed increased burnout symptoms and every sixth one thought frequently of leaving the profession. Temporal, physical, emotional and mental workloads and job stresses were strongly and positively associated with burnout symptoms and thoughts of leaving the profession. However, the relative risks of increased burnout symptoms and frequent thoughts of leaving the profession were highest in the case of effort-reward and work-life imbalances. In fact, these two work-related stress measures partly or even largely mediated the relationships between exposures (workloads, job stresses) and outcomes and were found to be the strongest predictors of all. Whereas a work-life imbalance most strongly predicted burnout symptoms among health professionals (β = .35), and particularly physicians (β = .48), an effort-reward imbalance most strongly predicted thoughts of leaving the profession (β = .31–36). A substantial part of the variance was explained in the fully specified regression models across both major health professions and both outcomes. However, explained variance was most pronounced for burnout symptoms of physicians (43.3%) and for frequent thoughts of leaving the profession among nurses and midwives (28.7%). Conclusions Reducing workload and job stress, and particularly reward frustration at work, as well as the difficulties in combining work and private lives among health professionals, may help to prevent them from developing burnout and/or leaving the profession and consequently also to reduce turnover, early retirement, career endings and understaffing in healthcare settings.

This article explores publication patterns across 10 prominent political science journals, documenting a significant gender gap in publication rates for men and women. We present three broad findings. First, we find no evidence that the low percentage of female authors simply mirrors an overall low share of women in the profession. Instead, we find continued underrepresentation of women in many of the discipline’s top journals. Second, we find that women are not benefiting equally in a broad trend across the discipline toward coauthorship. Most published collaborative research in these journals emerges from all-male teams. Third, it appears that the methodological proclivities of the top journals do not fully reflect the kind of work that female scholars are more likely than men to publish in these journals. The underrepresentation of qualitative work in many journals is associated as well with an underrepresentation of female authors.

Descriptive research—work aimed at answering “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and “how” questions—is vital at every stage of social scientific inquiry. The creative and analytic process of description—through concepts, measures, or cases, whether in numeric or narrative form—is crucial for conducting research aimed at understanding politics in action. Yet, our field tends to devalue such work as “merely descriptive” (Gerring 2012), subsidiary to or less valuable than hypothesis-drive causal inference. This article posits four key areas in which description contributes to political science: in conceptualization, in policy relevance, in the management and leveraging of data, and in challenging entrenched biases and diversifying our field.

How should scholars recognize and respond to the complexities of positionality during the research process? Although there has been much theorizing on the intersectional and context-dependent nature of positionality, there remains a disjuncture between how positionality is understood theoretically and how it is applied. Ignoring the dynamism of positionality in practice has implications for the research process. This article theorizes one means of recognizing and responding to positionality in practice: a posture of “active reflexivity.” It outlines how we can become actively reflexive by adopting a disposition toward both ongoing reflection about our own social location and ongoing reflection on our assumptions regarding others’ perceptions. We then articulate four strategies for doing active reflexivity: recording assumptions around positionality; routinizing and systemizing reflexivity; bringing other actors into the process; and “showing our work” in the publication process.

Purpose To examine the associations among quality of work life, nurses’ intention to leave the profession, and nurses leaving the profession. Design A prospective study design was used. Methods Participants were 1,283 hospital nurses with a purposive sampling in Taiwan. The self‐reported questionnaire consisted of three questionnaires: the Chinese version of the Quality of Nursing Work Life scale, an intention‐to‐leave profession questionnaire, and a demographic questionnaire. Records of nurses leaving the profession were surveyed 1 year later. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Findings As many as 720 nurses (56.1%) had tendencies to leave their profession. However, only 31 nurses (2.5%) left their profession 1 year later. Nurses’ intention to leave the profession mediated the relationship between the milieu of respect and autonomy, quality of work life, and nurses leaving the profession. Conclusions The milieu of respect and autonomy describing the quality of work life predicts the nurses’ intention to leave the profession, and together these predict nurses leaving the profession. Clinical Relevance This study illustrates that nurse managers could provide effective interventions to ameliorate the milieu of respect and autonomy aspect of quality of work life to prevent nurses from leaving their profession.

The diversity of political spaces, availability of cheap labor, ease of access to powerful figures, and safety net of a foreign passport attract researchers to the developing world. However, environments of extreme state weakness and ongoing conflict permit research behavior that would be frowned on in the global north. We suggest that weak regulatory authority in conflict-affected states offers foreign academics opportunities that are not available when states have greater reach or capacity. Qualitative researchers may find requests to interview victims or perpetrators of wartime violence granted with ease. Experimenters can coerce under-resourced NGOs to pursue interventions at odds with their organizational mandates. We posit that conflict contexts can constitute permissive environments in which researchers can engage in conduct that would be considered deeply problematic at home. Because studying political violence can require firsthand research on aspects of political life not easily observed elsewhere, this article offers a set of guidelines to foster more ethical and responsible research practices.

In this article, I trouble the pedagogical practice of comforting discomfort in the social-justice classroom. Is it possible to support white students, for instance, and not comfort them? Is it possible to support white students without recentering the emotional crisis of white students, without disregarding the needs and interests of students of color, and without reproducing the violence that students of color endure? First I address the dangers of comforting discomfort and discuss Robin DiAngelo's notion of white fragility, which has been used to explain the tendency of white people to flee discomfort rather than tarry with it (DiAngelo 2011). Employing Erinn Gilson's work on vulnerability, I argue that white fragility is not a weakness but an active performance of invulnerability (Gilson 2011; 2014). I conclude by arguing that developing vulnerability is a counter to white fragility, and that one way such vulnerability can be encouraged is through offering critical hope, which I maintain is a type of support that does not comfort.