WITHDRAWN: Day care for pre-school children.

Background: The debate about how, where and by whom young children should be looked after is one which has occupied much social policy and media attention in recent years. Mothers undertake most of the care of young children. Internationally, out-of-home day-care provision ranges widely.

The sociology of childbirth: an autobiographical journey through four decades of research.

The sociology of childbirth emerged in the 1970s largely as a result of influences from outside sociology. These included feminism, maternity care activism, the increasing medicalisation of childbirth, and evidence-based health care. This paper uses the author's own sociological 'career' to map a journey through four decades of childbirth research.

Pilot multimethod trial of a school-ethos intervention to reduce substance use: building hypotheses about upstream pathways to prevention.

Purpose: Interventions to improve school ethos can reduce substance use but "upstream" causal pathways relating to implementation and school-level changes are uncertain. We use qualitative and quantitative data from a pilot trial to build hypotheses regarding these.

Methods: The Healthy School Ethos intervention involved two schools being provided with facilitation, training, and funding to plan and implement actions (some mandatory and some locally determined) to improve school ethos over one year.

Teenage pregnancy and social disadvantage: systematic review integrating controlled trials and qualitative studies.

Objectives: To determine the impact on teenage pregnancy of interventions that address the social disadvantage associated with early parenthood and to assess the appropriateness of such interventions for young people in the United Kingdom.

Design: Systematic review, including a statistical meta-analysis of controlled trials on interventions for early parenthood and a thematic synthesis of qualitative studies that investigated the views on early parenthood of young people living in the UK.

Data Sources: 12 electronic bibliographic databases, five key journals, reference lists of relevant studies, study authors, and experts in the field.

The long-term effects of a peer-led sex education programme (RIPPLE): a cluster randomised trial in schools in England.

Background: Peer-led sex education is widely believed to be an effective approach to reducing unsafe sex among young people, but reliable evidence from long-term studies is lacking. To assess the effectiveness of one form of school-based peer-led sex education in reducing unintended teenage pregnancy, we did a cluster (school) randomised trial with 7 y of follow-up.

Methods And Findings: Twenty-seven representative schools in England, with over 9,000 pupils aged 13-14 y at baseline, took part in the trial.

A multidimensional conceptual framework for analysing public involvement in health services research.

Objective: To describe the development of a multidimensional conceptual framework capable of drawing out the implications for policy and practice of what is known about public involvement in research agenda setting.

Background: Public involvement in research is growing in western and developing countries. There is a need to learn from collective experience and a diverse literature of research, policy documents and reflective reports.

Evaluating the effectiveness of public health interventions: the role and activities of the Cochrane Collaboration.

Public health decision makers, funders, practitioners, and the public are increasingly interested in the evidence that underpins public health decision making. Decisions in public health cover a vast range of activities. With the ever increasing global volume of primary research, knowledge and changes in thinking and approaches, quality systematic reviews of all the available research that is relevant to a particular practice or policy decision are an efficient way to synthesise and utilise research efforts.

Process evaluation in randomised controlled trials of complex interventions.

Most randomised controlled trials focus on outcomes, not on the processes involved in implementing an intervention. Using an example from school based health promotion, this paper argues that including a process evaluation would improve the science of many randomised controlled trials

Applying systematic review methods to studies of people's views: an example from public health research.

Methods for systematic reviews are well developed for trials, but not for non-experimental or qualitative research. This paper describes the methods developed for reviewing research on people's perspectives and experiences ("views" studies) alongside trials within a series of reviews on young people's mental health, physical activity, and healthy eating. Reports of views studies were difficult to locate; could not easily be classified as "qualitative" or "quantitative"; and often failed to meet seven basic methodological reporting standards used in a newly developed quality assessment tool.

Integrating qualitative research with trials in systematic reviews.

An example review from public health shows how integration is possible and some potential benefits

Effectiveness of out-of-home day care for disadvantaged families: randomised controlled trial.

Objective: To assess the effects of providing daycare facilities for young children on the health and welfare of disadvantaged families.

Design: Randomised controlled trial. Eligible children from the application list to a daycare facility were randomly allocated to receive a daycare place or not.

Including culturally diverse samples in health research: a case study of an urban trial of social support.

Objectives: To describe the recruitment procedures used in a study of Social Support and Family Health carried out in a disadvantaged urban area of the UK in 1999-2001; to consider the impact of using inclusive recruitment procedures on the final research sample and implications for the conduct of the research and data obtained.

Design: Face-to-face recruitment of eligible women, using interpreters where necessary, to a randomized controlled trial of two alternative strategies for providing support to women with infants.

Results: Of the 1,263 women eligible to enter the trial, 731 were successfully recruited.

What influences peer-led sex education in the classroom? A view from the peer educators.

This paper is the second of two presenting data gathered from peer educators in the RIPPLE study-a randomized controlled trial of peer-led sex education in English secondary schools. Peer educators were recruited from Year 12 students (aged 16/17 years) in 13 schools in two successive cohorts in 1997 and 1998. Following a standardized training programme they delivered sex education sessions to Year 9 students (aged 13/14 years).

Peer-led sex education--characteristics of peer educators and their perceptions of the impact on them of participation in a peer education programme.

The RIPPLE study is a randomized controlled trial of peer-led sex education in English secondary schools. In 1997, 27 schools were recruited and randomly allocated to a programme of peer-led sex education or to act as control schools. In experimental schools peer educators in Year 12 (aged 16/17 years) were recruited in two successive cohorts and, having received a standardized training programme, delivered classroom-based sex education sessions to Year 9 students (aged 13/14 years).

Evaluating parent support initiatives: lessons from two case studies.

This study describes the characteristics of clients referred to two UK parent support initiatives - Newpin and Home-Start - and documents key aspects of the referral process and clients' responses to the help provided. Data were collected from referral records on 214 families referred during 1992 to four Newpin centres and 349 families referred between April 1994 and March 1995 to four Home-Start schemes. Families were sent questionnaires.

Smoking in pregnancy: smokescreen or risk factor? Towards a materialist analysis.

This paper considers the topic of women's smoking in pregnancy within the general context of the current health promotion concern about smoking as a public health issue. Drawing on data from an ongoing research project which is investigating the interrelationships between'risk', social support and reproductive health, the paper argues that smoking in pregnancy constitutes an area of women's behaviour which is linked in systematic ways with aspects of their material and social position. Consequently, conventional individualist models of smoking behaviour both fail to explain why pregnant women smoke and are unable adequately to account for the health consequences of this behaviour.