Is access thievery ever justified?: locating the political imperative for disabled lies

Introduction Physical activity (PA) is crucial to physical and mental health in various populations, including individuals with disabilities (IWDs). IWDs are at higher risk being physically inactive, developing non-communicable diseases, and experiencing major negative health consequences due to inactivity than the general population (Martin Ginis et al., 2021). One possibility to be physically active is through voluntary sport groups (VSGs) in sport clubs. However, physically, IWDs are significantly less active (also in VSGs), than the general population (Bickenbach, 2011; Martin Ginis et al., 2021). They seemingly have restricted access to (adaptive) VSGs. This is also the case for individuals who have a spinal cord injury or are dependent on a wheelchair in their daily lives (e.g. due to a chronic illness) (ISCIs), and individuals with mental health challenges or disorders (IMHDs), as they face specific challenges and barriers in accessing and participating in PA programs (Firth et al., 2016; Jaarsma et al., 2014). However, little is known about how those target groups gain access and why or why not they join VSGs. Research so far has looked mainly at what factors influence successful participation in (leisure time) PA for ISCIs (Jaarsma et al., 2014; Williams et al., 2014) and for IMHDs (Epiney et al., 2023; Firth et al., 2016), but not the process of access. To investigate how the access into sport, or VSGs, might happen, we use the concept of sport-related socialization (Burrmann, 2021). The theory addresses influencing factors on an internal reality (intrapersonal level, e.g. motivation, health) and an external reality (interpersonal level, e.g. social support; organizational level, e.g. accessibility and location of VSGs). Thus, the aim of the present study was to investigate how ISCIs and IMHDs gained access to VSGs and which factors are relevant for the access from an active participant’s and a coach’s perspective, aiming to get a greater comprehension of how access to VSGs can be increased. Methods A qualitative approach was chosen to investigate the above-mentioned aim. Participants were recruited via the Swiss Paraplegic association, offering adaptive VSGs for wheelchair users, and PluSport, offering adaptive VSGs for IMHDs in Switzerland. A purposive sampling approach was applied to achieve maximum variation sampling (Smith & Sparkes, 2020). The aim, in line with research in the field and with expert literature, was to recruit at least five participants per subgroup, leading to a final sample of ten athletes (5 ISCIs, 5 IMHDs) and ten coaches (5 of VSGs for ISCIs, 5 of VSGs for IMHDs) (Hennink & Kaiser, 2022; Smith & Sparkes, 2020). The coaches’ point of view was included to have a complementary perspective compared to the athletes to produce comprehensive insights. A semi-structured interview guideline was developed, discussed with experts and tested in a pilot interview (Braun & Clarke, 2022; Smith & Sparkes, 2020). Interviews were conducted during spring 2024 in (Swiss-)German or French. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis with an inductive and deductive approach to be able to identify themes and codes (Braun & Clarke, 2022). Results In the following, a selection of relevant factors that were found are presented. The results showed that people mostly accessed VSGs through other persons. ISCIs mentioned that they often gained access through the rehabilitation clinic, but none of IMHDs or their coaches mentioned that they gained access through a psychiatric clinic, but often through the institution where they lived. Further, more than half of the participants described that they gained, or coaches that they perceived, the access as self-determined and/or voluntary. As influencing factors on an internal reality, motivation for the VSG was frequently named as hindering or enabling, as well as fears and anxieties as an obstacle to gaining access. Body functions, including health, were mentioned by most of the coaches and half of the participants as influencing their access to VSGs. In addition, openness to new things and other people, as well as previous experience with sport and PA were mentioned as facilitators. On the external reality, social support from the environment was mentioned as important. Additionally, the group constellation, i.e. the people in the group, as well as behaviours of other participants were mentioned as influencing factors for access to VSGs. Then, the coach (behaviour before and during the VSG) was named as an enabler by almost all of the coaches and most athletes. At the organizational level, the type of program was mentioned as influential by all coaches and most athletes. Moreover, the location of the VSGs and for some, the costs were relevant to athletes’ gaining access to VSGs. Discussion/Conclusion The present study has provided important insights into how IWDs, especially ISCIs and IMHDs, gain access to VSGs. The results revealed important factors in both, an internal reality (e.g. fears and anxieties, motivation) and an external reality (e.g. social support, availability of VSGs). This study is the first to investigate on the access to VSGs for ISCIs and IMHDs. The findings confirm the literature on PA participation and provide new insights, such as the importance of previous experiences with PA. The results may have important implications for service providers for IWDs, such as rehabilitation clinics, clinicians and voluntary sports clubs. Finally, a large-scale survey is needed to confirm the findings, including inactive athletes. References Bickenbach, J. (2011). The World Report on Disability. Disability & Society, 26(5), 655–658. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2011.589198 Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2021). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. SAGE Publications, Inc. Burrmann, U. (2021). Sportbezogene Sozialisation. In U. Burrmann, E. Emrich, & F. Gassmann (Hrsg.), Sport in Kultur und Gesellschaft. Handbuch Sport und Sportwissenschaft (S. 197–216). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53407-6_15 Epiney, F., Wieber, F., Loosli, D., Znoj, H., & Kiselev, N. (2023). Voluntary sports programs for individuals with mental health disorders: The trainer’s view. PLOS ONE, 18(10), e0290404. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290404 Firth, J., Rosenbaum, S., Stubbs, B., Gorczynski, P., Yung, A. R., & Vancampfort, D. (2016a). Motivating factors and barriers towards exercise in severe mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 46(14), 2869–2881. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291716001732 Hennink, M., & Kaiser, B. N. (2022). Sample sizes for saturation in qualitative research: A systematic review of empirical tests. Social Science & Medicine, 292, 114523. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114523 Jaarsma, E. A., Dijkstra, P. U., Geertzen, J. H. B., & Dekker, R. (2014). Barriers to and facilitators of sports participation for people with physical disabilities: A systematic review. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 24(6), 871–881. https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.12218 Martin Ginis, K. A., Van Der Ploeg, H. P., Foster, C., Lai, B., McBride, C. B., Ng, K., Pratt, M., Shirazipour, C. H., Smith, B., Vásquez, P. M., & Heath, G. W. (2021). Participation of people living with disabilities in physical activity: A global perspective. The Lancet, 398(10298), 443–455. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01164-8 Smith, B., & Sparkes, A. C. (2020). Qualitative research. In G. Tenenbaum & R. C. Eklund (Eds.), Handbook of Sport Psychology (S. 999–1019). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119568124.ch49 Williams, T. L., Smith, B., & Papathomas, A. (2014). The barriers, benefits and facilitators of leisure time physical activity among people with spinal cord injury: A meta-synthesis of qualitative findings. Health Psychology Review, 8(4), 404–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2014.898406

This article surfaces some of the emotional encounters that may be experienced while trying to gain access and secure informants in qualitative research. Using the children’s game of hopscotch as a metaphor, we develop a dynamic, nonlinear process model of gaining access yielding four elements: study formulation with plans to move forward, identifying potential informants, contacting informants, and interacting with informants during data collection. Underlying each element of the process is the potential for researchers to re-strategize their approach or exit the study. Autobiographical stories about gaining access for our PhD dissertation research are used to flesh out each element of the process, including the challenges we experienced with each element and how we addressed them. We conclude by acknowledging limitations to our study and suggest future and continued areas of research.

This article examines the conditions under which non-governmental organisations (NGOs) gain access to defence administrations when campaigning for transparency around the use of military force. We theorise that gaining access in this traditionally secluded domain is a matter of supply and demand. NGOs can gain access through technical and political information, yet not without demand for these resources, dependent on the politicisation of concerns about the use of force. We focus on the activities of Airwars, an international NGO, and its campaign in the Netherlands (2015–20) to foster transparency about civilian casualties caused by Dutch airstrikes. Our analysis shows that their credible information about air strikes led to access to the defence administration and allowed them to effectively advocate for transparency, mediated by the politicisation of the issue through parliamentary and media attention. Our findings contribute both to the literature on NGO advocacy and to the field of civil-military relations.

Human rights analyses, concepts, and in particular rhetoric have played a consistent role in the global response to HIV for over two decades. Despite the longstanding recognition of human rights as essential to an effective response, recent global guidance, particularly with respect to the implementation of antiretroviral treatment (ART) scale-up efforts, falls short of meaningfully incorporating human rights norms and concepts. Applying human rights to ART scale-up draws attention to who is gaining access to ART, how they are gaining access, and over what period of time, not just how many people gain access. Deliberate consideration of the human rights principles of the interdependence of rights (including attention to the legal and policy environment), participation, non-discrimination, accountability, and key aspects of the right to health can help to identify and overcome some of the challenges to increasing and sustaining access to treatment and needed services, as well as to promote accountability and transparency for what is done and how it is done. Whereas a need remains to document evidence of the ways in which a lack of attention to human rights negatively influences the long-term outcomes of scale-up programmes, this paper focuses on the positive role human rights can play in ART scale-up efforts, and offers suggestions for research and action moving forward.

Very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) and chylomicrons (CMs) transport triacylglycerol (TAG) to peripheral tissues. Lipoprotein-TAG may gain access to target cells by lipoprotein lipase (LPL) hydrolysis or via receptor-mediated uptake; the principal routes of entry of VLDL and CM into heart are unknown, and different routes of entry may result in different metabolic fates. To examine this, isolated working rat hearts were perfused with rat VLDL and CMs, dual-labelled with [3H]TAG and [14C]cholesterol. Uptake and utilization of CM-TAG were significantly greater than VLDL-TAG, but both were decreased significantly (more than halved) by tetrahydrolipstatin (THL, an inhibitor of lipoprotein lipase). By contrast, uptake of VLDL-cholesterol was much higher than CM-cholesterol (P < 0.01), and suramin (a lipoprotein receptor antagonist) decreased cholesterol uptake of both forms. CM-TAG oxidation rate was more than 4-fold higher than VLDL-TAG oxidation. However, suramin decreased TAG oxidation from both VLDL and CM without affecting TAG uptake or total utilization, suggesting that the TAG gaining access through receptor-mediated pathways is preferentially 'channelled' towards oxidation. Most (79%) CM-TAG was oxidized whilst the proportion of VLDL-TAG oxidized was only about half (49%). In the presence of suramin, there was a significant increase in esterification (incorporation of assimilated [3H]TAG into myocardial tissue [3H]lipids, mainly TAG) of assimilated TAG from both VLDL and CMs, again suggesting that receptor-mediated TAG uptake is directed towards oxidation rather than esterification. The importance of this relatively small pool of TAG is indicated by the fact that cardiac mechanical function declined markedly when lipoprotein receptors were inhibited. These results suggest that CMs, most fatty acids of which gain access into cardiomyocytes through LPL-mediated hydrolysis, are the major supplier of TAG for hearts to oxidize; however, the metabolic fate of VLDL was split evenly between oxidation and deposition as myocardial tissue lipid. Most importantly, VLDL may play a regulatory role in heart lipid metabolism through a lipoprotein receptor-mediated mechanism.

How do newcomers gain access to learning opportunities when they are denied opportunities to practice? Changes in the nature of work, such as labour outsourcing and technological advancements, have created challenges for newcomers to learn. They may be more easily relegated to low-level repetitive tasks, such as scutwork. In these situations, newcomers’ ambiguous position as learners can limit access to participation in practices needed to progress their learning trajectories. Using field-study data, we explore the situated learning of merchant-navy cadets. We show that, when newcomers are not permitted access to participation, the structural arrangements of practice – temporal structures, spatial territories and hierarchical arrangements – hinder learning opportunities. We show, further, that some newcomers leverage these same structural arrangements surreptitiously as resources to access participation, which we conceptualise as stealth work . Consequently, we unveil the soft forms of power at play in crafting access to learning trajectories, making three contributions. First, we show how structural arrangements of a practice can be leveraged to enable learning. Second, we show that gaining access stealthily, requires both normative and counter-normative performances. Third, we show the importance of access in crafting learning trajectories and unpack how such access is navigated by newcomers.

This chapter analyzes the ways that LGBTQ individuals gain access and acknowledgment, such as being included as festival royalty, being recognized by festival organizations, and being included in museum exhibits. For LGBTQ festival participants, gaining access and acknowledgment was a way of recognizing their moral equality. To follow the same standards, to be treated the same, was part of this moral equality. This push for access and acknowledgment is deeply about fitting into cultural traditions and feeling belonging or out of place in the city. It is argued that in more traditionalistic festivals, LGBTQ people are expected to remain in the glass closet to participate in social elite events. The Catholicism of the Fiesta de Santa Fe in New Mexico, for example, pressured LGBTQ participants to participate in heteronormativity.

The European Commission's outreach to interest groups implies that they function as ‘transmission belts’ that aggregate and articulate interests as policy‐relevant information for policy‐makers. Operating as a transmission belt, however, requires an organizational design fit for this purpose. We offer one of the first systematic analyses of how organizational design affects interest group access to public officials. We draw from a novel dataset of 248 EU‐level interest groups including data on several dimensions of organizational design. One of our key findings is that qualified majority and consensus‐facilitating decision‐making procedures help interest groups gain access to administrative and political officials, whereas functional differentiation is important to get access to administrative officials, but not to political officials. Our findings thus demonstrate the relevance of organizational design in gaining access as well as the need to incorporate varying informational demands of public officials to properly explain interest group access to public decision‐making.

This article reflects on the effect of gatekeepers, guides and ghosts on gaining access to research participants and field sites. Using a critically reflective approach, we examine our role as researchers and the roles of intermediaries in the process to access schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings show how gaining access is a non-linear process that is influenced by the agency of researchers and intermediaries at different contextual levels. Our analysis probes past research on gatekeepers, develops the emerging research on the role of guides and advances current understandings by introducing the concept of ghosts. Given the lack of detailed, contextualised accounts on how researchers gain access to schools during or after a crisis, our experiences add to current understandings by providing an ‘on the ground’ account on how research can be stymied or end with mixed results when it is viewed as a difficult undertaking.

Current scholarship often concludes that technical expertise is one of the most important commodities for interest groups wishing to gain access to political‐administrative venues. Less attention has been given to politicization and the scope of societal support that interest groups bring to bear. Specifically, I hypothesize that the capacity of interest groups to supply broad societal support is decisive for gaining access in highly politicized policy domains. To test this expectation, the article combines a mapping of interest group membership in 616 Belgian advisory councils with survey data from more than 400 organized interests. The empirical analyses demonstrate that interest groups with broad support are more likely to gain access to advisory councils in highly politicized policy domains, but this effect is negatively moderated when interest groups involve their constituencies intensely in advocacy processes.

How and to what extent do different citizens experience democratic governance on a day-to-day basis? What agencies do they utilize in order to have their voices heard and grievances addressed? How do they gain access to government agencies responsible for delivering social welfare services, such as education, security, health care, and poverty relief? Investigations conducted in two states of India inquired about the manner in which different social groups living in rural areas gain access to the welfare services of the Indian state. These results show that an intermediary is required for gaining access. Different types of intermediaries are consulted by separate segments of society. For a large majority of poorer individuals, a newly arisen type of mediator, the naya neta (literally, new leader), is the intermediary of choice. Neither usually low status nor high status, but younger and better educated than other types of village leaders, naya netas play important roles in shaping welfare consequences in these villages of Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, most importantly, by affecting equity of access.

Gaining access in fieldwork is crucial to the success of research, and may often be problematic because it involves working in complex social situations. This article examines the intricacies of access, conceptualizing it as a fluid, temporal, and political process that requires sensitivity to social issues and to potential ethical choices faced by both researchers and organization members. Our contribution lies in offering ways in which researchers can reflexively negotiate the challenges of access by (a) underscoring the complex and relational nature of access by conceptualizing three relational perspectives—instrumental, transactional, and relational—proposing the latter as a strategy for developing a diplomatic sensitivity to the politics of access; (b) explicating the political, ethical, and emergent nature of access by framing it as an ongoing process of immersion, backstage dramas, and deception; and (c) offering a number of relational micropractices to help researchers negotiate the complexities of access. We illustrate the challenges of gaining and maintaining access through examples from the literature and from Rafael’s attempts to gain access to carry out fieldwork in a police force.

Firewalls are well known for their task of securing the enterprise intranet from untrusted users attempting to gain access. The concept of firewalls got its start when routers began to be used to balance network load. The effort to balance network traffic load at the transport level was extended to the server operating system where application proxy service and application level filtering is provided. Firewalls allow selected communications data to pass from one side of the corporate network perimeter to the other side. Since the firewall is the primary entry point to a corporate LAN from the Internet, the firewall frequently comes under attack by hackers and crackers. One form of attack is "denial-of-service". "Denial-of-service" attacks are easier to detect than are attacks that allow the attacker through the firewall on a valid password that they obtained by performing social engineering. Spamming the corporate email system is one form of "denial-of-service" attack, while many other forms simply flood the firewall with useless packets to prevent other authorized users from gaining access through the firewall. The paper presents a plan to place firewalls outside the corporate network boundaries, into the Internet. By having firewalls out in the Internet acting as agents for the corporations we expect to see attackers stopped closer to their source gateway. This changes the firewall task from a defensive mode to an offensive one. By having firewalls working together to seek out and locate or block the attacker at the source gateway, we gain several benefits. The paper proposes that the gateway protocol be modified to include this filtering function.

This paper examines what is arguably the most important issue in qualitative research – access to willing participants – specifically in the context of companies. This is of considerable importance in vocational education and training (VET) as workplaces are the site of much VET activity. While research textbooks discuss many issues in research, few address this topic explicitly or in depth. From those textbooks aimed at undergraduate students (e.g., Polonksy and Waller, 2005) to the more scholarly books such as the ‘ Sage Handbook of Organisational Research Methods’ (Buchanan & Bryman, eds., 2009) there is scarcely a mention of the problem of gaining access to organisations. Yet access is the major hurdle for most researchers, particularly when researching in companies. Attempting to gain access is a lengthy and sometimes dispiriting activity with outcomes that are often satisficing rather than optimal. The paper, based on Australian researchers’ experiences, reports on the difficulties of gaining access to suitable sites, and the ways in which access were gained, and reflects on the outcomes of the access process. This is undertaken partly through the author ’s self-reflection on her own experiences in carrying out three VET research projects during 2010, requiring access in total to 13 case study sites and 20 phone interview participants, and partly through email interviews with other VET researchers who have researched within companies during three recent years.

BackgroundNumerous studies suggest that health literacy (HL) plays a crucial role in maintaining and improving individual health. Furthermore, empirical findings highlight the relation between levels of a person’s HL and clinical outcomes. So far, there are no reviews, which investigate HL in individuals at-risk for psychosis. The aim of the current review is to assess how individuals at risk of developing a first episode of psychosis gain access to, understand, evaluate and apply risk-related health information.MethodsA mixed-methods approach was used to analyze and synthesize a variety of study types including qualitative and quantitative studies. Search strategy, screening and data selection have been carried out according to the PRISMA criteria. The systematic search was applied on peer-reviewed literature in PUBMED, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO and Web of Science. Studies were included if participants met clinical high risk criteria (CHR), including the basic symptom criterion (BS) and the ultra-high risk (UHR) criteria. The UHR criteria comprise the attenuated psychotic symptom criterion (APS), the brief limited psychotic symptom criterion (BLIPS) and the genetic risk and functional decline criterion (GRDP) Furthermore, studies must have used validated HL measures or any operationalization of the HL’s subdimensions (access, understanding, appraisal, decision-making or action) as a primary outcome. A third inclusion criterion comprised that the concept of HL or one of the four dimensions was mentioned in title or abstract. Data extraction and synthesis was implemented according to existing recommendations for appraising evidence from different study types. The quality of the included studies was evaluated and related to the study results.ResultsThe search string returned 10587 papers. After data extraction 15 quantitative as well as 4 qualitative studies and 3 reviews were included. The Quality assessment evaluated 12 publications as “good”, 9 as “fair” and one paper as “poor”. Only one of the studies assessed HL with as primary outcome. In the other studies, the five different subdimensions of HL were investigated as a secondary outcome respectively mentioned in the paper. “Gaining Access” was examined in 18 of the 22 studies. “Understanding” has been assessed in 7 publications. “Appraise” was examined in 9 studies. “Apply decision making” and “Apply health behavior” were investigated in 1 of 8 studies. Since none of the included publications operationalized neither HL nor the subdimensions of HL with a validated measure, no explicit influencing factors could be found.DiscussionQuantitative and qualitative evidence indicates that subjects at-risk for psychosis describe a lack of understanding about their state and fear stigmatization that might lead to dysfunctional coping strategies, such as ignoring and hiding symptoms. Affected subjects are eager to be informed about their condition and describe favoured channels for obtaining information. The internet, family members, school personnel and GP’s play a crucial role in gain access to, understand, evaluate and apply risk-related health information. The results clearly highlight that more research should be dedicated to HL in individuals at risk of developing a psychosis. Further studies should explore the relation between HL and clinical outcomes in this target population by assessing the underlining constructs with validated tools.