Seeking online telemedicine abortion outside the jurisdiction from Ireland following implementation of telemedicine provision locally.

BACKGROUND: Abortion was legalised in Ireland in 2019 and telemedicine provision introduced in April 2020. We examined patterns in and reasons for seeking and receiving online telemedicine abortion outside the jurisdiction following legalisation and introduction of telemedicine abortion. METHODS: Quantitative analysis compared frequency of contact, completed requests, service user characteristics and reasons for contacting Women on Web (WoW). Statistical analyses assessed if COVID-19 restrictions and the implementation of telemedicine abortion locally impacted on WoW contact patterns. Thematic analysis of email correspondence analysed reasons for seeking online telemedicine abortion. RESULTS: There were 764 requests from Ireland to WoW in 2019-2020, with 225 (29.5%) completed. Requests declined by 90 (21%) between 2019 and 2020, and proportion of completed requests declined by 11.3% (n=70). During COVID-19 restrictions, the proportion of completed requests decreased even more (25%, n=24). Legal restrictions and cost declined as reasons for seeking online telemedicine and childcare, work/study commitments and being with partner/friend increased. During COVID-19 an abusive partner increased as the cited reason. Barriers cited in email correspondence included lack of proximate provider, not qualifying due to legal status and difficulty participating in consultations due to an abusive partner. CONCLUSIONS: Online telemedicine abortion seeking from WoW outside the jurisdiction reduced in the second year of legalisation. Local introduction of telemedicine abortion addressed reasons cited for seeking online telemedicine, other than abusive partner. Increasing awareness of abortion provision, particularly access pathways, free cost and confidentiality, promoting normalisation and retaining local telemedicine can reduce reliance on online telemedicine. Extending the format of local telemedicine abortion to include text-based contact could alleviate how an abusive partner impedes access.

Early abortion care during the COVID-19 public health emergency in Ireland: Implications for law, policy, and service delivery.

Early abortion care became available in Ireland in January 2019. Service delivery involves two consultations with a medical practitioner, separated by a mandatory 3-day waiting period. The Model of Care for termination of pregnancy initially required in-person visits. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated significant reductions in in-person interactions in healthcare. A revised Model of Care for termination of pregnancy, issued for the duration of the pandemic, permits delivery of early abortion care by remote consultation. Significantly, this was introduced without amending the 2018 abortion law. The pandemic precipitated a rapid development in the delivery of abortion care that was not anticipated at the time of abortion law reform only 18 months earlier. We outline the work undertaken to maintain access to abortion care in early pregnancy through the lens of a single community-level provider and explore what these developments may mean for abortion law, policy, and service delivery.

Accessing abortion outside jurisdiction following legalisation of abortion in the Republic of Ireland.

BACKGROUND: After having one of the most restrictive abortion laws worldwide, Ireland legalised abortion in January 2019. We examine how legalisation impacted on demand for online telemedicine outside the jurisdiction. METHODS: We analysed anonymised data from 534 people from Ireland seeking online telemedicine abortion prior to legalisation (January-March and October-December 2018) and in the first 3 months following legalisation (January-March 2019). Numbers, characteristics and reasons for seeking the service before and after legalisation were compared. Content analysis of emails from people seeking the service following legalisation explored reasons for seeking care. RESULTS: Half as many people contacted Women on Web in the 3 months immediately after legalisation as compared with contacts 12 months prior (103 vs 221). Of these, the proportion receiving the service reduced, from 72% prior to legalisation to 26% after legalisation (p≤0.001). After legalisation, access related reasons for seeking online telemedicine featured less while reasons relating to privacy, stigma and avoiding protestors featured more. CONCLUSIONS: People continued to seek abortion through online telemedicine after legalisation, though the number of contacts reduced by half and the proportion receiving the service decreased considerably. To address access issues, policy measures should promote normalisation of abortion, legislate for safe zones around providers, and consider access in situations of coercive control or abuse including the role of telemedicine in the local model of care. Abortion provided through online telemedicine continues to be an important part of providing safe, accessible abortion even after legalisation.

"Doing" Intergenerational Friendship: Challenging the Dominance of Age Homophily in Friendship.

This article challenges the dominance of age homophily in the literature on friendship. Using findings from a recent study on intergenerational friendship, we put forward a new conceptualization of a homophily of doing-and-being in friendships between adults who are of different generations. This research took a qualitative approach using constructivist grounded theory methodology. Homophily of doing-and-being has three components: being "friends in action" (pursuing interests and leisure activities, or simply spending time together), being "not only old" (sharing identities beyond age), and sharing attitudes and approaches to friendship and life. Additionally, "differences" were an important element of interest between the intergenerational friends. Our discovery of the centrality of doing-and-being, and the relative insignificance of age homophily, constitute a novel way of looking at friendship, and a new way of conceptualizing how and why (older) adults make and maintain friendships.

Confused About Theoretical Sampling? Engaging Theoretical Sampling in Diverse Grounded Theory Studies.

Theoretical sampling is a key procedure for theory building in the grounded theory method. Confusion about how to employ theoretical sampling in grounded theory can exist among researchers who use or who want to use the grounded theory method. We illustrate how we employed theoretical sampling in diverse grounded theory studies and answer key questions about theoretical sampling in grounded theory. We show how theoretical sampling functions in grounded theory and how it differs from sampling for data generation alone. We demonstrate how induction, retroduction, and abduction operate in grounded theory and how memoing drives theoretical sampling in the pursuit of theory. We explicate how theoretical sampling can contextualize data to build concepts and theory. Finally, we show how theoretical sampling in grounded theory operates in secondary analysis to derive theory that goes beyond the original purpose of data collection.

Escaping 'the old fogey': Doing old age through intergenerational friendship.

BACKGROUND: Intergenerational friendship is a friendship which occurs between differing generations of older and younger adults. Intergenerational friendship as a research topic has received little attention from sociologists of ageing, despite the cultural turn. This study set out to explore and understand intergenerational friendships from the perspective of the older friend. METHOD: This research took a qualitative approach using Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology. Twenty-three people aged 65 and over were interviewed in Ireland to attain rich narrative accounts and observational memos were generated. FINDINGS: Intergenerational friendship formed part of the process that shaped the older friends' approach to ageing in their everyday lives (micro level), being influenced by stereotyping and commonly held understandings of ageing and older people in contemporary society (macro level). Engaging with intergenerational friends was congruent with the meaning these participants attached to 'being old' or 'being young' and how adults 'should' be in older and in younger age. DISCUSSION: For the older adults in this study, ageing is about performance - how they perform as older adults in their pursuits or interests - and not about chronological age. Intergenerational friendship is an integral part of this strategy for doing ageing in a meaningful yet mundane (everyday, taken for granted), way.

Beyond Mannheim: Conceptualising how people 'talk' and 'do' generations in contemporary society.

In the 1920s, Karl Mannheim developed the concept of generation in a treatise entitled 'The Problem of Generations' (1952/1928). His conceptualisation pertained to what Pilcher (1994) calls 'social generations', that is, cohort members who have similar attitudes, worldview and beliefs grounded in their shared context and experiences accumulated over time. It is often argued that social generation has been hollowed out as a sociological concept, yet it continues to feature prominently in policy debates, media, academic literature and everyday talk. This article develops a grounded conceptual framework of how the notion of 'generation' is employed by 'ordinary people'. We induct the meaning of 'generation' from how people use the term and the meaning they attribute to it. We contribute to the current scholarship engaging with Mannheim to explore how people's portrayals of their 'performance' of generation can help to develop further the concept of social generation. We draw on qualitative primary data collected in the Changing Generations project, a Grounded Theory study of intergenerational relations in Ireland. Far from outdated or redundant, generation emerges as a still-relevant concept that reflects perceptions of how material resources, period effects and the welfare state context shape lives in contemporary societies. Generation is a conceptual device used to 'perform' several tasks: to apportion blame, to express pity, concern and solidarity, to highlight unfairness and inequity, and to depict differential degrees of agency. Because the concept performs such a wide range of important communicative and symbolic functions, sociologists should approach generations (as discursive formations) as a concept and practice that calls for deeper understanding, not least because powerful political actors have been quicker than sociologists to recognise the potential of the concept to generate new societal cleavages.

Concentration and chemical-state profiles at heterogeneous interfaces with sub-nm accuracy from standing-wave ambient-pressure photoemission.

Heterogeneous processes at solid/gas, liquid/gas and solid/liquid interfaces are ubiquitous in modern devices and technologies but often difficult to study quantitatively. Full characterization requires measuring the depth profiles of chemical composition and state with enhanced sensitivity to narrow interfacial regions of a few to several nm in extent over those originating from the bulk phases on either side of the interface. We show for a model system of NaOH and CsOH in an ~1-nm thick hydrated layer on α-Fe2O3 (haematite) that combining ambient-pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and standing-wave photoemission spectroscopy provides the spatial arrangement of the bulk and interface chemical species, as well as local potential energy variations, along the direction perpendicular to the interface with sub-nm accuracy. Standing-wave ambient-pressure photoemission spectroscopy is thus a very promising technique for measuring such important interfaces, with relevance to energy research, heterogeneous catalysis, electrochemistry, and atmospheric and environmental science.

Strong interlayer coupling in van der Waals heterostructures built from single-layer chalcogenides.

Semiconductor heterostructures are the fundamental platform for many important device applications such as lasers, light-emitting diodes, solar cells, and high-electron-mobility transistors. Analogous to traditional heterostructures, layered transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures can be designed and built by assembling individual single layers into functional multilayer structures, but in principle with atomically sharp interfaces, no interdiffusion of atoms, digitally controlled layered components, and no lattice parameter constraints. Nonetheless, the optoelectronic behavior of this new type of van der Waals (vdW) semiconductor heterostructure is unknown at the single-layer limit. Specifically, it is experimentally unknown whether the optical transitions will be spatially direct or indirect in such hetero-bilayers. Here, we investigate artificial semiconductor heterostructures built from single-layer WSe2 and MoS2. We observe a large Stokes-like shift of ∼ 100 meV between the photoluminescence peak and the lowest absorption peak that is consistent with a type II band alignment having spatially direct absorption but spatially indirect emission. Notably, the photoluminescence intensity of this spatially indirect transition is strong, suggesting strong interlayer coupling of charge carriers. This coupling at the hetero-interface can be readily tuned by inserting dielectric layers into the vdW gap, consisting of hexagonal BN. Consequently, the generic nature of this interlayer coupling provides a new degree of freedom in band engineering and is expected to yield a new family of semiconductor heterostructures having tunable optoelectronic properties with customized composite layers.

Family, state, class and solidarity: re-conceptualising intergenerational solidarity through the grounded theory approach.

The relationship between class and intergenerational solidarities in the public and private spheres calls for further conceptual and theoretical development. This article discusses the findings from the first wave of a qualitative longitudinal study entitled Changing Generations, conducted in Ireland in 2011-2012, comprising 100 in-depth interviews with men and women across the age and socioeconomic spectrums. Constructivist grounded theory analysis of the data gives rise to the following postulates: (1) intergenerational solidarity at the family level is strongly contoured by socioeconomic status (SES); (2) intergenerational solidarity evolves as family generations observe each others' practices and adjust their expectations accordingly; (3) intergenerational solidarity within families is also shaped by the public sphere (the welfare state) that generates varying expectations and levels of solidarity regarding State supports for different age groups, again largely dependent on SES; (4) the liberal welfare state context, especially at a time of economic crisis, enhances the significance of intergenerational solidarity within families. We conclude by calling for research that is attuned to age/generation, gender and class, and how these operate across the family and societal levels.