This paper critically examines service user participation and involvement for older adults. It concentrates on research and community-led engagement for older people, and maintains that despite extensive support and expansion, participation offers a complex form of governance and ideological control, as well as a means by which local governments and some welfare professions seek to legitimise or extend their activities. Some of the paradoxes of participation are discussed, including tensions that persist between rhetorical claims of empowerment, active citizenship and democratic engagement, on one hand, despite tendencies towards risk-aversion, welfare retrenchment and participant ambivalence, on the other. The paper also highlights practical problems in relation to participative research and community involvement, and questions arguments that participation may challenge the authority of welfare professionals. Critical theory is drawn upon to contextualise the role of participative narratives within wider welfare, including its role in moving debate away from ownership or redistribution while masking and validating policy-related goals which can counter many older people's needs. Tension is also noted between participation projects represented as resources to support ageing identities as opposed to those representing technologies for social regulation and conformity.

Background: The pervasive tendency to avoid perceived risks has been recently implicated in the maintenance of anxiety pathology, and more specifically, social phobia. Social anxiety symptoms are thus hypothesised to be associated with a global risk-avoidant decision-making bias. Aim: This study investigated: (1) the relationship between risk-avoidance and social anxiety symptoms using both self-report and behavioural measures of risk-taking; and (2) whether risk-avoidance mediates the relationship between a dispositional vulnerability to anxiety (Behavioural Inhibition System [BIS] sensitivity) and social anxiety symptoms. Method: Fifty-five undergraduate students completed self-report measures assessing for social anxiety symptoms, risk-taking across various domains, and BIS sensitivity. Risk-avoidance was also assessed using a behavioural computer task. Results: As hypothesised, risk-avoidance correlated significantly with both social anxiety and BIS. Multiple regression analyses revealed that risk-avoidance served as a partial mediator between BIS and social anxiety. Conclusion: These results confirm the hypothesised relationship between BIS, risk-avoidance, and social anxiety symptoms. Risk-avoidance is one possible mechanism by which personality characteristics may be linked to anxiety pathology.

Although there has been a long interest in the personality traits associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), few studies have examined differences on normal, dimensional personality traits for individuals with OCD compared with other clinical disorders. The purpose of this study was to replicate and extend upon the work of Rector et al. (2002) who found unique associations between OCD and trait domains and facets of the five-factor model of personality (FFM) when compared with a clinical sample of depressed individuals. The current study compared individuals with a current diagnosis of OCD (n=21) with individuals with a current diagnosis of anxiety or depression but no OCD symptoms (n=39) on the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R Form S). Of particular interest was whether individuals with OCD would differ from other clinically anxious/depressed individuals on the actions facet of the FFM, as this facet is known to be related to harm and risk avoidance, and previous research suggests specific relationships between these forms of avoidance and OCD. Individuals with OCD were found to have lower scores on the actions, competence and self-discipline facets. These results add further support to previous research that suggests unique associations between trait domains and facets of the FFM and OCD.