RSS 1.0Social Sciences, Geography, Policing and Law
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The effect of a brief intervention video on gambling advertising resistance: Results of a randomized, on‐line experimental studyBACKGROUND AND AIMS: Gambling advertising is nowadays prevalent in multiple jurisdictions and can take multiple forms, such as TV adverts and social media promotions. However, few independently designed interventions for gambling advertising have been empirically tested. We aimed to measure the effectiveness of an inoculative intervention video for gambling advertising, which was developed based on previous interventions for alcohol and tobacco, and which used input from academics and experts by experience. DESIGN: Between‐participants randomised online experiment. Setting: UK. Participants: UK‐based gamblers aged 18–29 years (n = 1200) were recruited via Prolific. INTERVENTION: Participants either saw a novel inoculative intervention video (7.2 mins) aimed at increasing resistance against gambling advertising strategies (n = 595) or a neutral control video (7.2 mins) on healthy eating (n = 605). MEASUREMENTS: Participants completed pre‐ and post‐test measures of gambling advertising scepticism and persuasion knowledge immediately before and after video exposure. They also answered the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) and reported their past‐month engagement with gambling promotional offers. A random subset of participants (n = 797) recompleted these measures at one‐month follow‐up. FINDINGS: The intervention group's post‐test scores were statistically significantly higher than control for scepticism [estimated marginal means (EMM) = 40.32 vs. EMM = 34.72; P < 0.001, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 4.90–6.29, ηp2 = 0.17] and persuasion knowledge (EMM = 20.77 vs. EMM = 16.71; P < 0.001, 95%CI = 3.61–4.50, ηp2 = 0.21). One‐month follow‐up scores also remained statistically significantly higher in the intervention group compared with control for both scepticism (EMM = 38.26 vs. EMM = 34.73; P < 0.001, 95%CI = 2.70–4.36, ηp2 = 0.08) and persuasion knowledge (EMM = 18.63 vs. EMM = 17.21; P < 0.001, 95%CI = 0.88–1.95, ηp2 = 0.03). Within the intervention group, 21% of participants had stopped engaging with gambling promotional offers at one‐month follow‐up, reflective of a statistically significant reduction compared with control (EMM = 0.48 vs. EMM = 0.87; P < 0.001, 95%CI = −0.53 to −0.26, ηp2 = 0.04). Overall, the control group showed no statistically significant changes in any of their scores throughout the study period. CONCLUSIONS: An inoculative intervention video appears to increase young gamblers' resistance to gambling advertising and reduce their self‐reported engagement with promotional offers.
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‘Marked Out’: An exploration of the role of stigma in the marginalisation and racialisation of young peopleStigma and the labelling process have been conceptualised and debated for decades (Link & Phelan, 1999). Stigma was first examined by Goffman (1963), whose work was valuable in explaining and drawing attention to stigmatisation and individual strategies of stigma management. This thesis moves beyond this individualising definition to consider stigma as a mechanism of power, examining the role of stigmatisers in conveying and (re)producing labels and stereotypes (Link & Phelan, 2001) through exploring the potential influences of institutional structures on stigmatisation. Through an examination of the lived realities of young people, this thesis seeks to understand the role and reproduction of stigma in their lives, tied to the determining contexts of race, gender and class, and created within constructs of power. This study provides an empirical example of stigma power in the lives of young people living in two Manchester neighbourhoods. Working with 28 young people aged 16-19 in two stigmatised areas of Manchester, this research was grounded in ethnographic principles, serving as a foundation for a participatory-informed research design developed to discover, interpret, and apply knowledge. In addition to conducting over 300 hours of participant observation of the young people’s lives, the research involved the use of participatory-informed, creative methods. In consultation with young people, this was facilitated through various creative approaches, including geographical mapping, creative writing, flashcards, and a blog. Based upon its findings, this thesis will argue that the lives of young people are layered through pre-existing faultlines that can be understood and determined within the structures of society. By revealing the experiences of young people through the institutional structures of public and media narratives, and police and educational encounters, this thesis illustrates how institutionalised narratives may contribute to the (re)production of stigmatised identities. By understanding how the lives of young people can become structured within the determining contexts of society, directly from the individuals to whom this applies, this thesis offers the potential to explore how the lives of some young people are (re)produced through cycles of stigma.
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A multi-study paper on the development and validation of the Value Clarity Questionnaire in adults and adolescentsEngaging in behavior that promotes flourishing is a key outcome sought in several evidence-informed psychotherapies (e.g., “valued action” within Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). However, we cannot deliberately engage in valued action without first having value clarity. Having value clarity means understanding and being aware of the qualities of character we want to embody (i.e., the type of person we aspire to be). To date, there is no distinct process or outcome measure evaluating value clarity. In this multi-study paper, including two cross-sectional studies (Studies 1 and 2) and one, three-wave longitudinal study (Study 3), we describe the development and validation of a novel, unidimensional measure of value clarity (the Value Clarity Questionnaire; VCQ). Study 1 (convenience sample of adults, total N = 506) describes the development of and the empirical refinement of the VCQ through a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Study 2 confirmed the VCQ’s factor structure and internal consistency (a United Kingdom-representative sample, N = 491). Study 3 (a school-aged sample (N1 = 468 boys) revealed that the VCQ showed good internal consistency over time, test-retest stability, and a series of longitudinal measurement invariance tests supported configural, metric, scalar and strict invariance. Across the studies, value clarity was correlated with and predicted multiple aspects of flourishing including engaged living, depression, behavioral activation, assertiveness, productiveness, and energy levels, over and above known predictors. Overall, the results show that the VCQ is a reliable and valid measure that could be an especially useful proximal index of the effectiveness of targeted value clarification interventions.
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Towards Social Justice for Student-Parents: Learning from lived experiences to address social injustice for undergraduate students with parental responsibility in the UKOver the past two decades, students with parental responsibility have been encouraged into university by successive governments’ Widening Participation (WP) and Lifelong Learning agendas but have been consistently let down by a failure on behalf of institutions and policy makers to provide appropriate support for this cohort once they arrive at university. As such, student-parents have been unable to participate in their education on an equal footing with their non-WP peers, and in being expected to adapt to systems and expectations neither designed for nor accommodating of their needs, they have experienced a socially unjust higher education journey. This commentary introduces two research projects which produced original insight into the lived experiences of undergraduate student-parents in the UK and presents nine publications emanating from these projects, with a view to testing the following overriding thesis: ‘A socially just higher education experience for student-parents can be facilitated by gaining a rich insight into their lived experiences and from this, developing mechanisms to respond to their needs.’ The commentary explores the originality of the publications, evaluates their contribution to the literature and to the student-parents’ agenda, and presents two new models to address social injustice for student-parents. The influence, impact, and policy and practice implications of the work presented are considered, and evidence is put forward to demonstrate that the work presented has facilitated, and will continue to facilitate, the journey towards social justice for undergraduate student-parents in the UK and beyond. The commentary concludes with a consideration of my personal and professional journey in undertaking a PhD by Published Works and evaluates the extent to which this doctoral route is a facilitator of social justice for pracademics in a higher education context.
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Student-parents’ experiences of personal and academic support in UK higher education: barriers and challenges to equality of opportunity and policy and practice recommendations to mitigate themThis paper discusses the findings of a study of students with parental responsibility (student-parents) in England and Scotland. Exploring participants’ experiences of pastoral and academic support during their university journey, the study builds on previous small-scale research projects into the needs of student-parents (Todd, 2023a; 2023b) and was undertaken in the wake of both the UK's Universities and Colleges Admissions Service's (UCAS) new question inviting student-parents to self-identify when applying to university and the 2023 introduction of the Office for Students’ (OfS) Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR) for institutions based in England. The study's findings reveal pockets of institutional good practice but also systemic failures in pastoral and academic support for student-parents across the sector, which pose a considerable risk to their retention, progression and success. This paper links these failures to the risk factors identified in the EORR, explores recommendations for practice to minimise these risks, and shares the findings that contributed to the OfS's decision, in January 2024, to include student-parents in the EORR, meaning all providers in England will now be obliged to have regard to this cohort in their Access and Participation planning.
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How can we make HE more accessible for those with criminal convictions?Students with criminal convictions are often left out of higher education widening participation efforts. This resource challenges the narrative and offers strategies to support them
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Some improvements but a long way to go: a national survey of local authorities on the provision of social care for people released from prisonThe provision of social care for people in prison in England has historically been lacking. Seeking to address this, the 2014 Care Act clarified that local authorities are responsible for identifying, assessing and meeting prisoners’ social care needs. Against this background, in 2020 we undertook a survey to explore the emerging services for this group. Eighty-six (57%) local authorities responded. A mixed methods approach was taken. Numerical data were analysed through descriptive statistics with comparisons made to the previous survey. An inductive approach to thematic analysis was used to analyse the free text responses. The findings revealed some improvements since the 2015/16 surveys, including the wider introduction of self-referral systems, the success of peer supporters in identifying people in need of social care and greater multi-disciplinary working. However, other issues remained stubbornly persistent, including a dearth of systematic processes to identify those needing social care on release from prison, a lack of timely information sharing and disputes over the sending and receiving authorities’ responsibilities. There were also particular concerns about the shortage of appropriate accommodation for people leaving prison. Perhaps the most striking finding, however, was how little most authorities knew about this population. Building on discussions in previous papers, we explore three ways in which arrangements could be strengthened for this group: the collection of better data, the wider use of release on temporary licence and the greater employment of technology in planning people’s release.
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The Road to Recovery: A Two-Year Longitudinal Analysis of Mental Health Among University Students During and After the Covid-19 PandemicLongitudinal research into the impact of Covid-19 on university student mental health beyond the pandemic is lacking. This study aims to address the gap in the literature by tracking the mental health of university students over a two-year period, spanning the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath. A two-year longitudinal study surveyed a sample of university students (n=302) three times between May 2020 and May 2022. Students’ psychological distress, generalised anxiety, flourishing, and personal wellbeing were assessed at each time point. It was found that students’ psychological distress levels spiked in May 2021 (T1) during the first year of the pandemic, but reverted back to similar levels seen in May 2020 (T0) at two-year follow-up (T2). While generalised anxiety gradually improved, both their psychological distress and generalised anxiety remained considerably worse than pre-pandemic norms obtained in other studies. Students’ flourishing scores remained very low, while their life satisfaction and state happiness improved slightly between May 2021 (T1) and May 2022 (T2). These findings clearly demonstrate that students’ mental health is still in crisis, even after the Covid-19 pandemic. More needs to be done to support students beyond the pandemic generally, including this particularly unique cohort of students who endured unprecedented challenges for prolonged periods, and are now transitioning into the working world. Practical implications and recommendations are discussed.
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Why are organisational approvals needed for low-risk staff studies in the UK? Procedures, barriers, and burdensBackground: Health care staff should be given the opportunity to participate in research, but recruiting clinicians via their employing organisation is not always straightforward or quick in the UK. Unlike many countries outside the UK, very low-risk survey, interview or focus group studies can be subject to some of the same governance approval procedures as interventional studies. An exemplar study carried out by the NIHR funded Palliative Care Research Partnership North West Coast is used to highlight the challenges still faced by researchers and health care organisations when setting up a low-risk staff study across multiple NHS and non-NHS sites. Methods: A study database was created and information was collected on the first point of contact with the clinical site, Health Research Authority (HRA) and local organisational approval times, time from trust or hospice agreement to the first survey participant recruited and overall site survey recruitment numbers. Descriptive statistics (median, range) were used to analyse these data. Results: Across participating NHS trusts, it took a median of 147.5 days (range 99–195) from initial contact with the local collaborator to recruitment of the first survey participant and hospice sites mirrored these lengthy timescales (median 142 days, range 110–202). The lengthiest delays in the HRA approval process were the period between asking NHS trusts to assess whether they had capacity and capability to support the research and them granting local agreement. Local approval times varied between trusts and settings which may indicate organisations are applying national complex guidance differently. Conclusions: There is the potential for HRA processes to use more NHS resources than the research study itself when recruiting to a low-risk staff study across multiple organisations. There is a need to reduce unnecessary administrative burden and bureaucracy to give clinicians and research staff more opportunities to participate in research, and to free up NHS R&D departments, research nurses and clinicians to focus on more demanding and patient focused research studies. Hospices need standardised guidance on how to assess the risk of being involved in low-risk research without adopting the unnecessarily complex systems that are currently used within the NHS.
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A guide to supporting student parents at university: part threeIn the final piece in her series, Andy Todd explores ways personal tutors can help their tutees transition into university smoothly
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A guide to supporting student parents at university: part twoThe second in a three-part series provides detailed, practical guidance on how student parents can be supported to succeed at UK universities
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A guide to supporting student parents at university: part oneThe first in a three-part series provides an overview on how student parents can be supported to succeed at UK universities
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Factors associated with the length of inpatient stay of individuals with intellectual disability and autistic individuals across north of EnglandAccording to NHS statistics, as of July 2023 there were around 2045 people with intellectual disability and autistic people in mental health and specialist hospitals. Details of their inpatient stay were captured through Assuring Transformation data returns (NHS Digital 2023) and includes data on all types of mental health hospitals. This study aims to understand the characteristics of people with intellectual disability and of autistic adults who are in inpatient settings across north of England in February 2022. It explores the clinical and demographic factors that might have an impact on the length of their inpatient stay. This is a cross sectional study using routinely collected demographic and clinical data in 2022 of inpatients across the north of England. A total of 625 patients were in an inpatient setting across the north of England at the time of the data collection. The results indicate that the underlying diagnostic category, region, nature of inpatient service, legal framework, reason for admission and outcome of Care (Education) and Treatment Reviews are factors that are associated with the person’s length of stay in a hospital. This study highlighted the need review our community models of care to meet needs of those with intellectual disability. It further highlighted the need to collect and analyse longitudinal data, address social care needs, and further understand the factors linked to regional variations. This is a first study that investigated the factors associated with length of stay using inpatient data from across the north of England. It provides new insights into the factors that affect length of stay.
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Ungendered Flesh: Racial grammars in Western engagements with sexual violence in the DRCThis article centres Hortense Spillers’ vocabulary of ‘flesh’, ‘ungendering’ and ‘pornotroping’ in order to analyse the racial grammars and continuing coloniality that informs western engagements with sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Contextualising international interventions within a longer colonial history of gendered, sexualised and racialised violence, this article traces the modern industry that has developed around survivors of sexual violence, voyeuristic representations of violated bodies and strategies to elicit western audiences’ empathy through restaging scenes of violence as occurring to white bodies. It argues that such interventions risk reinforcing aspects of the colonial ungendering of black women through reproducing them as objects in global political economies and visual regimes of violence and through rendering their suffering as visible and intelligible only in relation to white liberal humanism. In doing so, it makes the case for further engagement with Spillers’ work in critical and feminist International Relations.
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Measuring, Predicting, and Influencing Self-Authenticity in Sexual Minority and Heterosexual PopulationsThe aim of this thesis to consider how to measure, predict, and influence self-authenticity in sexual minority and heterosexual populations. Self-authenticity (defined as knowing and being oneself) is a highly relevant psychological construct, particularly as it has been associated with numerous psychological outcomes. Furthermore, preliminary research suggests that self-authenticity is related to the construct of valued living, and as valued living can be increased using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy techniques, it is hypothetical that engaging in valued action will result in an increase in self-authenticity, as well as an increase in psychological outcomes. This may be particularly helpful to sexual minority individuals. Current measures of self-authenticity demonstrate some issues with regards to initial validation and factor structure, and so a novel measure of self-authenticity was developed – The Self-Authenticity Measure. This was included in numerous mediation models which demonstrated that encouraging self-authenticity could play a small role in buffering against the negative effects of experienced discrimination and internalised homonegativity on psychological outcomes for sexual minority individuals. Self-authenticity was also included in two regression models to assess potential predictors of self-authenticity, revealing that valued action, self-efficacy, social conformity, and fear of negative evaluation were the biggest predictors. As the strongest predictor, and one that has continually demonstrated its ability to result in positive psychological change in intervention research, three tasks encouraging valued action were developed and tested for acceptability. Following this, the tasks were used in an experiment alongside a mindfulness active control condition. The study found a significant effect of time for valued living, self-authenticity, and psychological outcomes, indicating that these may have improved following engagement with the interventions, however this may have been due to a placebo. Conversely, the study did not find significant effects of condition or time by condition interaction effect, indicating that the values condition was no greater at influencing valued living, self-authenticity, and psychological outcomes when compared to the mindfulness condition. However, the design and analysis of the experiment can rule out placebo and expectation effects, adding credibility to these findings.
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Suicide Risk Isn't BinaryCounsellors and psychotherapists who work in private practice have much to offer clients who present at risk of suicide. They are not defined by organisational policies and process they might have had little input into and can, therefore, shape their practice within broader ethical and legal parameters. Such work does not come without additional professional considerations however, and this article aims to outline key aspects for good practice in a private practice context with clients at risk.
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Measuring the Social Impact of Mental Health Interventions for Low-Income FamiliesCharitable sector services play an important role in providing mental health support to those who struggle to access professional help from the public or private sector. Platform for Life is a charity that offers free of charge counselling services to low-income families struggling with poor mental health. The demand for the charity’s service continues to grow but securing funding to meet this demand is challenging. Funders want tangible evidence to prove their money is making a substantial impact in the community. This research project aims to evidence the social impact of the services provided by Platform for Life.
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Navigating the Research Process as Newbies: Personal ReflectionsAs part of the Division’s Research Seminar Series, Dr Emma Price and Dr Wayne Campbell are presenting on their personal reflections for navigating the research process as early career researchers. The presentation will reflect on their personal anxieties for beginning their research career, the pressures to publish in academia and the emotional impact of navigating the processes and systems involved in research and publishing.
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Building a Community of Inquiry for Pluralistic PracticePluralism offers a means of recognising the value of multiple voices and perspectives and has emerged as an increasingly significant guiding framework for making sense of the complexity and diversity of contemporary social life. Pluralistic Practice is an open access journal created with the intention of supporting the development of a global community of inquiry within which practitioners, communities, and citizens can share knowledge, experience, and evidence around the challenges and benefits of working pluralistically to facilitate individual and collective well-being, solidarity, and justice. The present article offers an introduction to how the journal will operate and what it hopes to achieve and extends an invitation to be part of this endeavour.
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Five Top Tips for Supporting Flexible Working in the Legal SectorWomen in Law Pledge signatories met at a recent round table to discuss flexible working and how it can be used to promote the progression and retention of women in the legal sector. Our Women Solicitors Network committee co-chairs Chantal Davies and Liz Turner explore the findings of the discussion and set out five top tips to support you with your approach to flexible working.
