/ Full archive

New PhD Studentship: Cancer & Sexuality

Professor Sam Porter, Dr Sally Lee, Dr Zoe Sheppard and Tracy Glen are the supervisory team supporting Suzanne Sheppard in a new project on cancer and sexuality.  This project is aiming to develop an intervention to support healthcare professionals along with patients and their partners discuss sexual concerns following cancer treatment.  This mixed methods study will take place at Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

The PhD is part funded by Fortuneswell Cancer Trust, Bournemouth University and the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Wessex.

Newsletter No. 1

BU conference presentation on migration and COVID-19 in Nepal

Yesterday Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Shovita Dhakal Adhikari, Dr. Nirmal Aryal and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, all based in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, presented at the tenth Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal & the Himalaya.  Their paper ‘Moral panic and othering practices during Nepal’s COVID-19 Pandemic (A study with returnee migrants and Muslims in Nepal)’ was co-authored by Dr. Sharada Prasad Wasti from the University of Huddersfield and Shreeman Sharma (Department of  Conflict, Peace & Development
Studies, Tribhuvan University, Nepal).  The presentation was partly based on research funded by the British Academy.

 

How the LiveWell Dorset behaviour change service influences older adults’ physical activity behaviour: A generic qualitative study

As part of the Active Ageing Evaluation project, a qualitative study was conducted between March-July 2020 by the Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) that explored how the LiveWell Dorset behaviour change service influences older adults’ physical activity behaviour.

In this study, telephone interviews were carried out with 12 individuals aged 55 to 65 who had accessed the support of the LiveWell Dorset service to increase their physical activity levels, to gain their views and experiences of the service.

Participants highlighted a number of key factors regarding how LiveWell Dorset coaches influenced their physical activity behaviour. These included using a broad range of behaviour change techniques such as goal setting and activity planning, providing opportunities to receive social support, and displaying a kind, non-judgmental and empathetic attitude.

An open access journal article detailing the full results of this study has just been published in Public Health in Practice, which can be found here.

– Andy Powell (Lead investigator, Active Ageing Evaluation project)

Funding Development Briefings – back in September

The RDS Funding Development Briefings have occurred weekly, on a Wednesday at 12 noon since January 2021.

Thank you to those of you who have joined us to discuss the latest funding opportunities, ask questions, and share your research ideas. We will be taking a break over August, with the briefings returning in September.

Over August, we will still update the Major Opportunities pipeline on a weekly basis so you have access to the latest funding opportunities. The pipeline is available on the I Drive here: I:\RDS\Public\Funding Pipeline. The Research Facilitators will still be available over the summer to discuss your research bidding plans, so please do get in touch when required.

Details of the Funding Development Briefings for 2021/22 will be available shortly. Please email RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk to receive the Teams invite for these sessions.

We hope you have a restful summer, and look forward to seeing you in September!

NIHR Bulletin

NIHR News

The legacy of the CLAHRCs 2014-19 – 5 years of NIHR-funded applied health research

 

eBulletins and Newsletters

News from NIHR School for Social Care Research: Research findings, public involvement and webinars

Funding Opportunities

Latest NIHR funding calls

21/61 UK-wide antiviral clinical trial platform in non-hospitalised patients

Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme
21/532 Intensive Interaction for children and young people with profound and multiple learning disabilities
21/534 Surgical management of successfully reduced incarcerated inguinal hernia in children
21/535 Follow-up strategy after radical treatment for prostate cancer
21/536 Sodium bicarbonate in neonatal care
21/537 Neuroendoscopic lavage for preterm babies with post-haemorrhagic ventricular dilatation
21/538 Benefits and harms of reduced dose oral isotretinoin in the management of acne vulgaris
21/539 Benefits and harms of maintenance therapy for refractory acne vulgaris or previous relapses by reduced dose isotretinoin regimens
21/540 Pharmacological treatments for low back pain or sciatica
21/541 Medication support interventions and strategies for people with learning disabilities
21/542 Medication to manage sexual preoccupation in sex offenders

Policy Research Programme
Liaison and diversion services for children and young people
Access assessments for admission to adult medium and low secure services

Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) Programme
Competition 46

Research for Social Care
Research for Social Care dementia call
Research for Social Care call for mental health research in Northern England

 

Your local branch of the NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) should you need help with your application. We advise on all aspects of developing an application and can review application drafts as well as put them to a mock funding panel (run by RDS South West) known as Project Review Committee, which is a fantastic opportunity for researchers to obtain a critical review of a proposed grant application before this is sent to a funding body.

Contact us as early as possible to benefit fully from the advice

Feel free to call us on 01202 961939 or send us an email.

Pilot studies paper reaches 90,000 reads

Today ResearchGate informed Prof. Vanora Hundley and I that our paper in the Nursing Standard of 2002 had reached 90,000 reads.  This short methods paper called ‘The Importance of Pilot Studies’ [1] was one of our earlier attempts, nearly two decades ago, to publish more of our work in practitioners journals.  This approach has been highly successful in terms of reaching a wider audience.  We have written longer, more sophisticated research methods papers on pilot studies over the years, including in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, Social Research Update, and the SAGE encyclopedia on research methods [2-6], but none of these has been read or cited as often as our short paper in the Nursing Standard. 

The term ‘pilot studies’ refers to mini versions of a full-scale study (also called ‘feasibility’ studies), as well as the specific pre-testing of a particular research instrument such as a questionnaire or interview schedule. Pilot studies are a crucial element of good study design. Conducting a pilot study does not guarantee success in the main study, but it does increase the likelihood of success. Pilot studies fulfill a range of important functions and can provide valuable insights for other researchers. There is a need for more discussion among researchers of both the process and outcomes of pilot studies.

 

References:

  1. van Teijlingen E, Hundley, V. (2002) ‘The importance of pilot studies’ Nursing Standard 16(40): 33-36. Web: nursing-standard.co.uk/archives/vol16-40/pdfs/vol16w40p3336.pdf
  2. van Teijlingen E, Rennie, AM., Hundley, V, Graham, W. (2001) The importance of conducting & reporting pilot studies: example of Scottish Births Survey, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 34: 289-95.
  3. van Teijlingen E, Hundley, V. (2001) The importance of pilot studies, Social Research Update Issue 35, (Editor N. Gilbert), Guildford: University of Surrey. Web:  http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/sru/SRU35.html
  4. Hundley, V., van Teijlingen E. (2002) The role of pilot studies in midwifery research RCM Midwives Journal 5(11): 372-74
  5. van Teijlingen E, Hundley, V. (2005) Pilot studies in family planning & reproductive health care, Journal of Family Planning & Reproductive Health Care 31(3): 219-21.
  6. van Teijlingen E, Hundley, V. (2003) Pilot study, In: Encyclopaedia of Social Science Research Methods, Vol. 2, Lewis-Beck, M., Bryman, A. & Liao, T. (eds.), Oregon, Sage: 823-24.

New FHSS nutrition publication

Congratulations to Faculty of Health & Social Sciences’ PhD student Karim Khaled and supervisors Prof. Vanora Hundley and Dr. Fotini Tsofliou on the acceptance of your manuscript ‘Perceived Stress was associated with Poorer Diet Quality among Women of Reproductive Age in the UK’.  This paper will appear in the international journal Nutrients.
All three are associated with our research unit CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health). This paper is supported by BU’s Open Access Fund will be freely available online soon.

Well done!

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

BRIAN will be unavailable due to upgrade – 2nd & 3rd August 2021

BRIAN will be unavailable to users next week on Monday, 2nd August and Tuesday, 3rd August for a scheduled upgrade.

If you need any help using the new system or if you encounter any problems after the upgrade, please do send an email to BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk and a member of staff will be able to assist you.

In the meantime, if you do have general queries relating to the upgrade, please get in touch with BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk

Further information will be available once BRIAN is up and running again following the scheduled upgrade.

New joint publication with  Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust

 

This morning International Journal of Mental Health Nursing informed us that our article  ‘Cultural issues on accessing mental health services in Nepali and Iranian migrants communities in the UK‘ has been published today.   This paper is written by an interdisciplinary team including Hannah Blunt who works at Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust, Dr. Bibha Simkhada who is Senior Lecturer in Nursing at the University of Huddersfield and Dr. Mariam Vahdaninia who works in the Peninsula Medical School at the University of Plymouth.  Both Mariam and Bibha worked with me at Bournemouth University at the time of the study.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)

Producing FAIR research data – Interoperable

Findable Accessible Interoperable Reusable

FAIR guiding principles for data resources (SanguaPundir 2016) CC-BY-SA

FAIR aims to improve the value and impact of research data by ensuring it is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-useable. All data produced by researchers at BU should be FAIR, and many journals and funders have made it a condition for successful submission or grant applications. Over a series of posts I will look at each one and explain what this means for the data you produce. Click here if you want to read the previous posts on Findability and Accessibility. 

Interoperable 

Researchers may well be able to find your data without restrictions (Findable, Accessible), but they may not be able to use your data if it is not available in a useable format. Imagine if valuable data was only available on a floppy disk… Not much use to most of us! 

Data can be opened-up to more people if we make them available in open, interoperable formats. The UK Data Service has a list of recommended formats. Spreadsheets, for example, should be saved as .csv files. This is an open format, so users do not necessarily need a paid for solution like Microsoft Excel to open it.  

 

For more information visit the Library’s Research Data Management guide or email bordar@bournemouth.ac.uk. 

 

Dan Bailyes 

Faculty Librarian (FMC) and LLS lead for Research Data Management (RDM) 

 

References

SanguaPundir.,  2016. FAIR guiding principles for data resources [image]. Wikimedia Commons. Available from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FAIR_data_principles.jpg [Accessed 08 July 2021].

Research impact at BU: protecting sex workers in Brazil; defining standards for crowdsourced systems

A series of posts featuring BU’s impact case studies for REF 2021. (These are edited versions of the final submissions – the full impact case studies will be published online in 2022.)

Improving the lives of sex workers in Brazil

Research area/s: Physical culture, mediated spectacles

Staff conducting research: Professor Michael Silk, Dr Amanda De Lisio

Background: Media speculation often points to heightened demand for sexual services around sporting mega events (SMEs), such as the Olympics. These reports tend to be used to justify policing and rationalise displacing sex work from the public spaces. Professor Silk had argued that SMEs are highly mediated commodity spectacles, during which governments seek to erase and/or hide from view those who are antithetical to market ‘logics’. However, there was a dearth of relevant data on the sexual landscapes associated with the Olympics or on the impact of large-scale sporting events on vulnerable populations of sex workers.

With funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Professor Silk and academic collaborators from Rio de Janeiro, Toronto and Kings College London undertook the first ever funded academic study that looked at the impact of the Olympics on sex workers. The project was centred on Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Olympics and carried out with two Rio-based partners: the Observatorio Da Prostituicao (ODP), who had been collecting data on sex work in Rio for more than 10 years, and Davida, an NGO that supports sex workers in Brazil. Ethnographic data was collected from more than 100 sex workers, while interviews took place with key stakeholders such as clients, sex workers, venue managers, security personnel, police and local support groups. Observational data was collected from sex-related businesses and – in conjunction with the sex workers – field diaries and audio-visual data were recorded during and after the 2016 Olympics.

The project found that, within the Brazilian context:

  • Public discourse was once again focused on anti-trafficking strategies, which conflated forced migration and sexual exploitation with adult, consensual sex work.
  • Sex workers were forcibly evicted and displaced, with women unable to access justice without first asserting themselves as victims of sexual exploitation and sex trafficking – although they refused to lie about their consensual involvement in adult sex work.
  • Labour rights were denied, due to the conflation of sex work with sex trafficking and sexual exploitation.
  • The expected boom in ‘sex tourism’ did not materialise.
  • There was a heightened security presence in the street.

The final report made several key recommendations, including:

  • Stopping the conflation of prostitution with trafficking and sexual exploitation in law, public policies and popular discourse.
  • Creating opportunities for sex workers to add to the SME narrative.
  • Developing strategies to recognise and act against state-sanctioned violence faced by sexual minorities, and to guarantee social and spatial justice for those marginalised in the development process.

The impact:

Displacing sex workers during SMEs can have wide-reaching consequences for their safety, particularly in Brazil, where sex work is a legal profession.  By providing an evidence base on the spatial regulation of informal sex economies during SMEs, this project elevated the voice of sex workers in Brazil and shaped policy.

Changing policy

The research informed a submission by Davida to the United Nations Human Rights Council in October 2016, which documented human rights violations against sex workers in Brazil during the staging of SMEs. The report highlighted the eviction of approximately 200 women from a sex venue in 2014, with one evicted woman providing data on the eviction, denial of access to justice and the need for empirical evidence in the creation and execution of policies and strategies surrounding sex work. As a result of the report, she was invited to attend the EU Human Rights Defenders First Annual Meeting in November 2016. Subsequently, the UN referenced the Davida report in its Universal Periodic Review (Brazil) of February 2017 and adopted the following recommendations for the Brazilian government:

  • Improving the under-reporting of sexual violence/harrassment and developing policies to punish and prevent such actions.
  • Protecting human rights defenders and their families by implementing a national programme, policy and/or plan.
  • Combating police violence against women through training.

In September 2017, the Brazilian government enacted these recommendations into federal law, committing themselves to including human rights education in schools, creating domestic violence centres across the country, running an awareness campaign and setting up a hotline to report cases of violence against women.

Improving the lives and working conditions of sex workers

The project enabled Davida to reach a generation of women involved in sex work and the organisation has used the data to influence discourse around child labour exploitation, enhance ties with the Brazilian government’s anti-trafficking committee and ensure less conflation of sex work with sexual exploitation/trafficking at government level.

The ESRC team collaborated with local partners to develop a sex worker-author exhibition, documenting everyday work and life during the Olympics.  Participants curated their own pages for the online exhibition: “It was such an innovative, motivating process… I feel full of hopes and expectations… I feel like I achieved something”. As a result of the project, two of the trans sex worker photographers have developed careers in the arts.

Altering perceptions of sex work in the context of SMEs

The ‘What You Don’t See’ virtual exhibition was curated into a physical exhibition, shown in London, New York and Bournemouth.  The exhibition was converted into a film narrated by sex workers (and project participants), which offered accounts of the banality of everyday life, oppression and prejudice, bringing to life the project findings and challenging sensationalist media accounts of sex work during SMEs.  The film debuted at the MoMA PS1 Sex Workers’ Festival of Resistance in New York City, attended by 1,000 people, all of whom received a newsletter summarising the ESRC project. Davida stated that the project “broadened cultural and political sensibilities, which might have never expected to see the work of Brazilian women involved in sexual commerce celebrated in art galleries”. Davida is currently incorporating the data into a project that is digitising sex work histories in Brazil for the State Archives of Rio de Janeiro.

Creating internationally recognised standards for crowdsourced systems

Research areas: Computing & Informatics, Software Engineering, Cyber Psychology

Staff conducting research: Dr Marios Angelopoulos, Professor Raian Ali, Professor Keith Phalp, Dr Jacqui Taylor

Background: Crowdsourcing can be defined as the practice of soliciting input from the general public. Crowdsourced systems incorporate devices provided by the public to opportunistically supplement their infrastructure. In crowdsourced systems, members of the general public permit the system to access and use the resources of their devices in return for an incentive; this can either be intrinsic (e.g. for social good) or extrinsic (e.g. receiving a service, a micropayment, etc).

However, the highly personal nature of devices like smartphones poses significant trust and privacy issues. Since crowdsourced systems are characterised by the network effect (their efficacy increases as the number of their users increases), such issues can hinder their adoption and development. In addition, the community has lacked a common understanding of which systems can be classified as crowdsourced systems and how such systems can be built following a trustworthy and transparent method.

BU researchers conducted a systematic survey of crowdsourcing research to extract and describe the taxonomy of features which characterise crowdsourcing. They analysed 652 papers, identifying 113 papers (72 academic and 41 from industry) as providing definitions on crowdsourcing. The paper detailed the methodology that was assumed in order to elicit the key features of the concept of crowdsourcing and the corresponding definition, which was adopted in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T) standard. The model identified the four fundamental constituents of crowdsourcing: the crowd, the crowdsourcer, the crowdsourced task, and the crowdsourcing platform, and formed the basis for the reference architecture for crowdsourced systems specified in the ITU-T standard.

BU and European collaborators also assessed how crowdsourcing methods and tools can be used in designing systems (particularly in requirements engineering) and how these can be applied in industrial contexts. Dr Angelopoulos’ research underpinned the discussions within the ITU-T study group about implementation aspects of crowdsourced systems and corresponding use cases, and eventually helped shape the final text of the standard. These included architectural approaches for crowdsourced systems in a variety of applications, such as localised distributed computer infrastructure, crowd-enabled IoT systems and crowdsourced systems as enablers for citizen science.

The impact:

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is the United Nations’ special agency for information and communication technologies, with global membership including 193 member states, as well as some 900 companies, universities, international and regional organisations, and 20,000 industry professionals. Its recommendations act as an international standard and common point of reference globally to enable members to develop policies at a local or national level.

The ITU accepted the definitions and reference architecture developed through BU research as the formal definitions for crowdsourced systems. Angelopoulos led the BU delegation for the recommendation throughout its lifetime, as part of ITU-T Study Group 20 (SG20), which develops recommendations in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) and smart cities and communities. The terms defined were accepted by the Standardisation Committee for the Vocabulary and form part of official ITU terminology, which acts as a reference point for the international community. The recommendation was formally ratified by the ITU in February 2019 during the SG20 meeting held in China

Defining processes and attributes, and producing a standardised framework for the ways in which such systems are developed, helps to increase their transparency and provides a guarantee with regards to privacy and cybersecurity issues. This, in turn, helps increase public trust towards crowdsourced systems and, consequently, promotes their use. By helping to provide this formal, standardised framework – accepted by the global community through the ITU – BU has delivered a foundation of common understanding that will facilitate the growth and further adoption of crowdsourced systems and reference architecture, as well as identifying and addressing relevant security, privacy and trust issues.

 

Upcoming symposium “Social Impact of Audiovisual Media” – 12th – 13th August 2021 – Register now!

Please note our upcoming symposium “Social Impact of Audiovisual Media” – 12th – 13th August 2021 (12th: 4 – 8 PM CEST, 13th: 11 AM – 5 PM CEST):

Many films, videos and television programmes are produced with the intention of creating “social impact” – for example, reducing social discrimination, spreading environmental awareness or changing destructive habits. Media practitioners and researchers discuss a variety of impact strategies such as the emotional persuasion of large or small audiences, participatory production with affected communities or the targeting of individual decision-makers. At the same time, there is considerable disagreement about the feasibility and ethics of certain impact strategies, as well as about the concept of impact itself. The symposium aims to stimulate an exchange between media practitioners, researchers, activists and other stakeholders to better understand the “impact” of audiovisual media in its various dimensions, challenges and forms, be they fictional or non-fictional.

NIHR Bulletin

NIHR News

New vision for harnessing the full potential of data-enabled trials published

NIHR blog: Improving the uptake of research findings in global health

 

Forthcoming COVID-19 funding call: Community-based COVID-19 platform study for novel antivirals
The NIHR is intending to open a funding call on behalf of the DHSC Antivirals Taskforce, for a team to set up and run a community-based clinical trial platform for novel therapeutic candidates in the UK. The Taskforce was set up to find effective and safe treatments for COVID-19, and will identify and prioritise potential candidates for this study. The study team will be expected to quickly set up a clinical trial platform to evaluate these novel candidates, and start recruiting patients into the platform in Autumn 2021.

The likely advert date for this topic is 19 July 2021. However, please note this is an indicative date, which may change.

 

Funding Opportunities

Latest NIHR funding calls

Harkness Fellowships in Health Care Policy and Practice

Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme
21/529 Efficacy trials in regenerative medicine

Public Health Research (PHR) Programme
21/525 Permitted Developments Rights
21/527 Development Award – Local authority-level research priorities on climate change
21/530 Application Development Award – Healthy extended working lives

Policy Research Programme (PRP)
Mental health services funding call

 

Your local branch of the NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) should you need help with your application. We advise on all aspects of developing an application and can review application drafts as well as put them to a mock funding panel (run by RDS South West) known as Project Review Committee, which is a fantastic opportunity for researchers to obtain a critical review of a proposed grant application before this is sent to a funding body.

Contact us as early as possible to benefit fully from the advice

Feel free to call us on 01202 961939 or send us an email.

DEADLINE EXTENSION – 19th EUROGRAPHICS Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage (EG GCH 2021)

***Please find below updated information regarding the call for papers***

Bournemouth University will host the 19th EUROGRAPHICS Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage (EG GCH 2021) from 4-6 November 2021. The workshop will engage practitioners and researchers across the world working at the interface of novel 3D digital technologies and cultural heritage. This year, circumstances depending, EG GCH will be run in a hybrid format, organised by the University of Bournemouth, UK. This will allow those who are able to attend the conference in person to do so, while those that can’t, especially if the pandemic is still raging at the time of the conference, will also not miss out on this exciting event.

The event seeks different types of contributions including:

  1. Research papers: original and innovative research (maximum 10 pages)
  2. Short papers: update of ongoing research activities or projects (maximum 4 pages)
  3. Posters: overview of activities or national/international interdisciplinary projects (500 words abstract)
  4. Panel sessions for multidisciplinary/industry-oriented projects
  5. Special sessions on Interactive Digital Narratives

Note down these important dates:

  • Full papers submission deadline: 19 July 2021 2 August 2021
  • Short papers submission deadline: 2 August 2021 9 August 2021
  • Posters submission deadline: 30 August 2021

All accepted research and short papers will be published by the Eurographics Association and archived in the EG Digital Library.
The authors of up to five selected best papers will be invited to submit an extended version to the ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH).

The full call for papers and key dates can be found on the workshop website. The fantastic keynotes will be announced soon.

Please consider submitting and attending the workshop.

The EG GCH 2021 organisation committee