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BU PhD student Peter Wolfensberger has article accepted in Brit J Mental Health Nursing

Centre for Excellence in Learning, international, PG research, Publishing, student research, writing

Congratulations to FHSS PhD student Peter Wolfensberger whose article ‘Uncertainty in illness among people living with mental ill health – a mental health nursing perspective’ was accepted yesterday by the British Journal of Mental Health Nursing [1].   The paper introduces the concept of ‘uncertainty in illness’, which is a well-known concept in health care literature  and a considerable volume of research has investigated how people adapt to different health conditions and how the concept of uncertainty in illness relates to those populations. However, while there is substantial literature focusing on coping strategies and personal recovery, there is a paucity of research about uncertainty in illness among people living with mental ill health. 

This paper therefore, explores uncertainty in illness among mental health nurses and to provide an understanding of its relevance to people living with mental ill health.  The paper concludes that even though mental health nursing does not directly address uncertainty, the concept and its implications need to be considered and raised further among mental health professionals in order to improve support for people living with mental ill health in their process of personal recovery.

This paper originated from Peter’s PhD research on insights into mental health nursing in Switzerland, which has had input from Prof Fran Biley (before he passed away) and Dr. Zoe Sheppard (before she moved to her new job in Dorchester).  His current BU supervisors are: Dr. Sarah Thomas and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen and his Swiss supervisor is Prof. Sabine Hahn (Berner Fachhochschule/ Bern University of Applied Sciences).

 

Reference:

  1. Wolfensberger P. Thomas, S., Sheppard, Z., Hahn, S, van Teijlingen, E.  ‘Uncertainty in illness among people living with mental ill health – a mental health nursing perspective’  British Journal of Mental Health Nursing (Accepted)

 

 

 

 

Congratulations on academic paper by BU PhD student Orlanda Harvey

open access, PG research, Publishing, student research, writing

Congratulations to Orlanda Harvey, PhD student in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences on her PhD publication “Support for people who use Anabolic Androgenic Steroids: A Systematic Scoping Review into what they want and what they access” in the Open Access journal BMC Public Health [1].  Since there is a paucity of research on support for people using Anabolic Androgenic Steroids (AAS), this article searched and synthesised the available evidence in this field. Gaining an understanding of the support both accessed and wanted by recreational AAS users will be of use to professionals who provide services to intravenous substance users and also to those working in the fields of public health and social care, with the aim to increase engagement of those using AAS.

This systematic scoping review identified 23 papers and one report for review, which indicated that AAS users access a range of sources of information on: how to inject, substance effectiveness, dosages and side effects, suggesting this is the type of information users want. AAS users sought support from a range of sources including medical professionals, needle and syringe programmes, friends, dealers, and via the internet, suggesting that, different sources were used dependent on the information or support sought.

The authors argue that AAS users tended to prefer peer advice and support over that of professionals , and access information online/specialist fora, reflecting the stigma that is experienced by AAS  users. These tendencies can act as barriers to accessing services provided by professionals.  The paper concludes that support needs to be specific and targeted towards AAS users. Sensitivity to their perceptions of their drug-use and the associated stigma of being classified in the same sub-set as other illicit drug users is relevant to facilitating successful engagement.

 

Reference: 

  1. Harvey, O., Keen, S., Parrish, M., van Teijlingen, E. (2019) Support for people who use Anabolic Androgenic Steroids: A Systematic Literature Review into what they want and what they access. BMS Public Health 19: 1024      https://rdcu.be/bMFon

 

 

Research Professional – all you need to know

Funding opportunities

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to Research Professional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using Research Professional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of Research Professional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on Research Professional. They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with Research Professional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month. You can register here for your preferred date:

27th August 2019

10th September 2019

12th November 2019

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

Have you noticed the pink box on the BU Research Blog homepage?

By clicking on this box, on the left of the Research Blog home page just under the text ‘Funding Opportunities‘, you access a Research Professional real-time search of the calls announced by the Major UK Funders. Use this feature to stay up to date with funding calls. Please note that you will have to be on campus or connecting to your desktop via our VPN to fully access this service.

Hair Rollers!

The service assessment sequence

The research

Dr Sae Oshima, a Senior Lecturer in Corporate Marketing and Communications, is researching the awkward moments at the end of a haircut: when the customer must give their feedback.

Dr Oshima calls these moments the ‘service assessment sequence’, a period where honest opinion is often suppressed by social rituals. To her best knowledge, no previous study explored this interaction between customer and stylist. Dr Oshima aims to both inform customers on ways to ask for the best haircut, and educate stylists on communicating with customers to ensure they’re satisfied.

During her MA studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Dr Oshima focused on examining video-recorded, naturally occurring interactions. Continuing to develop her interest in the micro-foundations of professional tasks through her PhD studies, she decided to investigate an interaction close to her heart.

“How do we end up with good and bad haircuts? Some have brought pure joy and happiness, and others even made me cry for an entire week! We tend to credit the quality of the service (good/bad haircuts) to the stylists’ skills alone, but becoming a student of social interaction has enabled me to question this assumption,” explains Dr Oshima.

The importance of this interaction analysis extends further than the hair salon. This research applies to any social interaction where work or services require evaluation. While some services may be assessed by a clear measure of whether something works or not, other service evaluations involve people’s perspectives. This work therefore has far reaching implications on how communication can impact final outcome.

The findings

Dr Oshima video-recorded 60 haircutting sessions in various types of salons in USA and Japan, ranging from slow-paced salons that offer complimentary alcoholic drinks, to high volume/low profit margin chain salons with their value-oriented pricing and speedy service.

Her research has found that many small actions, such as a pause of 0.7 seconds, a shift of gaze, or a slight head movement, can all change the outcome of a haircut, and subsequently affect whether the salon business succeeds or fails.

Above is the ‘Hair Rollers!’ board game which aims to present the variance in haircut outcome due to small actions and responses by a customer. It also highlights the importance of feedback in a service assessment sequence and how this can change the interaction.

HAIR ROLLERS!

The negotiation of professional identities and power is one uncovered issue, present in ‘Hair Rollers!’ Stylists juggle the roles of service-provider and hair expert. Dr Oshima believes that in caring for both body and minds of customers, stylists may yield to customer’s opinions which undermine their role as a professional – see tiles E2, E4 and E6, where the customer hints at an upcoming revision of the cut. Her video evidence and research paper shows how stylists and customers may harmonise the sometimes conflicting responsibilities of ‘service-provider/patron’ and ‘expert/novice’ through a combination of verbal and nonverbal communication.

She was surprised to find just how much work the customers are doing in this sequence to give an “authentic” assessment of the cut which the stylist will believe. For instance, as seen in tile C4, customers perform a physical inspection prior to verbal assessment. Conversely, when the customer says they like the cut too soon, without physical inspection, the stylist may ignore their response – as seen in tile D3. Findings also suggest stylists and customers are constantly dealing with the issue of when it is good enough, and how they can take enough time for inspection without taking too much time. This issue is addressed in this research paper.

A third research paper tackles an ever-challenging topic in the field of social interaction: the complex relationship of practical action and speech. Dr Oshima worked with Professor Jürgen Streeck, of the University of Texas at Austin, to examine how a customer’s physical inspection is coupled with verbal responses.

Finally, this research paper assesses the role of a specific action present during most assessment sequences – nodding. Video data was collected during Dr Oshima’s research in Japan where it is commonly thought that Japanese people are good at reading each other’s minds and nonverbal acts. Dr Oshima challenges this notion to further analyse mechanisms of synchronised nods and how they contribute to satisfactory closure of business.

The impact

Dr Oshima has shared her findings with the stylists and clients who participated in the study, to help improve the quality of service. Her findings have also been shared with organisations and publics in the USA, Denmark and the UK. She has showcased not only hair salon data, but also various other video recorded data from other interactions (such as lunchroom gatherings, flamenco rehearsals or start-up project meetings) to reveal how the small things that people do drastically change what happens next in their interactions with others, and impact outcome.

Dr Oshima concludes: “If we start seeing these micro moments as the opportunity to make choices, then we can turn unconsciousness into consciousness. This is what I want to continue doing with my research – to spread awareness and appreciation for the massive power of micro-actions.”

The future

Dr Oshima currently has two research papers in progress. The first is on the role of emotion in service evaluations. This paper will have a particular focus on the customer’s presentation of surprise, which Dr Oshima finds to be a key form of emotional display in service evaluations. The second paper will include an analysis of service-assessment sequences between a software designer and his clients. This research will aim to address a common problem feared by design practitioners termed the ‘design-by-committee pitfall’. Dr Oshima has collected around 15 hours of video-recorded interactions between a designer and his clients with which she will now determine how verbal and nonverbal practices shape design outcome.

New page on the Clinical Governance Blog – Public Involvement in Research

Guidance, NHS, Research Ethics

Involving the public in your study is important, especially at the research design stage, this is known as ‘Public Involvement’ or ‘Patient & Public Involvement’ (PPI). This involvement can greatly improve the quality of your study design and documentation.

To better support researchers with this process (in particular for the purposes of clinical research), there is now a dedicated space for guidance, resources and wider reading, on the Clinical Governance blog space.

You can find the page here – as always if there are any specific queries, please get in touch with Research Ethics.

FoM Academics – article readership milestone!

 

Congratulations! Michael O’ Regan, PhD and Jaeyeon Choe,PhD,  from the Faculty of Management, published an article on peer-to-peer accommodation platform use in 2017, and has over a short period of two years, become one of the most read articles in the journal Anatolia – becoming one of its top ten “most read” in July 2019.

Despite the growing fear-filled sociopolitical rhetoric and moral hand-wringing about peer-to-peer accommodation platforms such as Airbnb, the paper argues that these platforms are under-researched and undertheorized.

Utilising Airbnb as an example, the paper explores this ‘disruptive’ collaborative consumption (sharing) platform within the prism of cultural capitalism to examine the ratio of freedom to estrangement it has created within cultural, economic, political, and consumer worlds.

Thanks to the Organisational Development team at BU,  the papers impact was primarily brought about through social media, blog posts and even a link to a page on collaborative consumption in Wikipedia.

 

 

 

CPMR member Dr Veneti won Best Conference Paper from the Academy of Marketing

CPMR member Dr Anastasia Veneti along with colleagues from the University of Leicester, Dr Georgios Patsiaouras and William Green, have won two prizes for their paper entitled: Tear gas, visual brands and opposition: an exploratory study on the use of visual branding techniques by the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Movement
at the prestigious conference of the Academy of Marketing which took place at Regent’s University, London, 2-4 July 2019. 
Prizes:
Best Conference paper, and 
Best Paper in Critical Marketing Track
 
 

5G Rural Dorset: what would health look like with 5G?

innovation

This beautiful image was created as the first part of the ‘Imagining the potential’ of change for rural life in Dorset resulting from a successful bid as a pilot area from central Government.

Beautiful drawing

Visualisation of the transformative effect of 5G

 

Template

Template for developing user cases – we explored rural GP surgeries and vulnerable users

The project team heading the work have invited the public and experts to work together to scope out potential user cases along the four themes identified in the SMART Rural Dorset work. Professor Debbie Holley attended to represent HSS at the event exploring 5G in health, facilitated by Colin Wood and the Rural Connected Communities team at Dorset Council. At the event, there was an ideas generation exercise, followed by team working to map out user case scenarios showing the improvement and benefit 5G would offer rural Dorest in terms of enahncing access to health care.

More information, including a series of videos explaining what 5G is about are available on the project website

https://www.5gruralfirst.org/

Law in Context Early Career Workshop – University of Oxford

Jeffrey Wale (FMC) has won a place on the Law in Context Early Career Workshop organised by the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford in September 2019.  This followed an open competition involving PGRs submitting their PHD thesis in 2019.  Ten applicants were chosen to participate and the best papers from the workshop will be considered for publication in the International Journal of Law in Context.  Jeffrey will be presenting his doctoral research titled Regulating Medical Decision-Making: A Qualitative Study of Fetal Reduction in Multiple Pregnancy.

 

 

Next wave of industry and society challenges announced!

Funding opportunities, Industry collaboration

The next wave of major industrial and societal challenges to receive investment through the government’s modern Industrial Strategy have been confirmed.

The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund brings together the UK’s world-leading research base with our best businesses to transform how we live, work and move around. It will put the UK in the best position to take advantage of future market opportunities.

The fund is delivered by UK Research and Innovation and is part of government’s £4.7 billion investment in R&D over 4 years that will support the delivery of its modern Industrial Strategy.

The details of the next wave of challenges are confirmed as below:

In addition last month the Government confirmed an investment in Quantum Technologies  – a £153 million Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund which will be matched by industry with over £200 million of investment expected from the private sector.

Please see this link for more information.

Funding Call: Knowledge Frontiers – International Interdisciplinary Research

Funding opportunities, international

The British Academy has opened Funding Call: Knowledge Frontiers – International Interdisciplinary Research 2020, funded by the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The deadline for submissions and UK institutional approval is 23 October 2019 at 17.00 (UK time), awards up to £200,000 for duration of 24 months, projects must begin on 1 April 2020.

The British Academy is inviting proposals from UK-based researchers in the humanities and social sciences wishing to develop international interdisciplinary projects in collaboration with colleagues from the natural, engineering and/or medical sciences. The Academy is looking to fund applications that break new ground in the collaborations – international and interdisciplinary. The purpose of each project will be to develop new international research ideas.

The Academy encourages partnerships with researchers in low-income countries, however applications focused on any country are welcome.

Applications must demonstrate an innovative and interdisciplinary approach yielding new conceptual understandings, developing ground-breaking research and energising innovative collaborations between the humanities and social sciences on the one hand, and the natural, engineering and/or medical sciences on the other, related to one or more of the following themes:

  • Hazard and Risk
  • Cultures of Forecasting
  • Meaning of Resilience

RDS is currently working with cross-disciplinary group of BU academics to develop a proposal. If you are interested either to join the existing group or willing to lead/create a new group, please contact Research Facilitator Ainar Blaudums for further details by the middle of August.

Good Clinical Practice refresher – Wednesday 14th August 2019

NHS, Research Ethics, Training

Are you currently undertaking research within the NHS, and your Good Clinical Practice (GCP) training is due to expire? Or has it expired recently?

GCP certification lasts for two years, so if your training is due to expire, has expired, or you want to validate your learning, then take advantage of the upcoming refresher half day session, taking place at Dorset County Hospital, Dorchester on Wednesday 14th August, 9am – 12:30pm.

Spaces are still remaining, so if you’d like to enrol, get in touch with Research Ethics.

Dr. Daisy Fan received “Best Paper of the Year 2019 for Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research (JHTR)”

Dr. Daisy Fan received “Best Paper of the Year 2019 for Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research (JHTR)”

Congratulations to Dr. Daisy Fan together with all the other co-authors who has received the “2019 Outstanding JHTR Best Paper of the Year” in the Awards Banquet, 26 July 2019 at the ICHRIE summer conference, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. The JHTR Editorial Review Board considered all of the papers published in 2018 and the paper entitled “Analyzing the Economic Sustainability of Tourism Development: Evidence from Hong Kong” was voted the very best of the best.

Reference:

Qiu, H., Fan, D. X. F., Lyu, J., Lin, P. M. C., & Jenkins, C. L. (2019). Analyzing the Economic Sustainability of Tourism Development: Evidence from Hong Kong. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 43(2), 226–248. https://doi.org/10.1177/1096348018777046

 

 

Photo of the week

The photo of the week series is a weekly series featuring photos taken by our academics and students for our Research Photography Competition, which provides a snapshot of some of the incredible research undertaken across the BU community.

Below: Some eggcellent results obtained from the VMD developing latent fingermarks on a chicken egg using gold and zinc.

This week’s photo of the week, Fingermarks on a chicken egg developed by Vacuum Metal Deposition, is by Alex Otto and Nicola Jones, demonstrators in Forensic Science.

This past October Bournemouth University Forensic department welcomed its newest piece of latent fingermark development equipment to the Crime Scene Training Facility…the VMD 360!  Following delivery, Demonstrators in Forensic Science Alex Otto, Nicola Jones and Christopher Dwen received bespoke training from West Technology Forensics over a two day period. 

Vacuum Metal Deposition (VMD) is widely recognised as one of, if not the most powerful latent fingermark development techniques currently available. The technique is commonly used to develop latent fingermarks on porous, semi-porous and non-porous exhibits using metals such as gold, zinc and sterling silver. Latent fingermarks developed using VMD are frequently found to be superior quality, and with excellent ridge clarity and higher contrast than fingermarks developed using alternative forensic methods.

The VMD 360 is currently the only table-top vacuum metal deposition unit available in the world and is compact and aesthetically pleasing. Furthermore, with an abundance of potential forensic research still to be undertaken using VMD, such as development of fingermarks on eggs in cases involving rare wild bird egg theft, exciting times lay ahead!