Category / REF Subjects

Understanding how people with depression think about how the past could have turned out differently

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

The period of funding from the BU Fusion Investment Fund (Co-Creation and Co-Production Strand) has just finished for my joint psychology and psychiatry research project into the role of counterfactual thinking in depression. Counterfactual thinking is thinking about how the past could have been different. It is closely tied-up with the emotion of regret but can help people prepare to deal more effectively with similar situations in the future. For example, a person who thinks that an intimate relationship that failed would have survived if they had taken more account of how their partner was feeling (counterfactual thinking) can adapt their behaviour accordingly in their next intimate relationship in order to try to prevent the breakdown of the relationship and ensure its longevity.

My collaborator on the Fusion-funded project is Dr Paul Walters who’s a Consultant Psychiatrist for Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust (DHUFT) based at Weymouth. A student from the Psychology Department’s Foundations in Clinical Psychology Master’s degree course (Stephen Richer) worked on the project by interviewing DHUFT patients who are diagnosed with depression. The project ran from December 2013 to July 2015, in which time a total of 29 patients were assessed. Although the project funding has ended, participant recruitment will continue until the required number of 65 participants is reached, which should be by October 2015.

Preliminary analysis of the data from the project suggests that the patients assessed tend to focus on aspects of the self (e.g., personality characteristics) when thinking counterfactually about a negative social event from their past. This finding contrasts with the counterfactual thoughts of people that have not received a formal clinical diagnosis of depression who, our previous research has found, tend to focus more on factors that are external to the self (e.g., other people’s behaviour) when mentally ‘undoing’ a previous negative social event. Once the data are collected from all 65 participants with depression, more meaningful comparisons between the counterfactual thoughts of depressed and non-depressed people will be drawn. Ultimately, Paul Walters and I hope that the findings of the project will aid in the refinement of the cognitive behavioural therapies that psychiatrists and clinical psychologists administer for the treatment of depression. Once the results of the data from all 65 participants have been analysed and written-up for publication, Paul and I plan to submit a funding bid to the National Institute of Health Research for a follow-on intervention project into tailoring cognitive behavioural therapies for depression based on the factors that influence the counterfactual thoughts of the patients with depression.

Overall, the BU Fusion funding has been immensely beneficial for engaging students and a key external stakeholder in the local community (DHUFT) in a valuable piece of applied research that has important psychotherapeutic implications for mental health patients and professional best practice implications for mental healthcare professionals.

Thank you, Fusion Investment Fund, I couldn’t have done the research without you.

Dr Kevin Thomas, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology.

Digital Project Grants – Awards up to £40,000

Digital Project Grants – Awards up to £40,000

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art invites applications for its digital project grants. These provide institutions and individuals help to support a curator or research scholar undertaking a digital research project which will lead to a digital or online project. Closing date 30th September 2015. Projects may include: online exhibition or curation…

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HEFCE Open Access Policy – Adjustments and Qualifications

BRIAN, Guidance, Publishing, REF Subjects, Research assessment

hefce-logoOn Friday (24 July 2015), HEFCE announced a number of adjustments and qualifications to its policy for open access (OA) in the next REF following consultation with HEIs. The key adjustment is that:

 

  • From 1st April 2016, authors will have until 3 months after publication to deposit outputs in our Institutional Repository (BURO) via BRIAN.  This is a temporary measure for the first year of the policy, to allow time to transition to a new way of working.

 

  • From 1st April 2017, the transition period will end, and in order to comply with the Open Access policy, authors will be expected to deposit outputs in (BURO) via BRIAN within 3 months of acceptance.

 

In light of these adjustments, it is recommended that authors still deposit outputs as soon as possible after acceptance to ensure continued compliance with all OA policies.

The circular and updated policy are available through the links below, if you have any queries or require further information on Open Access at BU including the Open Access Publication Fund, please contact Peng Peng Hatch at pphatch@bournemouth.ac.uk.

View this circular letter on the HEFCE website at: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2015/CL,202015/

View the full updated HEFCE policy at:  http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/Year/2014/201407/

Marie Sklodowska-Curie Project – ENEFOR

Awarded & submitted bids

We would like to welcome you to our Marie Sklodowska – Curie project “ENEFOR”. We proudly present you our website (http://enefor.eu) and we look forward for a live discussion on the project’s output!

This project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement (No 658494). The project started on April 2015 and it will be completed on April 2017.
This exciting and innovative project aims to develop new econometric model frameworks to forecast oil price and oil price volatility, which will be successful in enhancing internal consistency, forecasting accuracy and easiness to communicate extracting added-value (in terms of predictability) information from the ultra high sampling frequency. In addition, this project aims to use the forecasted oil price volatility to predict the economic policy uncertainty in Europe, given that oil price shocks exert significant impact on the effectiveness of economic policy.

The Midwifery quilt online- URA scheme funded project

Fusion, Women's Academic Network

As part of my EdD thesis on ‘The essence of the art of a midwife..’ http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/16560/    I created a reflexive textile quilt, with each of the squares representing an entry in my research diary. Whenever I have been to conferences with my quilt the question has always been asked ‘what do the squares mean’? Though I anticipate that anyone looking at it will gather their own interpretation of the squares my stories behind them are now accessible online. In the spring of this year I applied, and was pleased to receive, funding from the BU Undergraduate research assistantship scheme in order to create a web site for the quilt. For the past six weeks George Upson undergraduate student from the BA (Hons) Media Production course has been active in designing and creating the web site with me and learning about the world of academia in a small way. I am indebted to him for his creative abilities and to Garratt Lynch and Richard Wallis for their early support in the process, and also for the URA scheme!

The Midwifery quilt maybe accessed here http://www.midwiferyquilt.co.uk/

Dr Jenny Hall

Introducing Jo George, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Fusion, REF Subjects, Research assessment, student research

Hello, I will be working within the Health and Social Sciences Faculty with Impact Champion, Zoe Sheppard, over the next six weeks on the endeavour to monitor and measure the impact of research.

My work will involve:

  • Exploring methods of dissemination
  • Conducting literature searches to investigate the demonstration of impact
  • Working on two research case studies from the Health and Social Social Sciences Faculty

I can be found in R613 and contacted at jgeorge@bournemouth.ac.uk if you have any ideas or challenges you’d like to discuss. I will be sharing my findings towards the end of my six weeks here.

I look forward to meeting you,

Jo

Ethical fundraising : Protecting vulnerable adults from aggressive fundraising techniques

Festival of Learning, Research Ethics

Dr Lee-Ann Fenge

Dr Lee-Ann Fenge

There is growing awareness in the government and media of the importance of recognising and responding to the risks posed by financial abuse of vulnerable older people. My last two blogs have focused on financial scams and mass marketing fraud, but it is now becoming recognised that the charity sector are also employing dubious marketing techniques to elicit money from vulnerable individuals.

The marketing techniques and fundraising methods of charities have come under the spotlight since the death of Olive Cooke, 92, in May. Although her family insist that the numerous approaches she received from charities were not to blame for her death, the fact that she received 267 charity letters in one month alone started alarm bells ringing. Some charities working with emotionally upsetting issues (such as animal cruelty) sometimes employ shocking imagery which has been described as psychoactive advertising (Bennett, 2015). These types of marketing approaches seek to evoke a positive emotional response to fundraising, but can be upsetting for those who receive such material through the post.
As a result of governmental concern about the fundraising methods employed by some charities, changes will be
introduced as amendments to the Charities Bill. This new legislation will tighten rules on how fundraisers approach people who are vulnerable, and how vulnerable adults should be protected from high-pressure marketing tactics.

Some charities have already responded to these concerns by suspending operations with call centres which use
high pressure fundraising techniques.It is interesting to note that although the government is seeking to put a brake on aggressive fundraising techniques, this comes at a time when the remit of the Charity Commission to effectively regulate the sector has been reduced due to budget reductions following the UK Treasury’s Comprehensive Spending Review 2014–15. This has resulted in a reduction in the Commission’s regulatory engagement with charities. As part of the government response to concerns about unethical fundraising tactics, Sir Stuart Etherington, Chief Executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), will chair an urgent review of fundraising self-regulation.

It is important that the charity sector develop good practice guidance which embraces the responsibility to safeguard vulnerable groups, and put an end to working with companies which use aggressive fundraising techniques.

The National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work at BU is currently working collaboratively with the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) to develop good practice guides and advice for professionals working with vulnerable citizens and their families/carers about responding to the risks posed by financial scams. We will be hosting an event as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science on 10th November to explore with the sector how we develop better responses to safeguarding those most at risk of financial exploitation. Details of how to book onto this event will be posted in the near future.

Reference:

Bennett, R. (2015) Individual characteristics and the arousal of mixed emotions: consequences for the effectiveness of charity fundraising advertisements, International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing 20: 188–209