Congratulations to Drs. Pramod Regmi and Nirmal Aryal in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences who published their latest paper this week [1]. This peer-reviewed paper ‘Assessing the knowledge of, attitudes towards, and practices in, food safety among migrant workers in Klang Valley, Malaysia’ in the journal Travel Medicine & Infectious Disease assesses the current food safety KAP (knowledge, attitudes and behaviour) as well as strategies to promote food safety awareness, among migrant workers across occupational sectors in Malaysia.
The authors conducted a survey with 403 migrant workers using telephone interviews and online self-administered questionnaires. The respondents were Nepalese, Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers. The majority were male, working in the services industry, had completed high school, aged between 30 and 39 years and had worked in Malaysia for less than ten years. Knowledge was significantly correlated with attitudes and practices. Female respondents had lower knowledge and attitude scores while younger respondents had lower knowledge scores. Indonesian and Filipino respondents had lower knowledge and attitudes scores than Nepalese respondents. Understanding food safety information from social media was positively correlated with the respondents’ food safety knowledge and practices. The paper concludes there is: (i) a to target female, younger, Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers, and (ii) the potential of social media to improve public awareness of food safety and hygienic practices.
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)
Reference:
Chaudhary MN, Lim V-C, Sahimin N, Faller EM, Regmi P, Aryal N, Azman AS (2023) Assessing the knowledge of, attitudes towards, and practices in, food safety among migrant workers in Klang Valley, Malaysia, Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmaid.2023.102620.
Welcome to The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick.
John McAlaney
This week, we’re chatting with Professor in Psychology, John McAlaney…
What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas?
My research looks at how and why people choose to engage in risky behaviours, with a focus on how this is influenced by social processes. As part of this I do work on a range of topics including hacking, digital addiction, fake news and online gambling.
More broadly I am interested in how to challenge misperceptions that people have about those around them.
Often as humans we assume that our peers behave and think is much more negative way than is actually the case. By documenting these misperceptions and presenting them back to a target population you empower people to make informed decisions, which is known as the social norms approach.
I am drawn to this approach because, unlike some other behaviour change approaches, it does not dictate to people how they should behave.
What has been your career highlight to date?
Being invited to 10 Downing Street in 2012 to talk about how we can use technology to implement the social norms approach and to counter harmful stereotypes about young people.
What are you working on at the moment?
The biggest project I am involved in at the moment is a GambleAware funded project on behaviour change and transparency in online gambling. As part of this work I have recently been the academic lead on BU’s successful application to be included on the Gambling Commission’s Research, Education and Treatment (RET) list. We are the first university in the UK to be included on this list, and only the second in the world. Our inclusion on this list opens up many opportunities for us to continue research into ways to address the harms caused by problematic gambling.
I am also working on several projects relating to cybersecurity. This work is the basis of my ongoing participant as an academic expert in the UN Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes.
If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing?
I’ve always been interested in architecture, although I have terrible design skills. If that didn’t work out for me then I’d probably become a dog walker.
What do you do to unwind?
Reading is something I find very relaxing – I would like to claim that I only reads the classics, but usually the more stressful a day I have the trashier my choice of book.
What’s the best thing about Bournemouth?
I’m lucky to live within walking distance of the beach, which is great. I think I would struggle to live anywhere other than the coast now. Being from Scotland I still find the weather of the south coast to be a nice change.
If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why?
As someone who loves going to new places but dislikes the act of travel I would definitely choose teleportation.
If you were stranded on a desert island, what one luxury item would you take with you?
It would have to be my Kindle. I could happily pass the years by sitting, reading under a palm tree.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Very few things in life actually matter that much. That probably sounds quite nihilistic, but it an idea I increasingly embrace as I get older. Most of the dramas we have in our lives are things we won’t even remember in 10 years. Sometimes you are ahead, sometimes you are behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself. Also, wear sunscreen.
“We are not fighting an epidemic, we are fighting an infodemic.” These are the words of the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) about the misinformation in the corona virus pandemic. A few weeks ago the Prime Minister of Nepal suggested to drink hot water to kill corona virus and to avoid eating ice cream. This attracted a huge criticism from local health experts, but there was no public retraction of this false information. Every time I speak with my mom in Nepal she warns me not to eat meat products and use a lot of lemon and garlic. Also my mother-in-law seems pretty sure that the novel corona virus was intentionally engineered and spread by China to cripple America. Undoubtedly, social media platforms have played a vital role in spreading misinformation (as they do for correct information) at all levels.
Misinformation (inadvertently) and disinformation (advertently) are not a novel threat to public health, especially during the disease outbreaks. People are desperate for information related to probability of getting disease, possible severity, and possible preventive and curative measures. Evidence is equivocal that the misleading information has the tendency of spreading faster than the correct information in social media outlets (1). Studies about the prevalence of misleading information in popular social media platforms (e.g. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter) during Ebola and Zika outbreaks suggest that at least one-quarter of the popular contents (in terms of shares, likes, visits) are misleading (2,3). A study in Nigeria reported that 25% participants had used ‘salt water’ to become safe from Ebola (2). Although developing countries are more affected by misinformation (mainly due to the poor literacy rate and low health awareness level), this poses a huge threat to the developed countries as well. For example, in Denmark, vaccination rates of human papilloma virus (HPV) fell to under 20% in 2005 from over 90% in 2000 because of misleading information on social media and television about the harm of the vaccine (4).
We have to accept that with the advancement of technology and hand-held devices, social media platforms will continue to proliferate and stay as a main source of information for millions. An active presence of ‘gatekeepers’ to monitor and challenge false and misleading information may be the part of the solution. Organisations such as WHO, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have started ‘myth-busters’ websites on corona virus related myths. Leading internet platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok have also intensified initiatives from their sides. For example, notifying about false information (Facebook) and directing to the credible sources during the search (Google, Twitter). More generally organisations such as the BBC have fact-checking website (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/52369688/coronavirus-health-claims-debunked) as has OFCOM (see picture below ‘The most common false information around the coronavirus’). The role of mainstream media to refute misinformation and dispel the truth would also be important. In the UK, we have seen that BBC and other television and print media are actively inviting experts and taking questions from the public regarding queries about Covid-19. Journalists are a powerful weapon in the war against infodemics. Evidence suggests that the negative impact of misinformation can be mitigated from an early counteract and elaboration of facts (5). No single strategy may work and intervention strategies are hugely dependent on the context and socio-demographics of the population. Like my mother and mother-in-law, there are millions of populations who believe in every on Facebook and YouTube and develop perceptions accordingly.
As the world is grappling with the both invisible (Covid-19) and a visible (misinformation) enemy, a collective and stringent measures against the both is the must. From the researcher’s perspectives, identifying the magnitude of misinformation in the popular social media platforms, the most vulnerable groups falling prey to it, impact of misinformation on health-related behaviours, and providing evidence of effective interventions could be the areas for future research.
Dr Nirmal Aryal
Post-doctoral researcher
Faculty of Health and Social Sciences
References:
Wang Y, McKee M, Torbica A, Stuckler D. Systematic literature review on the spread of health-related misinformation on social media. Soc Sci Med. 2019;112552.
Balami AD, Meleh HU. Misinformation on salt water use among Nigerians during 2014 Ebola outbreak and the role of social media. Asian Pac J Trop Med. 2019;12(4):175.
Bora K, Das D, Barman B, Borah P. Are internet videos useful sources of information during global public health emergencies? A case study of YouTube videos during the 2015–16 Zika virus pandemic. Pathog Glob Health. 2018;112(6):320–8.
Larson HJ. The biggest pandemic risk? Viral misinformation. Nature. 2018;562(7726):309–10.
Bode L, Vraga EK. See something, say something: Correction of global health misinformation on social media. Health Commun. 2018;33(9):1131–40.
From educational toys to governmental guidelines and detailed nursery progress reports, there are lots of resources available to help parents track and facilitate their children’s development. But while there are tricks we can use to teach children to talk, count, draw or respect others, a surprisingly big part of how they develop is determined by the culture they grow up in.
Child development is a dynamic, interactive process. Every child is unique in interacting with the world around them, and what they invoke and receive from others and the environment also shapes how they think and behave. Children growing up in different cultures receive specific inputs from their environment. For that reason, there’s a vast array of cultural differences in children’s beliefs and behaviour.
Language is one of the many ways through which culture affects development. We know from research on adultsthat languages forge how people think and reason. Moreover, the content and focus of what people talk about in their conversations also vary across cultures. As early as infancy, mothers from different cultures talk to their babies differently. German mothers tend to focus on their infants’ needs, wishes or them as a person. Mothers of the African tribal group Nso, on the other hand, focus more on social context. This can include the child’s interactions with other people and the rules surrounding it.
This early exposure affects the way children attend to themselves or to their relationship with others – forming their self image and identity. For example, in Western European and North American countries, children tend to describe themselves around their unique characteristics – such as “I am smart” or “I am good at drawing”. In Asian, African, Southern European and South American countries, however, children describe themselves more often around their relationship with others and social roles. Examples of this include “I am my parents’ child” or “I am a good student”.
Because children in different cultures differ in how they think about themselves and relate to others, they also memorise events differently. For example, when preschoolers were asked to describe a recent special personal experience, European-American children provided more detailed descriptions, recalled more specific events and stressed their preferences, feelings and opinions about it more than Chinese and Korean children. The Asian children instead focused more on the people they had met and how they related to themselves.
Cultural effects of parenting
Parents in different cultures also play an important role in moulding children’s behaviour and thinking patterns. Typically, parents are the ones who prepare the children to interact with wider society. Children’s interaction with their parents often acts as the archetype of how to behave around others – learning a variety of socio-cultural rules, expectations and taboos. For example, young children typically develop a conversational style resembling their parents’ – and that often depends on culture.
European-American children frequently provide long, elaborative, self-focused narratives emphasising personal preferences and autonomy. Their interaction style also tends to be reciprocal, taking turns in talking. In contrast, Korean and Chinese children’s accounts are usually brief, relation-oriented, and show a great concern with authority. They often take a more passive role in the conversations. The same cultural variations in interaction are also evident when children talk with an independent interviewer.
Cultural differences in interactions between adults and children also influence how a child behaves socially. For instance, in Chinese culture, where parents assume much responsibility and authority over children, parents interact with children in a more authoritative manner and demand obedience from their children. Children growing up in such environments are more likely to comply with their parents’ requests, even when they are reluctant to do so.
By contrast, Chinese immigrant children growing up in England behave more similarly to English children, who are less likely to follow parental demands if unwilling.
From class to court
As the world is getting increasingly globalised, knowledge regarding cultural differences in children’s thinking, memory and how they interact with adults has important practical implications in many areas where you have to understand a child’s psychology. For instance, teachers may need to assess children who come from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Knowing how children coming from a different culture think and talk differently can help the teacher better interview them as part of an oral academic test, for example.
Another important area is forensic investigations. Being aware that Chinese children tend to recall details regarding other people and be brief in their initial response to questions may enable the investigator to allow more time for narrative practice to prepare the child to answer open-ended questions and prompt them with follow up questions.
Also, knowing that Chinese children may be more sensitive and compliant to authority figures – and more obedient to a perpetrator within the family – an interviewer may need to spend more time in building rapport to help the child relax and reduce their perceived authority. They should also be prepared to be patient with reluctance in disclosing abuse within families.
While children are unique and develop at their own pace, the cultural influence on their development is clearly considerable. It may even affect how quickly children reach different developmental milestones, but research on this complicated subject is still inconclusive. Importantly, knowledge about cultural differences can also help us pin down what all children have in common: an insatiable curiosity about the world and a love for the people around them.
#TalkBU is a monthly lunchtime seminar on Talbot Campus, open to all students and staff at Bournemouth University and free to attend. Come along to learn, discuss and engage in a 20-30 minute presentation by an academic or guest speaker talking about their research and findings, with a Q&A to finish.
Often our New Year resolutions involve changing unhealthy habits in the coming year. But how many of us have actually managed to change our unhealthy lifestyle and maintained it? Changes can be stressful, but how one manages the change can potentially ease that stress and make the change more achievable, which can potentially impact our physical and psychological well-being.
In this talk, Dr Fiona Ling will discuss her research that centres around physical activity behaviour change, and the extended implications on changing other health habits and public health promotions in order to encourage a healthy lifestyle.
#TalkBU is a monthly lunchtime seminar on Talbot Campus, open to all students and staff at Bournemouth University and free to attend. Come along to learn, discuss and engage in a 20-30 minute presentation by an academic or guest speaker talking about their research and findings, with a Q&A to finish.
Often our New Year resolutions involve changing unhealthy habits in the coming year. But how many of us have actually managed to change our unhealthy lifestyle and maintained it? Changes can be stressful, but how one manages the change can potentially ease that stress and make the change more achievable, which can potentially impact our physical and psychological well-being.
In this talk, Dr Fiona Ling will discuss her research that centres around physical activity behaviour change, and the extended implications on changing other health habits and public health promotions in order to encourage a healthy lifestyle.
The horses are trained to give clear and unbiased feedback on mental and emotional self control. Tasks are progressive and challenging, requiring the participants to remain calm and focused… or lose the plot!
Prisoners are coached to overcome frustration and failure by taking control over their thoughts and feelings. The horses provide both motivation and feedback, and reliably create positive change with even the most difficult individuals.
Initial findings are extremely positive, with participants showing results such as:
better self control
greater engagement with available education
confidence as learners
stronger focus on positive goals
hope
The horsemanship goal of the 7 sessions is to gain Parelli Level 1 accreditation, the more important goal is to have the skills to lead constructive and satisfying lives.
One of the participants has commented: “”I’ve been on anger management courses, alcohol courses, things like that – this is much different, you’re learning it physical, not mental if you know what I mean. It’s helped me more, without a doubt. I don’t like talking. …Normally, with other courses you’re in a group of people… you have to talk about your issues and things like that, but here you get it out in a different way, you’re doing physical things not just talking. I’ve been doing that since I was 6 years of age and it’s never worked. I learnt a lot about myself. I can actually do things. I always say I can’t but I can.”
”From the video based evaluation undertaken so far it is clear to me that this intervention shows real innovation and promise and may indeed have the potential to reduce reoffending. To date there has been no published longitudinal evaluation focused on this type of intervention. It is for this reason that we have committed to undertaking a pilot evaluation.” Dr Ann Hemingway, Bournemouth University, (Public Health Interventions)
Dr Ann Hemingway is also the course lead for BU’s MSc Public Health course (part-time and full-time options). Read more about the course to see how you could bring about positive changes in health promotion and influence policies to improve public health and wellbeing locally, nationally and internationally.
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