BU Research Blog

5 August 2016

Health Promotion intervention planning in rural Nepal

international, PG research, student research, Training Edwin van Teijlingen

Today and yesterday Green Tara Nepal (GTN) staff spent discussing and planning their health promotion intervention in the district of Dhading. The sessions included feedback by the GTN on progress to-date as well as a discussion of their perceptions of the various relevant health needs in the community. BU has been working with GTN for over seven years. [1] Yesterday BU professor Edwin van Teijlingen gave an interactive workshop on communication skills. This morning BU’s Visiting Professor Padam Simkhada from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) outlined key health promotion concepts and theories to the fieldworkers.

This particular post-disaster health promotion project grew out of years of research-based interventions run by GTN and the needs seen in areas affected by last years’ serious earthquakes in Nepal. The project has received support from various funding agencies, including Green Tara Trust, a London-based Buddhist charity. The training is being held in Dhadingbesi, about four hours drive away from the capital Kathmandu. The various photos with this blog show the results of a social mapping exercise. These included some beautifully hand-drawn maps of the individual wards in the area, indicating where the health post is situated, but more importantly the house of currently pregnant women.

Several GTN project have been, or ar currently, evaluated by FHSS Ph.D. students. The GTN project in Pharping has been evaluated by Sheetal Sharma, who has published several papers from this research.[2-4] The GTN project in Nawalparasi is currently being studied by Preeti Mahato, who has also already published from her thesis research despite being less than halfway through. [5] Prof. Padam Simkhada is external supervisor for both these BU Ph.D students.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

References:

van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P, Stephen J, Simkhada B, Woodes Rogers S, Sharma S. (2012) Making the best use of all resources: developing a health promotion intervention in rural Nepal. Health Renaissance 10(3): 229-235. healthrenaissance.org.np/uploads/7141_24852_1_PB.pdf
Sharma, S., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Angell, C., Simkhada, P. (2016) Dirty and 40 days in the wilderness: Eliciting childbirth and postnatal cultural practices and beliefs in Nepal BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 16: 147 https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-0938-4
Sharma, S., van Teijlingen, E., Belizán, J.M., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P., Sicuri, E. (2016) Measuring What Works: An impact evaluation of women’s groups on maternal health uptake in rural Nepal, PLOS One 11(5): e0155144 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0155144
Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P., Sharma, S., Mahato, P. (2016) Sustainable Development Goals: relevance to maternal & child health in Nepal. Health Prospect 15(1):9-10. healthprospect.org/archives/15/1/3.pdf
Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Angell, C. (2016) Birthing centres in Nepal: Recent developments, obstacles and opportunities, Journal of Asian Midwives 3(1): 18-30. http://ecommons.aku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=jam
Mahato, P.K., Regmi, P.R., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Angell, C., Sathian, B. (2015) Birthing centre infrastructure in Nepal post 2015 earthquake. Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 5(4): 518-519. http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/14260/11579

2 August 2016

Widening Participation: a practice of hope

Centre for Excellence in Learning Alex Wardrop

Silver Clouds, Billy Kruger and Andy Warhol 1966

Our Fair Access Researchers have written a blog-post exploring the necessity of hope and solidarity for widening participation – particularly when any glimpse of a silver cloud seems very out of reach.

Drawing on the work of José Esteban Muñoz, our researchers see hope as a troubling but very necessary thing for those working to transform higher education:

“Practicing educated hope, participating in a mode of revolutionary consciousness, is not simply conforming to one group’s doxa at the expense of another’s…It is not about announcing the way things ought to be, but, instead, imagining what things could be. It is thinking beyond the narrative of what stands for the world today by seeing it as not enough” (from Duggan and Muñoz, 2009: 278).

One of the cornerstones of the Fair Access Research project is that it is through working and learning together that just such a hope can be practiced.

Developing the thinking that underpinned an article that suggested how research can be used to better enable and embed an institutional culture that works for social justice, Maggie and Alex are now researching how the ideas, rhetoric and policies of widening participation are being learnt in different organisations. To contribute to this research and share your learning, please do complete our survey for the sector to help understand this more. They will be going up to Liverpool over the coming weeks to do some fieldwork with colleagues in different organisations.

For more information about the Fair Access Research project please email the Principal InvestigatorsDr Vanessa Heaslip and Dr Clive Hunt.

1 August 2016

Elderly people, are they physically active? A questionnaire in the Bournemouth area.

Francesco Ferraro

Freddie and Jamie are two college students visiting BU thanks to the collaboration with the Nuffield Project.

Their aim will be to produce an epidemiological study in the Bournemouth area using the The Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly (PASE).

This is their abstract:

The Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly (PASE) questionnaire is a common means of assessing the self-reported physical activity in the elderly over a 7 day period, as it is quite simple to administer, it can be carried out in a short period of time, via interview or self-administration (such as a survey) over a large group of subjects. Due to the ease of use, it is often core founding piece of research that occurs in the vast majority of epidemiological studies that revolve around the age group of approximately 65 years and above. One of the key benefits of the scale/questionnaire is how it gives clear and concise numerical results for an individual’s results based on very few basic calculations and how the activities it refers to are on different levels. These can consist of occupational, household and leisure activities however, all have to be within the previous seven days. It also consists of light, moderate and high-intensity activities as well as strength training (Casartelli, Nicola C. 2015).

Originally, when the PASE test came about, the method for assessing its reliability was by using a test-retest system. This is where two of the same type of test are carried out, one at the start of the testing and one after a given period of time, usually between one week and seven months. The second test however, has to be carried out within a time frame long enough so that people cannot recall answers from the previous assessment, but short enough so that the amount of physical activity they do, doesn’t change substantially. In one experiment carried out, the test retest coefficient (Pearson’s) reliability was approximately 1 for both a 3-day interval, and for a 3-week interval. Thus showing the results are easily scored using reliable methods and equipment.

The PASE is a well-established and trialled questionnaire that has been used hundreds of times as an index to understand the amount of physical activity that occurs within a community (Logan et al. 2013). It is also a very small test which takes 5-15 minutes to complete (or even less) for 12 questions.

The questionnaire was also carried out in an investigation in Japan (Hagiwara, A 2008), this had a large sample of 325 elderly subjects (aged 65+). In this investigation, validity was calculated using Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient PASE scores and an accelerometer. Other correlations involving grip strength, body fat percentage, and reliability in this case was tested by the test-retest method. The average in this case was 114.9 which is correlated to energy usage and other factors. The consistencies between the first questionnaire PASE scores and the second were high, in this case this version of the PASE was accepted as valid and reliable due to the correlations and consistencies acting as supporting evidence.

The PASE questionnaire is not only used for the study of healthy elderly adults, it is also utilised for other reasons such as; Does It Predict Physical Health? , Patients After Total Hip Arthroplasty (Casartelli, Nicola C.2015) and for measures in lung cancer (Granger, C. L 2015) as well as many more, showing that this test is a very well respected and used method for scoring different categories of people.

Some reports of the PASE questionnaire say that a larger sample size is needed to gather precise validity and reliability estimates (Casartelli, Nicola C. 2015) however, most resources looked at have a suitable sample size, and some suggesting/ stating that a large group of subjects are needed Amongst the PASE questionnaire, there are two other reliable self-report questionnaires such as CHAMPS and YPAS, however resources suggest the PASE is the simplest and easiest to carry out and interpret.

If you would like to help them please complete the questionnaire HERE

Their project is part of a fall prevention research. More information can be find clicking HERE

29 July 2016

Fieldwork preparation in Nepal

international, PG research Edwin van Teijlingen

If you have a number of research projects running in the same location it pays to combine some of the preparation. Thus as part of five different studies and one PhD project, I’m currently in Kathmandu. The projects are (1) the THET-funded intervention in Nawalparasi; (2) the CEL-funded qualitative research led by Dr. Catherine Angell on CPD (Continuous Professional Development); (3) the FHSS-funded project on transgender which is led by Dr. Pramod Regmi; (4) the FHSS-funded project with Pourakhi which supports Nepali women returning home after having been abroad as migrant workers; and (5) the Green Tara Trust funded project on improving maternal health care in Dhading and Nawalparasi, and the FHSS PhD project is that of Mrs. Preeti Mahato. Two of the project and the PhD topcic are closely related as all three cover maternity care in one for or another in Nawalparasi. The planning meetings we are having in Nepal involve planning training sessions and workshops, resource allocation and research preparation.

Fortunately, it is not all work. Today I enjoyed Kheer (Achar and Chana) for lunch in the Green Tara flat in Kathmandu a lovely rice pudding with slightly sour green vegetables and chick peas (see photo). The actual meal is traditionally health tomorrow but as this is the weekend the staff brought it one day forward so that I could join in too.

Finally, I like to thank colleagues who gave me mobile phones and a camera. One of the mobile phones is already in use by one of the Nepali charity workers in Kathmandu. I bought a new battery and memory card for camera in the UK and it is working fine, the photo with this blog has been taken with the donated camera!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (writing from Nepal).

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health Research

25 July 2016

New paper Dr. Pramod Regmi

Publishing, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

Dr. Pramod Regmi in FHSS published his latest paper today in the South East Asia Journal of Public Health. The paper ‘Priority public health interventions and research agendas in post-earthquake Nepal’ is co-authored with researchers based in New Zealand, Nepal and the UK [1]. The authors reminds the readers that natural disasters cause huge damage to infrastructure, economies as well as population health. Nepal’s 2015 earthquake has multiple effects on population health and health services delivery. Many public health facilities, mostly health posts or sub-healthposts, were damaged or completely destroyed. Priority health services such as immunisation and antenatal care were also seriously affected.

The earthquake has prompted the need for a disaster-related population-health-research agenda as well as renewed disaster strategy in post-earthquake Nepal. Meanwhile, it also unveiled the gap in knowledge and practice regarding earthquake resilience in Nepal. The paper arues that there is an opportunity for school-based and community-based interventions in both disaster preparedness and resilience. Nepal can build on experiences from other countries as well as from its own. We have discussed possible impacts of the Nepal earthquake on population health and health system infrastructures. We have also suggested possible public health interventions bestowing active awareness among the population and a research agenda in this regard. We strongly urge for the translation of the National Health Policy (2014) into action, as it prioritizes the need of an earthquake resistant infrastructure as well as the implementation of a disaster response plan.

Reference:

Regmi, PR, Aryal, N., Pant, PR, van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Devkota, B. (2015) Priority public health interventions and research agendas in post-earthquake Nepal South East Asia Journal of Public Health 5(2): 7-12 (http://www.banglajol.info/index.php/SEAJPH/article/view/28307/18835 )

25 July 2016

Research Data Management and you!

Publishing jharris

Research Data Management is a hot topic, especially when applying for grants. We all have our own strategies for managing our data as a product of research. Sometimes data management is in the form of a box or filing cabinet in a locked office, an external hard drive, purchased cloud storage or a hard drive. Whilst this approach is comfortable and familiar, it’s unlikely to comply with funder requirements neither currently nor in the future.

The Library has a created a guide that will help with navigating the diverse requirements of grant funding councils, writing data management plans and all its intricacies. The guide, ‘Research Data Management’ is available here .

We welcome your feedback about this resource, please contact rdm@bournemouth.ac.uk.

There is also a very informative youtube video Data Sharing and Management posted by NYU Health Sciences Library.

8 July 2016

Visible Students/Invisible Needs: a workshop

Centre for Excellence in Learning Alex Wardrop

festival of learning 2 (2) Members of the Fair Access Research project would like to invite you all to a workshop exploring issues of widening participation on Monday 11th July.

During the workshop we will engage in debates and participate in group activities as we work together to make visible the invisible needs of all of our students.

There will be a poster exhibition showcasing the variety of widening participation activities happening across the university.

The workshop is open to staff across all faculties and for professional service staff interested in this area. We want to collectively work to make the university and higher education a more equitable, more socially just place for our students, our selves and our society.

Monday 11th July 2016

10:00 -14:00

EBC 202 and 203

Lunch will be provided.

Here is our invitation. To book a place email awardrop@bournemouth.ac.uk

6 July 2016

New CMMPH paper by PhD student Sheetal Sharma

international, open access, PG research, Publishing, student research, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

Today saw the publication in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth of the paper ‘Dirty and 40 days in the wilderness: Eliciting childbirth and postnatal cultural practices and beliefs in Nepal’ with as lead author FHSS PhD student Sheetal Sharma [1]. This paper argues that pregnancy and childbirth are very much socio-cultural events that carry varying meanings across different societies and cultures. These are often translated into social expectations of what a particular society expects women to do (or not to do) during pregnancy, birth and/or the postnatal period. The study explored beliefs around childbirth in Nepal, a low-income country with a largely Hindu population. The paper then sets these findings in the context of the wider global literature around issues such as periods where women are viewed as polluted (or dirty even) after childbirth.

Sheetal is doing very well with her PhD publications as a few weeks ago her major quantitative findings paper was published in PLOS One [2]. Both papers are published in Open Access journals and therefore easily available to researchers, health promotors, health care providers and health policy-makers in low-income countries. Sheetal evaluated a research project funded by the London-based charity Green Tara Trust. Her PhD is supervised by Dr. Catherine Angell, Prof. Vanora Hundley and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen all nbased in CMMPH with external supervision from BU Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada (liverpool John Moores University).

References:

Sharma, S., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Angell, C., Simkhada, P. (2016) Dirty and 40 days in the wilderness: Eliciting childbirth and postnatal cultural practices and beliefs in Nepal BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 16: 147 https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-0938-4
Sharma, S., van Teijlingen, E., Belizán, J.M., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P., Sicuri, E. (2016) Measuring What Works: An impact evaluation of women’s groups on maternal health uptake in rural Nepal, PLOS One 11(5): e0155144 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0155144

4 July 2016

BU’s LEAP staff & SERT placement students featured in local Indonesian news regarding human elephant conflict in Northern Sumatra

Fusion Investment Fund, Public engagement akorstjens

In June, Dr Amanda Korstjens, 10 UG and 1 PGT student together with MRes student Emma Hankinson and PhD student Chris Marsh from the Life and Environmental Sciences and the Archaeology, Anthropology and Forensic Sciences Departments took part in a field trip to Indonesia run by Dr. Amanda Korstjens to investigate human wildlife conflict and ecotourism in Indonesia. The placements fall within the SERT scheme and the research forms part of LEAP: Landscape Ecology and Primatology http://go-leap.wix.com/home.

HEC_Jun16_Tezar&Rudi_FKL_Langsa_SRT_4501

One of our activities involved a visit to Langsa. In Langsa, in the Aceh province of northern Sumatra, the group met up with Rudi Putra of HAkA and FKL (Forest, Nature, Enviroment of Aceh & Leuser Conservation Forum) and winner of the 2014  Goldman Environmental Prize http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/rudi-putra to discuss the problems faced in preserving the Leuser ecosystem and wildlife in Indonesia.

The group of staff and students first visited the CRU Conservation response unit in Serbajadi Aceh Timur where they met with Tezar Pahlevie, the regional manager of HAkA and FKL, Dedek Makam, the CRU coordinator of the region, and Ilham Fonna, Wildlife Protection Team supervisor for FKL to learn about the problems the wild elephants are facing, including human wildlife conflict, poaching and deforestation. The group were able to meet the captive elephants that are used in protecting and patrolling against poaching and other illegal activities in the area and to chase away marauding wild elephants from plantations.

HEC_Jun16_Tezar&Ilham_CRU_Lokop_SRT_4501

Staff and students then visited a local palm-oil plantation with Tezar Pahlevie to investigate the undergoing human elephant conflict and regular destruction of palm oil plantations in the area. Whilst travelling to the plantation, local journalists, Said Moulana SH from TVRI and Luth Pi from Net TV joined the university group and began filming the events of the day for local Indonesian news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WoaPLDs43g and news articles were also published regarding the events of the day http://pelita8.com/mahasiswa-inggris-kunjungi-kawasan-yang-di-rusak-gajahliar-di-aceh-timur (more can be found below). Once at the plantation, the group explored the impacts that wild elephants are having on surrounding local businesses and communities, including an interview with the plantation manager, Usman Hanapiah and visits to the areas most badly affected by the wild elephants. All of the students were involved in the interview and explored the impacts, attempted resolves and the potential future solutions regarding the human elephant conflict, and the overall future of the plantation and the wild elephants.

HEC_Jun16_BUTeam_Plantation_Langsa_SRT_4501

Many students received funds for the trip from the Departmental International Travel Grant, Global Horizons, or the Project & Placement fund of the Alumni. The Life and Environmental Sciences Department International Travel Grant funded Dr Korstjens’s expenses and those for co-leader Emma Hankinson (MRes student) and Chris Marsh (PhD student), who are currently conducting their field research in Indonesia. The work forms part of LEAP’s elephant project: http://go-leap.wix.com/home#!elephants/c578 which is funded by the International Elephant Foundation M. Phil Kahl fellowship (2016) and Rufford Small Grants (2016) and People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES, 2016)

Written by Nicola Collins who is supporting LEAP as a BU-funded Undergraduate Research Assistant Placement student.

For more information visit:

LEAP: Landscape ecology and Primatology: http://go-leap.wix.com/home

HAkAR: http://www.haka.or.id

FKL: https://www.facebook.com/Forum-Konservasi-Leuser-FKL-219705561560977/

More Indonesian news articles published regarding the palm oil plantation visit:

http://www.tribunnews.com/regional/2016/06/20/mahasiswa-inggris-telitikonflik-antara-gajah-dengan-manusia-di-aceh-timur

http://aceh.tribunnews.com/2016/06/19/mahasiswa-asal-inggris-teliti-konflikgajah-manusia-di-aceh-timur

http://www.kanalaceh.com/2016/06/19/mahasiswa-inggris-teliti-konflikgajah-manusia-di-aceh-timur/

http://www.acehtraffic.com/2016/01/aceh-timur-miliki-cru-serbajadi.html

4 July 2016

Fair Access Research publication: Troubling ideas

Centre for Excellence in Learning Alex Wardrop

Bournemouth University is undertaking a large collaborative research study exploring issues of access to higher education. We are pleased to announce that members of the Fair Access Research project from BU and the University of Liverpool have had an article published in the influential Journal of Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning.

We explored how universities and colleges use research as part of their plans to widen participation and open up higher education to people from disadvantaged backgrounds. They found that while national policy is leading to more institutions mentioning research as part of their Access Agreements; it tends to be in the context of justifying spending rather than leading to significant behaviour change.

The most recent strategic guidance from the Office for Fair Access emphasised the importance of building a community of practice across institutions, with practitioners and academics working and learning together to understand effective practice and the impact of interventions.

It is hoped that when the 2017-18 access agreements are published over the coming months we see a sector engaging much more with research in order to transform thinking, practice and the sector as a whole.

For more information of this paper email Alex Wardrop (awardrop@bournemouth.ac.uk). For more information about the Fair Access Research project email Vanessa Heaslip (vheaslip@bournemouth.ac.uk) and Clive Hunt (chunt@bournemouth.ac.uk)

30 June 2016

Visible Students/Invisible Needs: Fair Access Event

Centre for Excellence in Learning Alex Wardrop

I Extend My Arms 1931 or 1932 Claude Cahun 1894-1954 Purchased 2007 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P79319

I Extend My Arms 1931 or 1932 by Claude Cahun

Monday 11th July

10:00-14:00

EBC 202 and 203

We are living through a time of great change and discontent the sector and the country. Finding spaces for hope, solace and respect seem even more important then they usually do.

Members of the Fair Access Research project are trying to make just such a space on Monday 11th July.

We are extending our arms to you to invite you all to an event where we share with you our research and find ways work and learn together at a time when partnership is so vital.

During the workshop we will engage in debates and participate in group activities as we work together to make visible the invisible needs of all of our students.

There will be a poster exhibition showcasing the variety of widening participation activities happening across the university.

The workshop is open to staff across all faculties and for professional service staff interested in this area. We want to collectively work to make the university and higher education a more equitable, more socially just place for our students, our selves and our society.

Lunch will be provided.

Here is our invitation. To book a place email awardrop@bournemouth.ac.uk

27 June 2016

A great day enjoying Life by the River

Festival of Learning, Public engagement hcrossen

Yesterday the Life by the River Team welcomed over 130 guests to their Festival of Learning Event at the Kingfisher Barn next to the River Stour near Throop. The event was development by Holly Crossen-White and Angela Turner-Wilson from the Public Health Cluster in partnership with Tom Clarke from the RSPB and staff from Bournemouth Borough Council Parks. The aim of the event was to encourage the public to consider the health and wellbeing benefits that can be gained by spending time enjoying the natural environment. Of those who completed an evaluation form 63 % of visitors had never been to this stretch of the River Stour before and all said they planned to return. The Team received lots of positive feedback about the event with visitors saying ‘there was a brilliant atmosphere’ , ‘really relaxing’ and ‘lots of fun for everyone’.

24 June 2016

Best paper award!

international, open access, PG research, Publishing, student research, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

Best Paper for 2015 Award in the international journal Heart. A paper published by Bournemouth University PhD student, Edward Carlton, and his supervisors, Prof. Ahmed Khattab (FHSS) and Prof. Kim Greaves from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia in collaboration with world-renowned hospitals: John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford; Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital in Australia; and Christchurch Hospital in New Zealand has been announced as the Winner of the “Heart Best Paper 2015 Award” [1]. This award is in recognition of the high quality and clinical impact of the paper. The winner for this award were chosen by the Editorial Team from the top 10 papers in each of the following three categories: downloads, citations and Altmetrics Score.

Dr. Edward Carlton has just finished his PhD at BU and he is now working as an Emergency Medicine Consultant in Bristol.

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Reference:

Carlton EW, Cullen L, Than M, Gamble J, Khattab A, Greaves K. A novel diagnostic protocol to identify patients suitable for discharge after a single high-sensitivity troponin. Heart. 2015 Jul;101(13):1041-6. doi: 10.1136/heartjnl-2014-307288. Epub 2015 Feb 17.

23 June 2016

The Sun IS going to shine……

Festival of Learning, Fusion, Public engagement hcrossen

….so why not spend this Sunday enjoying

Life by the River

Members of the Public Health Cluster have been working in partnership with Tom Clarke from the RSPB over the last two years to to promote to the public the many health and wellbeing benefits there are from spending time outside enjoying the natural environment. The Team has also been working with Bournemouth Borough Council, Parks staff and supporting the development of a project based on a stretch of the River Stour. Heritage Lottery funding had enabled the creation of the Kingfisher Barn, a new visitor’s centre alongside the River Stour, near Throop. To showcase the work the project team Holly and Angela (BU), Tom (RSPB) and Bournemouth Parks staff have developed a Festival of Learning Event at the Kingfisher Barn with lots of outdoor activities for visitors of all ages. There will be an opportunity to discover how previous generations have lived their life by the river and there will be some lovely family photos showing how life was that have been generously provided by local families who have also shared their memories and helped Holly bring together the exhibition. There will be some messy things to do too so maybe pack some wellies if you would like to help create a cobb structure with Heidi a local artist who has been working with the Team. The event is this Sunday – 26th June at the Kingfisher Barn between 11am and 3pm.

17 June 2016

New collaborative Nepal paper

international, open access, Publishing, student research Edwin van Teijlingen

Today BU staff and post-graduate students published our latest diabetes paper. In the International Journal of Food, Nutrition and Public Health (IJFNPH) publish by the World Association for Sustainable Development (WASD) you’ll find ‘Diabetes prevention and management in South Asia: a call for action‘.

The lead BU author is Dr. Pramod Regmi. he is joint by Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS) PhD student Ms. Folashade Alloh as well as Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen of the Centre for Midwfiery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH). Further national and international co-authors are: Dr. Om Kurmi based at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford; Dr. Nirmal Aryal, from the Department of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand; Dr.Puspa Raj Pant based at the Centre for Child and Adolescent Health, University of the West of England; and Amrit Banstola based in the Faculty of Health and Applied Sciences, also at the University of the West of England.

The paper can be found here! Please note, you need to be a WASD member to login and download this paper. Once you are logged in you will see a ‘Download’ button in the box above. If you do not have a login, you can register to join WASD free of charge.

14 June 2016

New publication Carol Bond & Osman Ahmed

international, Publishing, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

The week saw the publication of a new book by Elsevier (June 9th) Health Through Social Media which contains a chapter by FHSS staff Drs Carol Bond and Osman Ahmed called ‘Patient Empowerment Through Social Media’. Carol and Osman have a wide-ranging experience in researching and publishing about e-health, m-health and social media. They co-authored this topical chapter with a colleague in Australia.

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

8 June 2016

Assessing Undergraduate Research Assistants’ Learning through Participatory Methods

Centre for Excellence in Learning, Fusion Investment Fund, student research Jacqueline Priego

This blog post reports on the progress of the CEL-Fusion Funded project Assessing Undergraduate Research Assistants’ Learning through Participatory Methods (AURAL).

The Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA) is an institutional programme run by BU’s Research and Knowledge Exchange Office (RKEO), which furnishes academics with the financial means to hire a part-time (spring cohort) or full-time (summer cohort) research assistant who works between 75 and 225 hours on the academics’ research projects. This scheme runs twice a year and this year alone attracted 95 applications from academics with the most diverse projects.

Student researchers plan their diaries’ content over pizza and snacks.

Interventions that use a ‘students-as-researchers’ pedagogy, where undergraduate students are involved in research-intensive projects, are increasing in the UK (Walkington, 2015) and internationally (Healey, 2014). BU’s URA programme is an apposite case study given its arrangements of paid research placements, which position the scheme as both research-based and work-based learning. This research contributes to the burgeoning literature on students-as-researchers through its employment of a dialogical participatory research design whereby students actively self-monitor their evolving learning when working on a research project. Through the use of reflective diaries and participatory sessions, students engaged in the process of evaluating the impact of this university-wide scheme.

In this endeavour, RKEO and CEL worked closely to embed the research into the scheme. We matched a participatory planning session for those students taking part in the research with the induction for the entire cohort of URA, so that the timing would be convenient for the majority of them. In addition, the research was run in parallel with their URA placements, and the necessary adjustments were made when students continued working beyond their URA contracts.

The preliminary results of AURAL were reported during CELebrate, through a session that provided a link with other colleagues interested in fostering research-based learning and its university-wide implementation. Twelve students from the spring cohort agreed to take part in the research, but only 7 wrote at least one diary entry and 3 made it to the closing session. All students who agreed to take part are being invited for an in-depth interview, while 17 new participants have been recruited from the summer cohort.

For a flavour of the passages coded under ‘research skills’ gained by participants, see the quotes below:

I learnt how to successfully collect various forms of offline data in order to provide some background data for a study. I have also learnt that the collection process is not a scary as first thought, and confidence and professionalism is key to the collection of good data and a happy participant. The participant feel safe and confident and more willing to participate if you actually look like you know what you’re doing and happy to be doing so (Participant 3, Diary entry 5)

I understood Thematic Analysis a lot better and felt more comfortable doing it now knowing what I was doing (Participant 4, Diary entry 2)

The full results of this scheme will be ready by the end of the summer. Watch this space!

References

Healey, M. (2014). Integrating Undergraduate Research into the Curriculum: International Perspectives on Capstone and Final-year Projects. CUR Quarterly, 34(4), 26-32.
Walkington, H. (2015). Students as researchers: Supporting undergraduate research in the disciplines in higher education. York: Higher Education Academy.

Note: Earlier versions of this text were submitted as part of a number of internal and external applications and presented at CELebrate. The blog post was first published at the CEL Blog, and is reposted here with permission.

6 June 2016

BU to host National Undergraduate Research Conference in April 2017

Centre for Excellence in Learning mgouthro

Bournemouth University is getting ready to host the 7^th BCUR (British Conference in Undergraduate Research) on April 25-26 2017. Previous hosts include: University of Central Lancashire (2011), University of Warwick (2012), Plymouth University (2013), University of Nottingham (2014), University of Winchester (2015), and in 2016 Manchester Metropolitan University. BU has had representation at each of these gatherings previously, and is looking forward to hosting in 2017. At the last gathering in Manchester, the faculty of Management, SciTech and HSS all had undergraduate student abstracts accepted, profiling their research by way of poster session or oral presentations.

Two students who participated at the March 2016 conference in Manchester took a lot away from the enhanced learning experience the conference offered.

Aaron Wornes, final year international hospitality management student who presented his research on The General Attitudes of Self-Service Technology said “The diversity and level of research that was being presented was enthralling. I felt so proud that I was able to share my interests though my own research. My only regret was that I didn’t hear about BCUR sooner, I can’t wait for Bournemouth to host next year”. Edwin Lewis, a final year Tourism Management student made the following observations, “…it has given me time to reflect not only on my own research and what else I could include, but also the wide variety of undergraduate research that is being studied. The conference really helped me understand how important it is to recognise research projects. I am very excited that BU gets to hold BCUR next year”. Edwin presented his dissertation research on The Impacts of Airline Hubs on the European Aviation Market, A Case Study of the Emirates.

The current BU organising committee is taking shape with UET support and is made up of Gail Thomas (CEL), Luciana Esteves, Mary Beth Gouthro (conference co-chairs); representatives from each faculty, ie Maggie Hutchings/Peter Thomas (HSS); Xun He (SciTech); Fiona Cownie (FMC) and Miguel Moital (FoM). Also contributing to the planning are team members from: Marketing Communications, BU Events Team, SUBU and Estates.

Bournemouth Uni is expecting well over 400 delegates to this national research conference next April. It is a great opportunity to showcase the diverse quality of undergraduate research being undertaken at BU and other UK universities in attendance. If you seek further information, please contact any of your faculty colleagues mentioned above or co-chair Mary Beth Gouthro mgouthro@bournemouth.ac.uk.

For more information on BU’s prior involvement in BCUR activities, previous research blog entries can be found below, and follow #BCUR17.

2014:

http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2014/04/24/school-of-tourism-undergraduates-highlight-research-at-national-bcur-gathering-2/

2015:

http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2015/03/02/bu-undergraduate-research-featured-in-houses-of-parliament/

2016:

http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2016/02/16/bu-undergraduate-research-on-show-in-parliament/

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BU to host National Undergraduate Research Conference in April 2017

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