BU Research Blog

Latest addition to the PGR Virtual Poster Showcase:

Charlotte Clayton, PhD student in the Faculty of Health & Social Science with this poster entitled:

‘Role of Midwifery continuity of CARE in reducing health inequalities.’

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The impact of living in a deprived area on a low-income, has far reaching consequences on maternal and infant health. Studies show that in England, women living in the most deprived areas have some of the poorest birth outcomes, and are 50% more likely to die due to pregnancy related complications than women in the least deprived neighbourhoods. Between 2010-2020, life expectancy fell for women living in deprived areas in England compared to women living in the least deprived areas, who have experienced increases in their life expectancies. Women from low-income backgrounds are also more likely to report negative maternity care experiences.

The Social Determinants of Health (SDH) are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age. They are themselves influenced by wider societal forces shaping our daily lives, such as the distribution of wealth, power, and resources. The SDH are mostly responsible for health inequity – the unfair and avoidable differences in health status seen within and between different people, populations, and countries. Compared with traditional healthcare which impacts upon approximately 20% of health outcomes, the SDH are estimated to impact upon approximately 40%. Evidence shows that taking action on the SDH affecting women from the most deprived areas alongside the provision of continuity of midwifery care; where there is consistency in the midwife providing hands-on care for a woman and her baby throughout the antenatal, intrapartum, and postnatal periods, improves birth outcomes and reduces health inequalities. How midwives working in caseloading teams providing continuity of care to women with complex social needs in areas of high deprivation, address the SDH as part of their expanding public health role is currently not clear. There is also a lack of contemporary qualitative evidence about the SDH impacting upon childbearing women’s lives in England, from the perspectives of women themselves, which this research seeks to address.

This research will take place in the NHS, in a low-income setting in the South of England, and will follow a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach. Through the use of semi-structured interviews with childbearing women, and midwives working in caseloading teams, the study will generate a grounded theory to help explain how and indeed whether midwives engage with and take action on the SDH as part of their public health role. The study also seeks to better understand the SDH impacting upon women’s lives from their perspectives and what mechanisms exist within the case setting to facilitate or obstruct midwives engagement with the SDH. Examining these domains will contribute to the evidence base about the impact of continuity of midwifery care for women and babies at increased risk of health inequalities. 

Charlotte Clayton is a Clinical Doctoral student in the FHSS and a midwife at University Hospital Southampton. She is due to start data collection once the NHS are able to re-commence their non-Covid 19 research activity. She is supervised by Professor Ann Hemingway, Dr Mel Hughes and Dr Stella Rawnson. Please feel free to get in touch with Charlotte for more information at: claytonc@bournemouth.ac.uk or @femmidwife on Twitter.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact our dedicated admissions team.

This week in our PGR Virtual Poster Showcase:

Ismail Can Kurtuk, PhD student in the Faculty of Management with this poster entitled:

‘The butterfly effect of decisions: Enhancement of teaching-decision making in project management within UK higher education.’

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This research is investigating how to improve the teaching in UK Higher Education of decision-making related to project management. Decision-making is a core element of effective project management, but practitioners have reported that without extensive experience of real-life project management, the decision making of newly qualified professionals is inadequate. As a result, projects are delayed, resources are used ineffectively, risks are increased and opportunities are overlooked. Using an inductive approach based upon interviews and focus groups, this research study will investigate the experience of project managers to develop a better understanding of what how decision-making can be taught more effectively, and from this new perspective, a decision-making teaching framework will be developed and validated for application across UK Higher Education.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact our dedicated admissions team.

Still plenty to share in this PGR Virtual Poster Showcase:

Chris Williams, PhD student in the Faculty of Management with this poster entitled:

‘Accreditation of higher education in the UK: The rise of PSRBs & potential influence.’

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This poster will provide a graphical illustration and analysis of data collected as part of my PhD. The data collected identifies when Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies (PSRB’s) that accredit UK undergraduate degrees began their accreditation programmes. PSRB’s were identified from data held by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and contacted individually to establish when they began accrediting, leading to the collation of a unique set of figures. HESA’s data is used as part of the Key Information Set (KIS) that HE institutions display on their web pages and other printed material. The information is also held by the Office for Students (OfS), the independent regulator of HE in the UK. Further, the poster identifies key events impacting the UK HE sector and provides a brief analysis of any correlation with the commencement of the accreditation schemes that responded.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact our dedicated admissions team.

Next up in the PGR Virtual Poster Showcase:

Hina Tariq, PhD student in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences with this poster entitled:

‘Validation of contracture assessment screening tool.’

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Contractures are a debilitating consequence of prolonged immobility potentially leading to physical impairments, limited functional mobility, decreased independence with everyday activities, and reduced social participation. There is no standard assessment tool available to assess the risk of contracture development or progression. The Contracture Assessment Screening Tool (CAST) was developed by Dorset Health Care University NHS Foundation Trust to address this gap. This project aims to establish the 1) CAST validity and 2) CAST effectiveness in reducing contracture development and progression. Timely identification of those at risk of contracture development or progression may help facilitate contracture prevention and the associated negative sequelae.  To evaluate CAST, a mixed methods approach is being utilised including realist review and evaluation.  Merging different methodologies and a realist approach will provide a unique perspective on CAST validation and use. This project is ongoing and the poster will present the overall methodology and significance of the project.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact our dedicated admissions team.

Taking us into the sixth week of the PGR Virtual Poster Showcase:

Juliette Hecquet, PhD student in the Faculty of Management with this poster entitled:

‘Exploring yoga as a flow experience: A phenomenological study of contemporary communities.’

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The definition of yoga remains fluid and controversial, creating an oxymoron between the philosophical roots of yoga and physical practice. The majority of published academic research is in medicalised fields; however researchers agree yoga has vast positive outcomes with the potential to be valuable in society.  A lack of clarity exists on what the yoga experience now is, with sparse evidence of, non-medical, qualitative research.  The flow experience and the practice of yoga continue to draws parallel’s from a philosophical standpoint.   Yoga can be regarded as one of the oldest and most systematic methods of producing flow experience but has yet to be researched as one. This interpretative phenomenological research aims to explore the lived yoga experience and the potential flow experience, across contemporary yoga communities.  Videos (vlogs) and in-depth semi-structured interviews will explore the research questions; how yoga participants explain their lived yoga experience and the potential flow experience.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact our dedicated admissions team.

Fourth in this PGR Virtual Poster Showcase: 

Lara Christ, visiting PhD student in the Faculty of Management with this poster entitled:

‘Nonprofit brand orientation in emerging countries: Antecedents, barriers and outcomes’

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Considering the importance of the nonprofit organizations in emerging countries, the research aims to develop the elements that constitute the nonprofit brand orientation in emerging countries and identify the antecedents, barriers and outcomes of nonprofit brand orientation.  In this way, the recent literature about the concept was analysed and a theoretical model is going to be proposed. The research is going to be realized in four steps: generation of indicators from an exploratory research, grouping of the indicators in factors, confirmation of the factors and test of the proposed model. We expect to produce a measurement scale of nonprofit brand orientation, antecedents, barriers and outcomes in emerging countries. In addition to the theoretical relevance of a new scale of a concept that has not been approached yet in the marketing literature, the project can contribute to the management of social organizations bringing benefits to society as a whole.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact our dedicated admissions team.

Entering week 3 of the PGR Virtual Poster Showcase

Francesca Dean PhD student in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences with this poster entitled:

‘Exploring the experiences of sport psychologists working within elite youth football in England.’

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Successful performance in sport requires the execution of advanced psychological skills in both training and competition. Although the importance of sport psychology is now widely acknowledged, there is a need for greater clarity regarding (a) what is actually delivered under the banner of sport psychology, and (b) the needs of those receiving psychological support. One sport which is increasingly focusing on the role of psychological development is football—this is occurring via the English Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan. As the first stage of a PhD programme, this study aims to examine the current knowledge and provision of sport psychology services delivered to youth performers within professional football academies in England. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with six sport psychology practitioners working within professional academies in order to gain insight into their understanding of their role, their perception of (sport) psychology, and their experience of delivering psychology services at the academy level.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact our dedicated admissions team.

Next up in the PGR Virtual Poster Showcase:

Kelsie Fletcher, PhD student in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences with this poster entitled:

‘The momentum of grounded theory: Nursing research and new perspectives in disaster management’.

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The purpose of this poster is to explore the background of Grounded Theory evolution to its application in disaster management and nursing theoretical development. It will examine why Grounded theory remains popular and useful in developing professional knowledge in healthcare research and, most importantly, why it is the methodology of choice for understanding the experiences of nurses working in a disaster region. Explicit links will be made to offer clarity of its appropriateness in this field of research and this will be enhanced by reflections of the researcher.  Nurses possess a unique opportunity to develop understanding of emergency management, public health and planning, to enhance potential responses to a disaster. Grounded theory aims to support research in subjects with little or no literature available (Charmaz 2014; Birks and Mills 2015). Due to the researcher’s personal experience in disaster management provision, constructivist grounded theory is considered to be the most appropriate.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact our dedicated admissions team.

Kicking off the PGR Virtual Poster Showcase:

Festus Adedoyin, PhD student in the Faculty of Management with this poster entitled:

‘Energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and tourist arrivals to small island economies dependent on tourism.’

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In less than two decades, the global tourism industry has overtaken the construction industry as one of the bigger polluters, accounting for up to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, research into the causal link between emissions and the tourism industry have increased significantly focusing extensively on top earners from the industry. However, few studies have thoroughly assessed this relationship for small island economies dependent on tourism. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the causal relationship between CO₂ emissions, real GDP per capita, and the tourism industry. The long-run relationship is investigated using Pooled Mean Group ARDL Model. Prior to this, we conduct the Pedroni and Kao cointegration tests, the ADF-Fisher and Im, Perasan Shin unit root tests. We also examine causality using the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) Panel causality tests. Our study seeks to contribute to the energy-growth-tourism debate as well as the feedback mechanism among the variables.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact our dedicated admissions team.