Social Sciences Publications: Recent submissions
Now showing items 1-20 of 1085
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Know the score: Empowering sport choices with a straightforward solutionRisk factors associated with depression in athletes include biological sex, physical pain, and history of sport-related concussion (SRC). However, although there are well-documented benefits of sport and physical activity on mental health, many sportspeople still take the risk of competing in contact sports. Therefore, this infographic, supported by scientific evidence, aims to provide sportspeople with an informed decision on their participation. This infographic can be used by sports clubs or governing bodies to illustrate the risk that SRC has on the mental health of sportspeople. Likewise, it highlights the elevated risk of being in physical pain and being a female sportsperson. Therefore, this infographic provides a simple message to enhance the decision-making process of sportspeople, ensuring they are making a better-informed choice of their sporting participation and making their own cost/reward judgment.
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The Long-term Effect of Civil Conflict on Psychological Well-beingA growing literature shows that exposure to civil conflict could have long-term effects on psychological well-being in adulthood. This paper examines the long-term effects of exposure to the Nigerian civil war on the psychological well-being of heads of household using a difference-in-differences approach. We find that exposure to the civil war is associated with an increase in depressive score or symptoms in later life. We also find gender and locational differences in the effects of the civil war on depressive symptoms. The findings of this paper reveal that illness, household income, ownership of formal accounts, access to electricity, and unemployment, are some of the potential mechanisms through which exposure to conflict could affect depressive symptoms in later life. The findings of this paper support the hypothesis that exposure to shocks such as conflict could have deleterious consequences on well-being in later life.
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Social choice, agency, inclusiveness and capabilitiesThe capability approach is a versatile framework rooted on issues of justice and multidimensional assessment of quality of life developed in the 1980s as an alternative approach to prevailing mainstream development ideas focused narrowly on economic development. Most closely associated with the work of Amartya Sen, it has become of great interest to development scholars from a variety of different disciplines. Much has already been done exploring the conceptual foundations of the capability approach and discussing Sen's contribution to the field, but few books have explored the links between social choice (another field with rich contributions by Sen) and human development issues. Featuring many of the world's leading experts on social choice theory and capability indicators, Social Choice, Agency, Inclusiveness and Capabilities combines these interrelated themes into one volume and fully explores the relevance of social choice to human development.
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Factors affecting new students’ sense of belonging and wellbeing at UniversityA higher sense of belonging has been shown to be associated with general wellbeing among students and its benefits are known to relate to academic and post-academic successes. Yet, we know little about newly enrolled students’ lived experience that links sense of belonging and wellbeing. This small-scale qualitative study (n = 8) showed that an interplay of factors including academic, social, surroundings, and personal space influence new students’ sense of belonging and wellbeing at university and within the discipline. Specifically, our findings revealed that undergraduate and postgraduate (home and international) students have different experiences depending on demographic characteristics such as age, gender as well as socio-economic factors. Further details revealed that enhanced student support is needed to ensure that different groups of students’ needs are addressed in an inclusive manner.
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Readiness assessment in flood risk management and climate adaptation: A mechanism for social innovation?This paper discusses the development and initial trials of a readiness assessment methodology intended to support more informed, ethical and effective processes of project development and stakeholder engagement within an evolving and increasingly challenging context of Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM) in England and Wales. In particular, it considers how and to what extent this approach to readiness assessment can be considered an example of social innovation. Drawing on scholarship about social innovation, the paper also considers challenges within the design and implementation of readiness assessment processes. In turn, this supports an exploration of obstacles to and limitations of social innovation, particularly in the context of far-reaching social-ecological change.
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Rescaling Geoeconomics: The role of local illicit authority in global megaprojectsThis article examines the influence of violent non-state actors (VNSAs) on the construction of large-scale infrastructure projects in conflict-affected territories. Recentering such territories, it challenges state-centric geoeconomic narratives, which often overlook the significant role of local illicit authorities in shaping project outcomes. The study demonstrates how geoeconomic ambitions, such as regional or global influence and energy security, depend on negotiating with local actors in contested territories. The findings reveal the blurred boundaries between domestic and international authority in these regions and suggest that megaprojects must account for multi-scalar authority dynamics. We illustrate our argument by analyzing the construction of two megadam projects: the Hidroituango dam in Colombia’s Antioquia department and the Myitsone dam in Myanmar’s Kachin State. Drawing on original evidence collected during extensive fieldwork comprising semi-structured interviews and observations in these two conflict-affected regions, we show that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and Myanmar’s Kachin Independence Army, respectively, exercised authority in regions where the state’s monopoly on violence was limited. These VNSAs obstructed or facilitated megaprojects based on tactics including extortion and community representation.
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Frontline health care workers' mental health and well-being during the first year of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Analysis of interviews and social media dataThe COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on fractures in health care systems worldwide and continues to have a significant impact, particularly in relation to the health care workforce. Frontline staff have been exposed to unprecedented strain, and delivering care during the pandemic has affected their safety, mental health, and well-being. This study aimed to explore the experiences of health care workers (HCWs) delivering care in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand their well-being needs, experiences, and strategies used to maintain well-being (at individual and organizational levels). We analyzed 94 telephone interviews with HCWs and 2000 tweets about HCWs' mental health during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results were grouped under 6 themes: redeployment, clinical work, and sense of duty; well-being support and HCW's coping strategies; negative mental health effects; organizational support; social network and support; and public and government support. These findings demonstrate the need for open conversations, where staff's well-being needs and the strategies they adopted can be shared and encouraged, rather than implementing top-down psychological interventions alone. At the macro level, the findings also highlighted the impact on HCW's well-being of public and government support as well as the need to ensure protection through personal protective equipment, testing, and vaccines for frontline workers.
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The role of patient and public involvement in rapid qualitative studies: Can we carry out meaningful PPIE with time pressures?Rapid qualitative studies conducted with patient and public involvement can help promote policy-relevant and efficient research. There is a need to understand the experiences of researchers, patients, and members of the public to guide the development of good practice and to determine the extent to which rapid qualitative research can be implemented in PPIE projects. We conducted a qualitative study to explore the experiences of research teams that carried out studies using rapid techniques with patient and public involvement. We carried out 26 interviews with researchers, coordinators, patients, carers, service users and members of the public. This study identified needs which related to practical and time constraints. Rapid qualitative research tends to be limited to certain PPIE groups, and particular phases of the research process. Study findings are rarely discussed with PPIE members. The educational needs of rapid qualitative research were also identified. Researchers and PPIE members considered three main issues: a lack of training on patient involvement for researchers, rapid qualitative research training for PPIE members, and the diversity of PPIE members. We found that rapid researchers were able to involve patients and members of the public in research despite time pressures. The challenges identified in this study can be used to plan future training programmes for researchers and PPIE panel members and develop strategies to recruit PPIE panel members from a wide range of backgrounds. The research aim was to explore the experiences of those carrying out rapid qualitative studies with PPIE. As such, the participants of this study included patients, carers, service users and members of the public, who were interviewed individually. A lived experienced researcher and PPIE member for a hospital conducted the design, data collection and analysis of the study. The study brief was to interview researchers only. The lived-experience researcher initiated the inclusion of PPIE members as participants, therefore strengthening the study design. We shared the draft report with the PPIE participants for participant validation and to maintain a continuous feedback relationship. This led to addressing key issues in designing and involving PPIE members in more meaningful and equal ways. Whilst there is agreement on activities which centre on PPIE, there is no consensus on how to achieve these in high quality rapid qualitative studies.
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Association between nutrition self-efficacy, health locus of control and food choice motives in consumers in nine European countriesWe investigated associations between food choice motives and psychological determinants of dietary health behaviour change (nutrition self-efficacy, NS-E, and health locus of control, HLoC) among 9381 participants (18–65 years, 49.4% females) from nine European countries. Price was the highest rated food choice motive. Higher importance of all motives was associated with higher NS-E and with higher Internal HLoC. Relationships between food choice motives and External HLoC were also in the expected direction in showing negative associations with Health, Natural Content, Weight Control, Mood and Sensory Appeal. Higher External HLoC was also associated with perceived greater importance of ‘external’ motives Ethical Concern, Familiarity and Convenience. Relationships between External HLoC and food choice motives were not all in the expected direction. Price was unrelated to External HLoC. Females rated the importance of all motives higher than males. People with less education ascribed greater importance to Price in motivating food choices. Together, these findings imply that self-efficacy and health locus of control should be considered along with motivations for food choice in dietary health promotion.
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Educators’ Perspectives on University Technology Transfer Processes in the Philippines: A Case StudyAs universities extend the scope of their tasks as educational institutions to include technology transfer and commercialization of their faculty’s and students’ research outputs, it becomes necessary to investigate internal systems that facilitate such processes. Existing literature on technology transfer in the Philippines is mostly focused on the transfer of a specific technology, industry–academe research and development (R&D) collaboration, the experience in a specific industry, or the experience in public Philippine higher education institutions (HEIs). The perspectives of educators and researchers who are the recipients of technology transfer services within Philippine HEIs have, so far, not yet been investigated. This paper aims to fill that gap by interviewing eight educators from four colleges in a Philippine HEI. The findings primarily reveal the importance of internal communications in the university technology transfer process. They also reveal that, aside from entrepreneurship training, educators need to understand the intellectual property rights system to see the potential benefits of intellectual property protection and be able to relate intellectual property rights to their research work. This paper therefore recommends that, to promote intellectual property awareness and academic entrepreneurship in the country, HEIs need to allocate resources for intellectual property education and entrepreneurship training to encourage active participation of researchers in Philippine HEIs in the formal technology transfer process.
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Intersectional marginality: Compounding structural violence against Dalit Christians in IndiaThe limited literature on anti-Christian violence in India focuses on physical forms of violence. This chapter instead shows how the experience of structural violence faced by Dalit Christians is compounded due to the intersecting marginalities of religion and caste. Particularly, this chapter focuses on the structural violence experienced from the state, in the form of the imposition of anti-conversion laws, and the denial of state resources to Dalit Christians such as affirmative action policies. This chapter argues that as the Hindutva ideology has become further embedded in India’s political-legal structure, the situation of structural violence has deepened and compounded.
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Team-Based Learning and Threshold Concepts in Biological Security and Dual-Use: Toward a Transformative Biological Security Pedagogy—The Game Changing Implications of CRISPR/Cas and the Design of a Novel Methodology for Influencing the Culture of Life and Associated Science through Awareness Raising and EducationCRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) gene editing technologies appear to be a game-changer and suggest great potential for genome manipulation and for developments in next-generation therapeutics. Ethical, legal and social concerns have been raised in light of recent applications in humans. Concern also arises in relation to the potential of such developments for misuse. In addressing the post-COVID19 challenges raised by responsible research innovation and in confronting what to do about the vexed question of “dual-use”, we contend that awareness-raising and education concerning the ethical, legal and social implications of scientific research innovation represents a welcome and empowering alternative to top down regulatory responses that may serve to stifle innovation. The design and subsequent implementation of a novel transformative pedagogy combining Team-Based Learning and Threshold Concepts yields both empirical evidence-based metrics for real-time learning. As well as generating novel empirical data-sets for the identification of subject-specific threshold concepts across discrete specialisms in the life sciences, we argue that this hybrid methodology can be used to engage science professionals and students alike in meaningful and much-needed dialogue about developments relating to genome manipulation. We demonstrate how evidence-based threshold concepts can inform the design of bespoke subject-specific training as we suggest was the case from our deployment of team-based learning and threshold concepts during our proof of concept application, prior to the pandemic, during the course of two European Union Human Brain Project training programmes undertaken in 2017 and 2018, with experts in neuroscience research at the Karonlinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
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Male entrapment and its charm warrant: A systematic review characterising male entrapment behaviours of domestic abuse, how they are described and researchedBackground: Research and policy traditionally focus on female victim-survivors of domestic abuse. Therefore, behaviour change approaches for male perpetrators of abuse look at the same, rather than focusing on the root cause of the problem — men who use abusive behaviours. This systematic review aimed to identify studies that characterise entrapment behaviours and how male perpetrators describe those behaviours. Method: The review used a systematic meta-analysis design, conducting an electronic search via databases with a two-stage strategy employed to locate literature and pinpoint key themes and concepts to explore coercive control and male entrapment behaviours of domestic abuse. The protocol was pre-registered on PROSPERO. Nine articles were identified within the review as being of interest, and this paper provides a narrative synthesis which details the results of the systematic review. Results: The narrative synthesis identified unities between some articles, which were labelled as commonalities. There are four commonalities: male behaviour, coercive control, charm and charisma and power. Critically the review only returned one article directly examining male behaviours of entrapment, with the findings still valid a decade later, but shows more research needs to be built upon this. Conclusion: This review showed that male behaviour within domestic abuse is chronically under-researched, and behaviours utilised by male perpetrators of abuse to entrap and coercively control a female partner need further investigation, but that charm and power is an area of interest.
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Affirmative Action in the Educational Sector: A Discriminative Practice or for Promoting Peaceful Living?The article discusses the admission process for Unity schools in Nigeria, which uses affirmative action to ensure the representation of students from all regions of the country. The policy promotes fairness, equity, and justice in education by compensating disadvantaged groups without equal access to opportunities, rights, and ‘social bases of self-respect’. Affirmative action removes obstacles that prevent individuals from pursuing their goals and ensures that all parts of the country are represented. They might not be the most intelligent students, but they are the best in their region. The evidence shows that affirmative action is not discriminatory but relatively justifiable as a temporary measure to reduce the educational imbalance between the northern and southern parts of the country. With limited school spaces and numerous applicants, the admission policy prioritizes diversity, equity, and unity. Without this policy, the schools would be dominated by students from the south of Nigeria, which could lead to conflict and a lack of positive peace. Educational achievement discrepancies, such as disparities in access to quality education, resources, and opportunities, have the potential to breed distrust and conflict within communities.
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Minding some animals but not others: Strategic attributions of mental capacities and moral worth to animals used for food in pescatarians, vegetarians, and omnivoresWhile moral concern for animals has become increasingly important for both consumer food choice and food policy makers, previous research demonstrated that meat eaters attribute lower moral status and mental capacities to animals raised for meat compared to non-food animals. The current research investigated whether this strategic flexibility in moral concern and mind perceptions also occurs when considering aquatic food animals and animals used for dairy and egg products, and the degree to which these concerns and perceptions are evident in pescatarians and vegetarians. We compared perceptions (mind attributions and moral concern) of land food animals versus aquatic food animals, and of animals in the meat versus dairy and egg industry between omnivores (n = 122), pescatarians (n = 118), vegetarians (n = 138), vegans (n = 120), and flexitarians (n = 60). Pescatarians scored lower than other dietary groups on moral concern and mind attribution for aquatic animals relative to farmed land animals. Unlike the other dietary groups, pescatarians and vegetarians scored lower on moral concern and mind attribution for dairy than beef cows and for layer chickens than broiler chickens. These findings demonstrate that pescatarians and vegetarians were flexible in their moral thinking about different types of food animals in ways that suited their consumption habits, even when the same animal was evaluated (e.g., dairy vs beef cows). This research highlights the psychological barriers that might prevent people from reducing animal product consumption and may need to be addressed in interventions to encourage transitioning towards more plant-based diets.
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Citizen attitudes towards the environment and association with perceived threats to the countryside: Evidence from countries in five European biogeographic zonesCitizens play a crucial role in attaining the United Nations 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs). There is growing awareness of the importance of understanding citizen perspectives on environmental issues, in relation to developing and maintaining sustainable lifestyles, and in addressing perceived threats to protection and restoration of ecosystems and biodiversity. This analysis sought to understand people’s attitudes towards environmental conservation, how they relate to perceived threats to the countryside, and to determine how attitudes and perceived threats vary demographically and between countries. A survey was administered to citizens (quota sampled on age, gender, education, and split between rural and urban residency) across five countries representative of differing biogeographical regions (N = 3,190): Czech Republic (n = 649) (Continental); Spain (Mediterranean) (n = 623); Sweden (Boreal) (n = 645); Switzerland (Alpine) (n = 641); United Kingdom (UK) (Atlantic) (n = 632). Attitudes were measured using the Environmental Attitudes Inventory (EAI-24) on 2 factors (utilization; preservation) and perceived threat to the countryside on 1-factor (15 items). Multigroup regression analysis indicated that preservationist attitudes were associated with greater perceived threat to the countryside in all five countries. Higher perceived threat was associated with activities linked to environmental degradation, socio-economic uncertainty and risks in agri-food supply chains in all countries. The “bad behaviour of visitors” was the greatest perceived threat in the Czech Republic, Switzerland and the UK, while “lack of young farmers taking over farming” was the greatest perceived threat in Spain and Sweden. To promote pro-environmental attitudes and obtain greater public support for policies and interventions targeting environmental conservation, communication about environmental threats is needed, together with threat mitigation measures. Raising peoples’ awareness of threats to the countryside through targeted communications could promote pro-environment attitudes and potentially result in pro-environmental behaviours.
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The Challenge of Global Migration - Human Rights, Security and RefugeesThis is a comprehensive study that examines the sources of refugee flows, in particular as they relate to political persecution, trafficking human slavery, and human rights challenges in relation to gender and sexual identity. Liberal democratic states have been contending with significant refugee inflows. The migration of large populations to Europe and North America is driven by various factors, including regional conflicts, the impacts of global warming, political opposition to autocratic regimes, and societal. The purpose of this study is to understand the nature of human rights challenges, to cut through false perceptions and myths in relation to the sources of migration and refugee flows, and to provide a deeper understanding for academics and practitioners in relation to the support for refugees and victims of human slavery.
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Using hybrid qualitative analysis to explore lived experience of motherhood and postnatal depression: A thematic-dialogical approachThis paper illustrates a novel hybrid approach to analysis which offers unique insights into the experience of postnatal depression in British Pakistani-Muslim women, through the prioritising of voice. To do so, we combine thematic and dialogical analysis, using data from a study on motherhood and postnatal depression. Participants were part of the birth cohort ‘Born in Bradford's Better Start’. The rationale for developing a hybridised approach is discussed. The ensuing analyses highlight the role of internal voices and chronotope, which give a detailed insight into women's meaning making of psychological distress and motherhood during the postnatal period. We go onto discuss the strength and limitations of hybridising thematic-dialogical analysis in the context of health research.