Institute for Social Sciences Research (ISSR) newsletter - June 5 2020

Today we recognise World Environment Day and to mark the occasion, it is fitting that we hear from Prof Colin Reid, Professor of Environmental Law in the School of Social Sciences.

World Environment Day 5 June is organised by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to encourage worldwide awareness and action for the protection of the environment. This year’s theme is 'Time for Nature', with a focus on its role in providing the essential infrastructure that supports life on Earth and human development. The current Covid-19 crisis has given many of us the opportunity to appreciate the value of nature for our well-being but also shown how our modern technological society does not exist in invulnerable isolation. The climate and biodiversity crises the world faces may be engulfing us more slowly that a pandemic, but are much more certain and much more destructive of the capacity of the societies we have developed to continue as they are today. Working out how to make a time and place for nature is vital as we resume our former lives, and is a challenge that ISSR is well placed to address.

Also, this week is Volunteers Week and we want to say a big thank you to all volunteers who selflessly dedicate their time to help deliver crucial services through these difficult times.

Sending happy positive thoughts and I hope you all enjoy the weekend.

Love books and podcasts?

Love books and podcasts? This one is for you! School of Education & Social Work lecturer Jonathan Brown has started a fantastic University of Dundee Book Club podcast during lockdown for your listening pleasure! The podcast aims to interview staff across the campus about the books that have impacted them on a personal and/or professional level. It’s been live for just over two weeks now.

Find out more information in a recent blog post from Dundee Uni Culture

Newly Announced

Honorary Professor, University of Cape Town

Congratulations to Professor Lorraine van Blerk, Professor and Personal Chair of Human Geography in the School of Social Sciences on receiving Honorary Professor in the Children’s Institute, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town for a period of five years with effect from 1 June 2020 to 31 May 2025.

Extractives Hub Webinar Series

The Energy Transition Debate: Is Africa Ready to Bid Farewell to Fossil Fuels?

The Extractives Hub brings you another webinar via ZOOM on Monday 8 June at 1pm.

SPRE Policy & Research webinars 11, 16 and 23 June 2020

The Scottish Policy and Research Exchange are working with the Improvement Service to consider ways in which local authorities might learn from the rapid transformation that has occurred during Covid-19 and take the best of the responses forward into renewal. This would also consider what any new operating model for councils might start to look like and how the mix of services might change and who delivers them (e.g. community volunteers).

School of Health Sciences Research Seminar

The People, Health and Communities Research Group 18 June 12-1pm.

Scoping for Zimbabwe’s Affordability for a Universal Social Pension Scheme

Presenter: Henry N. Chikova, ILO Social Security Consultant and Honorary Research Fellow of the School of Health Sciences at the University of Dundee

Abstract

The elderly in Zimbabwe are disproportionately poorer than the rest of the population, yet the Government does not have a comprehensive social pension scheme to address the problem. Only 30% of the elderly have access to a pension because they contributed to a social insurance scheme during their working life. Universal social pensions, which are non-contributory and provided by the State as a right, have been found to be an effective social policy instrument for dealing with old age poverty. Using microsimulation on household survey data, the study showed that a universal social pension for Zimbabwe has the potential to lift the elderly from poverty, and that this can be achieved with a budget of at most 1% of GDP. Zimbabwe should consider implementing a social pension and finance it from a combination of sources.

ISSR Seminar Series

If you missed the opportunity to attend our recent panels, you can view in STREAM and will continue to keep you updated on the next scheduled panels in due course.

If you have a suggestion for speakers, please send in your recommendations by COMMS channel, email or DM.

Research and Impact

How confident are you now? Identifying psychological and neural predictors of suboptimal metacognitive decisions in the general population.

Christopher Benwell, Lecturer in Psychology was recently awarded a small research grant from the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust to carry out a research project.

People who are able to accurately evaluate their behaviour and decisions are said to possess a high level of ‘metacognitive’ insight. Conversely, people who either over- or under-estimate the accuracy of their behaviours and decisions possess low ‘metacognitive’ insight. Metacognition differs widely across individuals and plays a crucial role in the optimisation of learning and decision-making. In an online experiment involving both perceptual and knowledge-based decision-making tasks, we investigated the relationship between metacognitive insight and self-reported personality traits and psychiatric symptom-dimensions in a large, heterogeneous general population sample (N = 400).

Fortunately, this experiment was unaffected by the current COVID-19 social distancing restrictions. Additionally, in a second experiment we will employ electroencephalography (EEG) to uncover the neural activity patterns involved in both decision-making and metacognitive evaluation. This 2nd experiment necessitates face-to-face data collection and will proceed once the social distancing regulations allow for this. If we understand these processes, we may also understand why decisions and self-evaluation are often biased and apparently sub-optimal. This knowledge would facilitate the development of future behavioural and/or pharmacological techniques to optimise accurate self-evaluation.

Severe mental illness and comorbid physical conditions in times of COVID-19

Researchers from the School of Health Sciences are contributing to global efforts to investigate and reduce the burden of disease derived due to multimorbidity, in particular involving mental illnesses. People living with mental illness die on average 10-20 years earlier than the general population. Studies from low- and middle-income countries also show a similar pattern but with an even greater reduction in life expectancy. The vast majority of these excess deaths are due to preventable physical health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes. Almost all physical conditions are more common and their outcomes are poorer for people with mental illness. Reasons for this include a complex combination of the underlying mental disorder, its treatment, socioeconomic inequalities and crucially, disparities in accessing healthcare and lack of effective treatments. The coexistence of mental and physical illness is a major and growing problem, particularly in South Asia, affecting some of the poorest and most vulnerable people. Although prioritised in global health agendas, it remains under-researched.

The aims of the NIHR Global Health Research Group "Improving Outcomes in Mental and Physical Multimorbidity and Developing Research Capacity" (IMPACT; NIHR 17/63/130; led by the University of York) with partner organisations in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan are:

1. To improve health and reduce deaths associated with diabetes, heart and lung diseases in people with severe mental ill health by addressing the most common health risk behaviours.
2. To reduce depression and anxiety in people with chronic physical health conditions

For more information, see the IMPACT web page.

Jan R. Boehnke in the School of Health Sciences, is workstream lead for the measurement of outcomes and contributes in particular expertise in psychological assessment, psychometrics, survey development and sampling. One of the cornerstones of this research programme is the deployment of a health service survey investigating the prevalence of physical disorders and related lifestyle health risk behaviours in people living with severe mental illness. An additional goal as part of an effort to increase research capacity in the region and in partner organisations is to develop a data resource for future research such as trials and cohort studies in this population.

With the COVID-19 crisis this was requested for the first time: There are reasons to suggest that people living with severe mental illness may be disproportionately affected by the outbreak and/or the societal response. Building on the initial data collection, a telephone follow-up survey is now under way that investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its response (e.g. health promotion messaging, lockdown and social distancing) on persons living with SMI in the three partner countries. In planned intervals of about three months information will be collected about participants’ knowledge, attitudes and responses to public health measures to prevent COVID-19; symptoms, diagnosis and testing for COVID-19 amongst participants and their families; participants’ wellbeing and mental health, health risk behaviours, health-related quality of life and access to healthcare; and their housing (including urban/rural location), employment, finances, food security and social support. The goal of this project is to shed a light onto the challenges some of the most vulnerable people in South Asian societies are facing as their social environment is shaped by this unprecedented change of their social environment.

Publishing news

Splitting Accountability Hairs: Anomalies in the Adaptation of IFRS for SMEs in the UK and Ireland

New paper from Theresa Dunne and Ahmed Hassan Ahmed, School of Business Recent years have witnessed a significant shift in the financial reporting frameworks available in the UK and Ireland affecting entities of all sizes with the Financial Reporting Council issuing three financial reporting standards replacing the extant UK GAAP.

This paper reports the results of a content analysis of 151 comment letters sent to the standard-setter in response to its policy proposal. The paper explains why the standard-setter stepped back from its controversial proposal to enforce IFRS for SMEs based on the absence of public accountability.

The Psychology of Physical Distancing

New paper co-authored by Nick Hopkins (Psychology), John Drury and Stephen Reicher. As lockdown rules ease in the UK but distancing guidance remains in place, how can we use group norms to make distancing easier for people at mass gatherings?

Subjective Wellbeing and Sustainable Development

Dr Beverley Searle (Geography and Environmental Sciences) is guest editing a special issue of Sustainability, an international, peer-reviewed Open Access journal. Submission deadline 31 January 2021.

Graduate community

Psychology students have attracted competitive funding

Working with Dr Josephine Ross, research candidate Vicky Armstrong has just been awarded public engagement seed funding to develop their art-based response to reaching families during Covid-19 restrictions. The Art at the Start project, a collaboration between the DCA and Psychology, Vicky began making up boxes of art materials with activity guides and information on the benefits of art making together to deliver to families whose art therapy work with the project had been forced to end. The art boxes allowed the project to still give those families a positive experience of art making together and to help them continue to feel supported. This seed funding will allow the project to expand and start taking referrals for new families who would benefit from some playful, interactions together through getting messy with art materials. We think this will encourage them to try new activities, will help parents feel more connected to their infants and will improve both parent and child's mental health and well-being at a difficult time.

Also, undergraduate Paolo Bucci had been awarded a prestigious Vacation Scholarship from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland to develop research skills in the penultimate year of his degree. He will work with Dr Ross to explore the links between metacognition, perspective taking and self-representation in 16 to 24 month old infants.

ISSR engagement

Get involved

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