Health and Wellbeing
Supporting Psychology Students Research Career Aspirations
PROJECT LEAD: DR PRUDENCE MILLEAR
SDG4: Quality Education
This project is aimed at actively involving youth in research priorities. This psychology youth research proposal aligns with the sustainable development goals of good health and wellbeing. All youth involved chose their own projects and were supported by their academic supervisors. This project aimed to support honours students to communicate their research project findings to a wider audience, beyond the university, such as end-users.
The youth projects are:
Applying systems-thinking to understand the effects of traffic safety culture on young driver speeding behaviour
Evaluation of an implementation intentions intervention for reducing stress-induced eating
The role of self-efficacy in older adults’ engagement in community exercise programs during COVID-19
Cognitive models of neuroticism and hearing speech amidst noise: implications for audiologists.
The recognition-primed decision model in elite football coaches
Exploring the Influence of Information Manipulation on Buyer Decision Making in Darknet Marketplaces
Six youth research team members were part of this project and received stipends to enable their professional development and support them to develop their findings for conferences and academic publications. The findings of three of the projects are outlined below.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
1. Traffic safety culture and young driver speeding behaviour
The aim of this Honours project was to investigate traffic safety culture of young driver sub-groups (females, males, and car enthusiasts) regarding their speeding behaviour. Additionally, the project aimed to examine how factors at the different levels of the road transport system influence traffic safety culture of young drivers. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with a sample of 27 young drivers from Queensland.
Thematic analysis revealed key factors of a general traffic safety culture that exists across the young driver groups. Further, the findings showed that factors across the whole road transport system impact young drivers’ traffic safety culture to varying degrees. The findings provide insight into how the system could be adapted to encourage safer behaviour in young drivers. It is suggested that a holistic approach spanning the road transport system be used to integrate strategies to promote a positive traffic safety culture around speeding within the young driver cohort. A publication outlining the findings of her thesis is currently in draft and is expected to be submitted for peer review soon.
Benefits of the project
This study was exploratory, and its findings contribute to the literature in the young driver safety area by demonstrating the utility of taking systems thinking approach to addressing young driver speeding. This will support other researchers to take similar approaches to other road safety areas. The findings also have implications for road safety practice, confirming some countermeasures already in place while also identifying new approaches that could be taken to reinforce a positive traffic safety culture amongst young drivers in Australia. The findings of the honours project will be shared via a peer-reviewed publication, supported by the YES program.
Photo by Jan Baborák on Unsplash
2. Feasibility and Acceptability of a Theory-Based Online Tool for Reducing Stress-Induced Eating
The aim of this Honours project was to investigate the acceptability of replacement coping strategies for stress-induced eating that participants could seek to implement using behaviour change techniques like implementation intentions. Research questions included:
What are the cues and situations prompting stress-induced eating?
What coping strategies may people enjoy and find useful to replace their stress-induced eating?
Would these strategies be acceptable to form the basis of a plan generated through an implementation intention intervention?
Research outcomes:
There were eight themes of cues and/or situations prompting stress-induced eating, including: (1) daily hassles, (2) tasks to complete, (3) health-related concerns, (4) presence of food and hunger, (5) interpersonal situations, (6) a lack of energy, (7) experiencing negative affect, and (8) seeking comfort. Participant responses indicated a range of factors influencing coping strategy acceptability, including: (1) feasibility, (2) function and utility, (3) personal experiences, and (4) intraindividual factors.
Providing individuals with a range of coping strategies to replace stress-induced eating may be beneficial to promote behaviour change. Interventions might seek to employ behaviour change methods like implementation intentions to account for both automatic and reasoned processes underpinning behaviour and in doing so, assist individuals in reducing their stress-induced eating. Consideration of the factors seen here to influence coping strategy acceptability may aid not only intervention design for stress-induced eating but also for changing coping responses more broadly.
Benefits of this project
This study was able to provide valuable insight into stress-induced eating behaviour and indicate the acceptability of the pairing of replacement coping strategies with implementation intentions activity. More broadly, factors seen here to influence acceptability of replacement coping strategy could inform intervention design when seeking to change coping responses.
3. The role of self-efficacy in older adults’ engagement in community exercise programs during COVID-19
This Honours project used focus groups to investigate the psychological processes older adults used to adapt their exercise behaviours when their community exercise program was unavailable due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The findings of this project relate to participants reported a range of factors contributing to their self-efficacy to engage in exercise following a community exercise program pause. These were classified according to the personal, behavioural, or environmental factors. Personal factors included applying mastery experiences from previous community exercise participation, needing verbal persuasion to incentivise exercising alone, and the influence of earlier affective experiences related to exercise (e.g., knowing exercise would be enjoyable). Environmental factors included access to an alternative support, and access to other physical resources. Behavioural factors included engaging in alternative forms of exercise and reducing the amount of exercise performed during program pauses.
Benefits of the project
This Honours study formed part of a broader collaboration between UniSC researchers from psychology, exercise physiology, applied science, and dietetics, along with a Sunshine Coast Council representative and CQU researchers. The collaboration and subsequent manuscript submission strengthen interdisciplinary work and opportunities at UniSC and may contribute to our reputation as a university conducting innovative research in the area of healthy ageing.
In terms of societal benefit, in recent times community exercise programs have been subject to disruption due to natural disasters, changes to funding structures, labour shortages and the recent global pandemic. Understanding psychological processes that contribute to individuals’ continuation of health behaviours in suboptimal conditions may be key to ensuring consistency of participation. This project provided information on the ways in which older adults were able to leverage their self-efficacy to continue to exercise during a community exercise program disruption via personal, environmental, and behavioural factors.