Regression. Progression. Regression. (reblog)

Another great post here from the ‘adopt and keep calm’ blog, this time giving some insight into the links between changes in routine and regression to ‘age-inappropriate’ behaviour for children with traumatic histories.

Follow the link for the post: http://adoptandkeepcalm.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/regression-progression-regression/

You can also follow the author on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jayandaitch

Thinking about (vulner)ability

In September 2012, the British Psychological Society Developmental Section held its annual conference at Strathclyde University. I chaired a symposium with Professor Robin Banerjee on the topic of ‘Social and developmental processes in vulnerable populations of children and young people’.

The symposium explored conceptions of the self and the social world in vulnerable groups of children and young people. The first paper (Nikki Luke & Robin Banerjee) investigated mechanisms linking parental maltreatment to children’s socio-emotional well-being. The second (Fidelma Hanhrahan & Robin Banerjee) presented evidence to support a developmental model for understanding school disaffection. The third (Gwen Lewis & Robin Banerjee) looked at links between possible selves and psychopathologies in young offenders, while the fourth (Clio Berry & Kathy Greenwood) inspected the role of self-beliefs in relation to social inclusion and psychosis. The discussion (Melissa Nolas) addressed conceptual lenses for understanding vulnerability, risk and resilience in young people. Slides for the individual presentations are given below.

Nikki Luke & Robin Banerjee: Socio-emotional outcomes for maltreated children: The role of empathy and social understanding.

Fidelma Hanrahan & Robin Banerjee: ‘I think education is bulls**t’: Understanding the pathway to disaffection in school-excluded young people.

Gwen Lewis & Robin Banerjee: Possible selves and internalizing and externalizing psychopathology: Patterns of associations in youths with and without criminal convictions.

Clio Berry & Kathy Greenwood: Social inclusion for young people with and without psychosis: The roles of negative self-beliefs and relationships with mental health professionals.

Melissa Nolas: Unpacking children and young people’s (vulner)ability: theories, methods and praxis. Please note that this is an abridged version of Melissa’s presentation.

New drama uncovers young people’s true stories

*POWERFUL NEW THEATRE PRODUCTION HITS LONDON*

THE GIRLS is a new production that sees young people play out compelling and moving scenes from their own lives.

“On the eve of the riots in Croydon, four young people sit in an empty room, awaiting yet another compulsory counselling session. They know nothing about each other, or of the circumstances that have brought them all there. Their only common bond: distrust and hatred…”

This drama is sure to be of interest to anyone working with at-risk young people, as well as those who enjoy fact-based storytelling. I’d highly recommend going along to see it.

Tickets can be purchased at The Project’s website, but hurry as the run is for a limited time only.

Ability and vulnerability

On Friday 7th September I will co-chair a symposium of talks at the British Psychological Society’s Developmental Section Conference in Glasgow. The title of the symposium is ‘Social and developmental processes in vulnerable populations of children and young people’, and we have five interesting talks lined up:

1. I will speak about my school-based study comparing abused and neglected children in foster care. This will include an examination of differences (and similarities) in their reputations with peers and feelings about themselves. I will also talk about whether children’s difficulties with social understanding and empathy might explain some of the issues around social and emotional well-being that are associated with maltreatment.
2. Fidelma Hanrahan will be discussing her work with young people in a Pupil Referral Unit. She has interviewed young people in PRUs to help unravel factors that might contribute to the development of disaffection in young people. Fidelma is currently collaborating with a theatre group which works with school excluded young people to create an education resource pack for schools, which will include acted out scenarios based on the young people’s own experiences.
3. Gwen Lewis’s talk will focus on the topic of possible selves and internalising and externalising psychopathology. Gwen has conducted work with young people both with and without criminal convictions, and will discuss the ways in which their thoughts about possible future versions of themselves relate to particular problems.
4. Clio Berry will speak about her research on social inclusion for young people with and without psychosis. In her talk she will examine the links between social inclusion, negative self-beliefs and young people’s relationships with mental health professionals.
5. The symposium will be rounded off with a talk by Melissa Nolas on the topic of ability and vulnerability in young people. Melissa’s presentation will draw on the previous four talks, challenging the way we think about vulnerability and looking at messages of hope for young people in vulnerable situations.

Overall, we hope the symposium will make our audience think about the various ways in which children and young people face risk and display resilience, and that it will provoke discussion on avenues for intervention services that build on existing strengths while addressing specific difficulties.

If you would like a copy of any of these presentations, please contact me after next Friday.

Getting meta every day

A couple of weeks ago I submitted a paper to a journal in the hopes that they will publish it. This is not an unusual occurrence for someone doing a PhD; in fact, it is expected that you will do this at least once or twice during the course of your studies. What made this one stand out for me was the sheer scale of the beast. To paraphrase Brian Cox, if my previous (interview) paper were a grain of sand, this latest paper would be a billion billion billion billion times more massive. An elephant, perhaps, or the average amount of cake I consume in a month.

For this was that most revered and despised of formats, a meta-analysis and systematic review. [I’m not sure that italics do it justice – perhaps some kind of attractive-but-migraine-inducing flash animation would encapsulate the experience better.] Meta-analysis has well and truly broken free of its original bonds to medical research and has established a firm footing in the social sciences. Many students beginning work on a new topic now begin their literature review by seeking out these review papers, and they are often favoured as a more ‘objective’ alternative to the traditional narrative review. The attitude towards meta-analysis has certainly come a long way since Eysenck (1978) called it “An exercise in mega-silliness” – though if you’d asked me a few months ago I might have been inclined to agree with him…

I started work towards this paper (on the links between maltreatment experiences and social understanding) at the beginning of my PhD. I had some vague notions about what a meta-analysis could do and because some of my friends were involved in health psychology, I had heard about the systematic method of conducting reviews. It seemed like this would be a good way for me to establish the current state of knowledge on my topic, as well as helping me to identify any gaps in the literature that I could fill with my own research.

Being the anally retentive soul that I am, I set up several Excel files for different aspects of the search and decided to create an entry for every paper that was suggested by my online searches, to avoid reading the same thing twice. This seemed like a marvellous idea at the time, and although I’m now glad I did it this way, the months spent typing in entries for what became a 7000-odd long list of potential papers are not something I would care to revisit too often. I probably did that first run-through in about 6 months and ended up with about 45 papers, with notes. The project was then put on hold for several months while I was conducting data collection and analysis for my first school-based project, and after another few months of looking at the review it was again set aside when I developed labyrinthitis early last year. So it was that I really only began the serious business of writing up towards the end of last year, by which time I had to update my search and spend a few more weeks staring at those Excel files. Several drafts later, I had something my supervisor and I were both pleased with, and now here we are at the fingers-crossed-the-reviewers-love-it stage.

I’m sure that anyone reading this who has done their own meta-analysis will identify with this pattern of painful progress interspersed with the very real satisfaction of getting to know your topic very well. For anyone who is just beginning a meta-analysis, I have these few pieces of advice to share (fellow m-a veterans, please add your own tips in the comments!):

1. Don’t read anything until you have agreed a very clear search protocol with your colloborators/supervisor. I began my online search with what I thought was a clear list of terms, but several weeks later when my supervisor and I sat down and discussed it properly, we realised it wasn’t inclusive enough and I had to start again. The converse problem comes if your terms are too vague and you end up going off on a tangent. Be more specific than you thought was necessary about search terms, exclusion criteria, and which sources you will use (see below). Being this picky at the start will save you a lot of time later, and if you can write a justification for your exclusions now, you’ve already started writing your paper.
2. You can’t search every possible source, but make sure you are as thorough as possible to avoid the ‘file drawer’ problem. You should really be checking at least a couple of the key online databases for your topic, as well as checking who has cited the papers you select for inclusion and seeing which papers appear on their reference lists. On top of this I did a hand-search of the tables of contents for a number of key journals in my research field – though this might be a reflection of the aforementioned anal retentiveness, rather than a compulsory part of the search process. You should, however, search the databases for unpublished dissertations and contact the author or institution for a copy of any that match your criteria. Finally, email key researchers in your field explaining that you are conducting a meta-analysis and asking if they can recommend any research (their own or other people’s) that you won’t find in the databases – they might be able to recommend someone’s unpublished study or conference paper.
3. Keep well-organised! At the very least you should set up a file listing your included papers and another with details of your meta-analysis. If you are using exclusion criteria for the meta-analysis then make sure this is recorded somewhere too – it’s fine to keep some papers for the systematic review only, as long as you remember why you made that decision.
4. Find a statistical program that you are comfortable using, and stick to it. I used Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) Version 2 by Biostat. It’s not free, but it’s terribly user-friendly and provides clear results, which is especially important if you’ve never done a meta-analysis before. The website offers a free trial (no card details needed and no obligation to purchase), so it’s worth taking a look at even if you decide to go with another program in the end.

So here I am, almost at the end of the process and I can look back and gloss over the pain to concentrate on the lovely end result (I am told this also happens after giving birth). Was it worth it? For me, definitely. Conducting the review has given me a really solid understanding of the research on my topic, much more so than if I’d approached it via the usual method of starting with one set of search terms and then following interesting links until I get overwhelmed. In fact I am now so confident in my knowledge of this particular set of links that when I try to talk about the other strand of my research (on empathy) I feel woefully under-prepared. I now face the task of writing a literature view on the links between maltreatment and empathy, and while this won’t be conducted as a meta-analysis or involve a massive Excel file, I do plan to apply some of the controlled principles of the systematic review to the search procedure.

So my advice to anyone in the early stages of their PhD (or the early stages of any new research project) would be to look into the possibility of doing a meta-analysis and systematic review on your topic. It might seem like ‘mega-silliness’ while you’re bogged down in it, but it will leave in the possession of some very serious knowledge.

Feelings. Nothing more than feelings?

In December, Barnardo’s launched a new television advert which tells the life story of Michael, one of many young people whose lives have been turned around with the help of the UK’s leading children’s charity. If you haven’t seen the ad yet I’d recommend you watch it. It offers a small glimpse of the reality of life for many young people in and on the fringes of the care system.

Like many other viewers, I experienced an emotional reaction to this young man’s story. I was not alone: the stream of comments to Barnardo’s twitter account was testament to the very powerful effect this ad could have. I’m sure that while they were in the process of making the advert, Barnardo’s could only have hoped for this kind of reaction. What they were looking to prompt in their viewers was empathy.

Empathy plays a large part in my research*, but it is one of those tricky psychological concepts for which there is no consensus on a definition. Everyday usage of the word might suggest that empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, particularly with regard to how they are feeling; yet the full meaning of empathy encompasses more than just understanding feelings. Levenson and Ruef’s (1992) review of the literature on empathy distinguishes definitions based on three qualities: “knowing what another person is feeling… feeling what another person is feeling… and responding compassionately to another person’s distress.” (p234) What really struck me on seeing the Barnardo’s ad was that in order for its message to be successful, the viewer was required to display all three of these aspects of empathy: they needed to understand how Michael was feeling and why he felt that way, to have their own emotional reaction to his situation, and to be prompted to make a donation that would help Barnardo’s continue to support similar young people. Knowing, feeling, acting.

In contrast, the subject of the ad might not be expected to display this full range of empathic responses. As part of my research I look at empathy in maltreated children like Michael, whose extreme parenting experiences have a clear effect on their emotional development. Our meta-analysis of research on maltreatment and emotion knowledge suggests that while abused and neglected children have some difficulty recognising other people’s feelings, they struggle even more with understanding the causes of emotions. As well as these difficulties with the cognitive aspect of empathy, my interviews with foster carers suggest that some maltreated children also have a problem with affective and behavioural empathic responses: sadness in others makes them anxious, not sad, and they don’t know how to offer comfort. This can have very real social effects: children who cannot offer a ‘prosocial’ response are often rejected by their peers – who wants to be friends with someone who laughs when your pet has died?

Knowing, feeling, acting. Helping maltreated children and young people to develop these empathic responses at an age when their peers have been responding in this way automatically for years can be tough. But with the support of carers, practitioners, and organisations like Barnardo’s, Michael and others like him can learn what it is to respond empathically and take a step towards peer acceptance.

* I am currently collecting data on all three aspects of empathy, using a questionnaire designed by Carolien Rieffe and a Test of Emotion Comprehension designed by Francisco Pons. In February I will be fortunate enough to visit Carolien for three weeks to compare our Dutch and English data and to learn more about the art of questionnaire design, thanks to a Postgraduate Study Visit award from the BPS and the generosity of my school. As well as looking at empathy in maltreated children now in foster care, in my studies with primary school children I also hope to uncover the specific aspects of children’s perceived parenting experiences which relate to their empathic responses, and to see how these might be influencing their peer relationships.

Reference: Levenson, R. W., & Ruef, A. M. (1992). Empathy: A physiological substrate. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 234-246.