Drinking and harm reduction
A realistic and fun focus for reducing young people’s drinking?
The people behind Global Drug Survey have just launched a new website called One Too Many. Rather than conveying the usual messages about reducing alcohol units or long term health consequences of drinking, this website aims to help users discover how much of an A.R.S.E (or idiot) they become when drunk.
Fun at my Halloween party with my unit measure plastic beakers
One Too Many invites you to answer 20 questions about some of the shameful and less fun consequences of getting drunk. At the end you’ll receive an Alcohol Related Social Embarrassment (ARSE) Score. At this point, you can invite your friends to rate how much of an ARSE you are too, as well as sharing your score on social media.
It will be interesting to see what users think of this approach, which hopes to encourages a change in drinking behaviour by targeting our natural desire to be seen in a positive light by friends and peers. Young people I spoke to about the website certainly agreed that they would feel mortified to admit most of these outcomes. Of most concern was the potential for incriminating pictures to be posted on social media.
It is important to acknowledge that much of the current advice and guidance around alcohol is simply unrealistic in light of young people’s actual experiences. For example, many people are unaware of what a unit of alcohol actual relates to, and even fewer will be counting their units on a night out. This means that health campaigns and messages are often ignored, or even laughed at by their intended audience.
Getting your personal ARSE score is a humorous way to get a serious message across, and the content is aimed at young adults. It is hoped that being confronted by the undesirable scenarios, as well as thinking about friends’ perceptions of their behaviour, will lead users to reconsider their alcohol consumption. Research is needed to ascertain the effectiveness of this kind of approach, but it certainly has the potential to offer something new.
In my own current research, I’m looking at ways to reduce alcohol misuse in young adolescents under the age of 15. In this age group it is also important to acknowledge the normative nature of drinking and to develop harm reduction focused interventions that contain credible messages. This remains challenging, but is an important area for research to reduce alcohol related harm.
Check it out your own ARSE score here – what do you think?
Some selected related references
Boniface, S., Kneale, J., & Shelton, N. (2013). Actual and Perceived Units of Alcohol in a Self-Defined “Usual Glass” of Alcoholic Drinks in England. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 37(6), 978-983. doi: 10.1111/acer.12046
De Visser, R. O., & Birch, J. D. (2012). My cup runneth over: Young people’s lack of knowledge of low-risk drinking guidelines. Drug and Alcohol Review, 31(2), 206-212. doi: 10.1111/j.1465-3362.2011.00371.x
De Visser, R. O., Wheeler, Z., Abraham, C., & Smith, J. A. (2013). “Drinking is our modern way of bonding”: Young people’s beliefs about interventions to encourage moderate drinking. Psychology & Health, null-null. doi: 10.1080/08870446.2013.828293
Nicholls, J. (2009). Young people, alcohol and the news: preliminary findings (Vol. Alcohol insight 67): Alcohol Research UK.
Developing interventions
Development and specification of novel behavioural interventions
Workshop at the European Society for Prevention Research (EUSPR) Conference 2013 Paris 13th November 2013
Workshop slides
Comments and feedback welcome
<div style=”margin-bottom:5px”> <strong> <a href=”https://www.slideshare.net/i_am_emma/euspr-workshop-final-emma-davies-13th-november-2013″ title=”EUSPR SPAN workshop on developing interventions Emma L Davies” target=”_blank”>EUSPR SPAN workshop on developing interventions Emma L Davies</a> </strong> from <strong><a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/i_am_emma” target=”_blank”>i_am_emma</a></strong> </div>
Please let me have your comments and feedback below
How Twitter ‘saved’ my PhD
A quick post for a presentation to the Oxford Brookes Health and Life Sciences Social Media Club Friday 8th November
Apparently I once said to Anne Osterrieder that Twitter had saved my PhD. While not strictly true (it is as yet unsaved), I have benefited from using Twitter during my PhD in many different ways.
Here’s how Twitter ‘saved’ my PhD in five tweets…
1) Networking (conferences and future collaborators)
2) Keeping up with the latest research
3) Seeing your topic from a multidisciplinary perspective and generating debate
4) Research recruitment
Issue with recruitment led to
5) Support from other students
Note: My PhD has not been saved – submitted but not saved
Blogging workshop at PsyPAG 2013
Blogging workshop at PsyPAG 2013
A workshop at the PsyPAG 2013 conferenced aimed to explore the benefits of blogging for postgraduate students. Dr Christian Jarrett from the @ResearchDigest was our guest speaker for the session which was put together by Emma Davies, Fleur Michelle Coiffait, Dan Jolley and Fabio Zucchelli
Delegates were encouraged to think about what they wanted from the session
It must be true, I read it on the web!
Interesting post from Dawn Branley which considers the way in which we have come to trust online information. Young people often use the web for drug and alcohol information so it is vital that there are reliable sources to counter some of the myths and misinformation
Is blogging self indulgent?
Continuing on the theme of musical hits of the late 80s/ early 90s today’s blog post is accompanied by Manchester favourites The Stone Roses*.
When we publish a new blog post, is it because we wanna be adored?
At our Faculty Annual Research Conference today I attended a blogging workshop by social media and online communication guru Anne Osterrieder and Marion Waite a teaching fellow with expertise in online distance learning. During the workshop it was evident that colleagues had a number of different views about the purposes of blogging. With the PsyPAG 2013 blogging workshop almost upon us I was really interested in the divergent opinions in the room as it seems likely that our workshop attendees may raise similar issues.
Anne and Marion’s slides list a number of potential benefits and barriers to blogging. As an Open University tutor I was really interested in how blogs had been used in teaching. I sometimes find it challenging to get students to engage in online forums and so I wondered how encouraging personal reflection using a blog might overcome some students’ reluctance to interact using the online tools provided through the module.
In terms of barriers, I can really identify with the issue of time. When Fleur-Michelle and I started the blogging project we planned to post once a month. This has been much much harder than I anticipated. Other barriers that many people agreed with was that they may appear unprofessional, lack confidence or not knowing what to say.
One of our colleagues in the room then raised a common objection suggesting that blogging was self-indulgent in a similar way that Facebook sometimes seems to be full of rather inappropriate over sharing. I can certainly agree with that comment to some extent and I am sure we’ve all got examples of times we have groaned or gasped in horror at something one of our ‘friends’ has posted on social media. But blogging doesn’t have to be the same. If you chose to blog for professional reasons then you can chose just to follow other professional blogs.
I’ll be asking the experienced bloggers in the #postgradblogs workshop what they think about some of these barriers and reporting back after the conference.
My colleague Carolina has also written a response to the workshop on her new blog where she discusses ‘blogger’s block’. Please do read this as well and let us know your thoughts on the topic.
Do we simply just wanna be adored or does blogging have a more useful function?
This is a picture I took when I was made to go and see the Stone Roses play in Heaton Park last summer. They were adored very much by their fans, most of whom were wearing hats like the guy in this shot.
*I also partly included this song also because I just sat through the new Stone Roses film ‘Made of Stone’ with my partner who was a big fan and actually really enjoyed it!
Motivation
Moving on from terrible ’80s rockers Europe to some cheery Radiohead from the ’90s
One of the really great things about doing a PhD is that you meet a lot of different people along the way. I’m always interested to find out about people’s reasons for undertaking a PhD and this has made me reflect upon my own motivation. In a previous post I mentioned that I felt like I was doing lot of things badly and this was possibly due having a number of competing commitments. I’ve taken on extra responsibilities and got involved with different things because I want to make the most of every opportunity available to me. Even this far down the line (month 30 and counting..) I still don’t really see myself as being the type of person who gets a PhD. When I did my undergraduate degree I wasn’t the greatest of students, in fact I think I only went to university because I wanted to leave home and it seemed like an easy way to do it. In my second year I only went to about four stats lectures, partly because they were at 9am on a Thursday and partly because I was completely intimidated by the subject matter.
Taking a bath at the BPS conference in Harrogate where I helped to host the PsyPAG stand
After university I had no idea what I wanted to do and no confidence. I spent six years working hard, playing hard and making some amazing friends along the way but all the time with the feeling that it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I was increasingly unhappy at this time but one day a chat with a friend lead me to return to study with the Open University. An extremely fortunate turn of events meant that I ended up at Oxford Brookes as a full time psychology demonstrator in 2007. I’m not exaggerating when I say that being offered this job changed my life.
So I know that there is a huge difference in the way that I approach my PhD compared with the high flying students coming straight through the system or the experienced professionals taking a PhD in their area of expertise. It is almost like I have given myself a second chance and I’m going to try as hard as possible to make the most of it. Even if this means working a lot of the time at the moment, and sometimes feeling a bit stressed about certain things. I’m trying to keep hold of the feeling that to be able to do what I am doing is a great privilege and I’m so happy to be enjoying what I do every day.
This is just my reflection on what motivates me to keep going, especially when it all gets a bit much. Everyone has different reasons and different things that spur them on when the going gets tough (but don’t worry I’m not going to link to the video for that song!)
In terms of over-commitment then, as Radiohead so aptly put it, you do it to yourself. I’m off to lie down on the ground now, just don’t ask me why.
The final countdown…
I reached a really important milestone last week; I finished all of my data collection! As the date of my final interview approached I felt excited and was really looking forward to the feeling of switching off the dictaphone for the last time. I’ve faced some challenges in recruiting young people aged 11-17 to talk about alcohol (which would take an entire book to outline, let alone a blog post) and I have only been able to get this far thanks to the kind help I have received from colleagues and friends.
This is a picture from the materials of my ‘think aloud’ study. I’ll talk about this in more detail another time.
In addition, I feel like I have been doing too many things with my time and doing them all badly. From trying to fit in the scheduling of interviews, OU teaching and marking, keeping up with my writing schedule and managing my responsibilities to PsyPAG I was wondering how long it would be before something went terribly wrong. Thankfully it has not (well not in a catastrophic sense at least) but I’ve definitely been neglecting my partner and friends and not been having enough fun or relaxation time.
The feeling of great joy and elation that I was hoping for has not yet materialised but I do feel a good sense of achievement and am looking forward to being able to fully immerse myself in the writing up phase. Linked to this is that one thing that I have learned about blogging is that there needs to be a really coherent thread to a blog. For this reason (and that I don’t have time to take up an exciting new hobby right now) I am going to focus my blog on the writing up process.
As I was thinking about a title for this post this inspiring 80s classic song came into my head*, so here we go it’s the final countdown as I try to bring together my five studies into nine chapters and a coherent thesis!
Clearly, writing this blog post this morning instead of working on the discussion for chapter three illustrates that procrastination is an issue for me at the moment, but given my commitment to the blogging workshop I think it counts as work in ones sense….
* And if you want to know more about this song then check out the wikipedia page (and students if you’re reading then this is an appropriate place to reference wikipedia – your assignment is not)
Blogging workshop accepted
Hooray! Our proposal for a blogging workshop at PsyPAG 2013 was accepted. This means that myself and Fleur-Michelle are going to get down to some serious blogging over the coming months in preparation. We are in talks with a number of exciting and more experienced bloggers to come and share their tips and advice with delegates. More information and indeed more blogging to follow. In the meantime please let me know if you have any blogging advice and watch this space for more news and further details.
Here are a few great blogs by other new and experienced bloggers by some lovely people that I know. These examples show how different people have made blogging work for them and illustrate the variety, breadth of topics, types of posts and purposes of blogging.
Raising Children with Swagger: Lizzie Arkley is a mum to be (very very soon actually) posting about getting ready for the arrival of the baby. Very well written and highly amusing.
Through the Academic Looking Glass Sian Jones is a teaching fellow and researcher posting about life in academia. She is involved in an ESRC research project on humour and bullying.https://alcoholresearch.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=185&action=edit
Jeremy Segrott is a public health researcher interested in how parents, parenting and families can help young people lead healthy lives, and avoid problems like alcohol misuse.
Anna Smith has just quit her job as a a fundraiser for Mind, the mental health charity. She is taking a solo trip through Central and South America. This blog details her previous trip in amusing detail.
For more information about the PsyPAG conference please visit the website. The call for oral and poster presentations opens tomorrow!
http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/psypag2013/
We also have a Crowdvine page
Think of potatoes
Last week, while preparing for a conference presentation, I was struck with a severe case of (what I now know is termed) public speaking anxiety (PSA). I felt sure that I would make a fool of myself, perhaps even more than usual. I thought I might vomit with fear, or say the wrong thing, or convince the audience that I was some kind of imposter.
I turned to my colleagues and friends for advice. “Help, how can I overcome this fear and speak confidently about my research?”. Given that presenting at conferences is an important part of academic life, I hoped for some words of wisdom that would help.
“Think of the audience naked” said one former colleague. This I have heard many times before. Does it actually work? A quick literature search and a Google on the subject proves inconclusive (with some results bringing up more than I had anticipated). Some people really do swear by this, with one blogger (a juggler) suggesting it puts the audience on a lower social standing. I wasn’t sure that I could manage this strategy, I moved on to ask someone else.
“Pretend you are American” said another colleague “American accents sound more confident” he continued. This seems like really really bad advice, given that I can’t do any accents *or impressions. I am not sure what the audience would make of that (or what my American colleagues would say) but perhaps their laughter at my terrible and perhaps insulting attempt would take attention away from my talk…..
Thankfully, I decided to ask another colleague.
“Think of potatoes,” he said. “The audience are all potatoes”. So, rather than imagining them naked, which I though would be hard enough, while concentrating on what I wanted to say, I was to imagine a room full of potatoes. Right. To illustrate the point, he printed me a full colour picture of nine sacks of potatoes and proudly handed it to me.
At this point I realised that my lovely colleagues, whilst well meaning, were not going to provide the solution.
Bodie (2010) suggests a number of techniques to overcome PSA in a review of literature on this topic. Systematic desensitization, where you gradually put yourself in situations of increased anxiety was one such technique. The idea is to start talking to yourself (low anxiety, but perhaps the chance of being caught and people wondering if you are alright) and then slowly moving up to imagining an audience (clothed, I assumed) and then on to actually doing it in front of an audience. Another was communication-orientation modification therapy. This involves being trained to see public speaking more like everyday conversation. Apparently, people high in PSA see the audience as evaluators and if we can be trained to think of the situation as a normal conversation we’ll feel better.
These techniques did sound appealing, but there was no time for me to try them!
Other research evidence suggests that practice helps to reduce anxiety, with one study showing that students who started practicing earlier had fewer signs of anxiety in their speech (Goberman, Hughes, & Haydock, 2011).
So, I practiced and practiced (boring another colleague to sleep with my insistence on practice), I scripted the difficult bits and I practiced again. But I still felt anxious, and highly experienced colleagues suggested this feeling might never go away.
And as for the audience, they were anything but potatoes, and were thankfully fully clothed, attentive, polite and asked thoughtful questions. The anxiety may never go away, but as with many such challenges we can create our own strategies to deal with the situation.
I’d be very interested to hear of any other ‘good’ advice you’ve heard, or suggestions you have for overcoming public speaking anxiety.
References
Bodie, G. D. (2010). A racing heart, rattling knees, and ruminative thoughts: Defining, explaining, and treating public speaking anxiety. Communication Education, 59(1), 70-105. doi: 10.1080/03634520903443849
Goberman, A. M., Hughes, S., & Haydock, T. (2011). Acoustic characteristics of public speaking: Anxiety and practice effects. Speech Communication, 53(6), 867-876. doi: 10.1016/j.specom.2011.02.005
*Disclaimer: I’m really not a Harry Potter fan but I did think the American accent lesson was funny in this video.
alcohol research 