Making preparations

Spent what seemed like an awfully long time this morning making preparations for travel to a conference in May.  Visa waiver application, flights, accommodation,etc. At least it's done now.

Afternoon spent doing some marking, and preparing for tomorrow's classes on two different applied psychology masters programmes: Forensic Psychology and Health Psychology, plus a wee bit of research on an external organisation who've expressed an interest in buying some training from us. 

Really looking forward to Friday when I hope to pick up my OWN work again - if I ever manage to catch up on all the (increasingly terse) emails that are swamping my inbox...

Has it really been so long?

Been busy  - too busy... But back to it:

Supervising a test today for students on the third year option module Applied Health Psychology.  Students took the test online and got their results immediately - nicely meeting the new fast turnaround time for student feedback ;-) - with exception of a few who encountered technical problems and will get their papers manually marked within a day or so.

Some very pleasing results overall.

In the interim, one of my colleagues (Erica Bowen) has been on Radio 4 Women's Hour, discussing her new book on domestic violence. Listen again is highly recommended http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yj189

Not the best day ever...

The day started badly when I turned up to give a guest lecture and found that the room had changed without my knowing.  A colleague, who left for a new post recently, had neglected to mention that the room for my two guest spots had changed.  Embarrassing exit from the room I had set up my presentation in, several phone calls later and a chance meeting with one of the students in the corridor... eventually turned up to the new room to find that all but one of the students had left - v. frustrating.

Then got some horrible news at lunch time about the health of one of my valued research collaborators - which put things in perspective somewhat.  We are all thinking about her and wishing her the best for the tough few months she's likely to have ahead.

Feedback on student presentations

Pleasant session today with third year students on the Health & Lifestyle Management degree - giving feedback on a practice presentation.

We ask our students to prepare a presentation as if for a job interview. Today's was for a post working as a healthy lifestyle support worker in a forensic mental health unit. A particular focus was on the ethical dilemmas that one might face in working in this setting.

We give students video recordings of their presentations so they can view and critique their own performance.

Also advertised another voluntary research internship: focusing on assistance dogs placed with families where a child has a developmental disability.

Tick tick tick

Have just finished some marking on the Health & Lifestyle Management course - to meet our new super-fast feedback turnaround time - and it's the end of the working week already.  Students have said some nice things about their experience of the Health Behaviour Change module we offer, which includes the following: 

Motivational interviewing knowledge and skills refresher

MI with sent clients, with groups, in rehab settings.

CBT refresher

Lay-led and peer-led health behaviour change interventions

Classifying health behavioural change interventions

Publicly funded health behaviour change programmes in the UK and beyond

Intervention mapping : health behaviour change programmes in the UK and beyond

Key ethical issues in research on health and lifestyle management

Key ethical issues in practice in health and lifestyle management

The different roles played by professionals working in health and lifestyle management

Diversity awareness issues working in health and lifestyle management

Meanwhile - I have a new(to me via ebay) shed AND it's potato day at Ryton Organic Gardens tomorrow - my joy is complete...

Since Monday

Since Monday have forgotten to post.  Monday night was teaching until 8.30 pm for part-time students, so got thrown slightly off kilter in my posting habits.

Tuesday teaching social psychology, with a focus on personal construct psychology:

Doster, J. A., Mielke, R. K., Riley, C. A., Toledo, J. R., Goven, A. J., & Moorefield, R. (2006). Play and health among a group of adult business executives. Social Behavior and Personality, 34(9), 1071-1080.

Weiss, P. A., Watson, N., & McGuire, H. (2003). Smoking and self-concept in young adults: An idiographic method of measurement. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 16(4), 323-334.

Wednesday meeting with student representatives as part of the student forum.  As final year tutor for psychology I was especially keen to find out what we can do to help our soon-to-be-graduates with their employment prospects.  Given that it's just been announced that graduate unemployment is at 20% they will need all the help we can give them.

Bumpass Hell

Ok so the bubble has been burst.

I opened the editor's decision email referred to in yesterday's post. It was a rejection...

Editor's comment:

Thank you for allowing us to consider this work for (name of journal). At this point your paper has been reviewed by one expert reviewer only, who has presented us with a quite brief review. In order to avoid a delay I decided not to invite more reviewers. However, we have subjected your paper to a thorough editorial evaluation.

Reviewer #1: I enjoyed reading the paper which makes a worthy contribution to an under-researched area. Although the paper is well-structured, I have a number of minor suggestions to improve it...

Editor's comment:
Because of an increase in submissions, we can only publish a minority of the manuscripts we receive. Space constraints dictate that that to an increasing extent we may publish only those manuscripts providing significantly novel insights or new perspectives.

Sadly, this means that we are unable to publish many manuscripts of significant quality. I must regretfully inform you that based on the review and our editorial evaluation your paper did not reach a high enough priority to be further considered for publication.

Sob