A Research Guide for Health & Clinical Psychology

This must-have, practical guide for trainee psychologists working towards their British Psychological Society (BPS) qualification in either health psychology or clinical psychology is designed to address the key concerns and questions that students often have when applying research designs in real settings.

The book:

- looks specifically at what is required to demonstrate research competence for the qualifications;
- is structured around a simple question-and-answer format, making it easy to navigate;
- is packed full of tips, including on ethical considerations and conducting qualitative and quantitative research designs; and
- uses health and clinical psychology research examples to highlight key issues for trainees.

The silent treatment: Parents’ narratives on sexuality education with their adolescent children

This paper is based on research undertaken in Ireland that sought to understand how parents communicate with their children about sexuality. Forty-three parents were interviewed and data were analysed using analytical induction. Data indicated that while parents tended to pride themselves on the culture of openness to sexuality that prevailed in their home, they often described situations where very little dialogue on the subject actually transpired. However, unlike previous research on the topic that identified parent-related factors (such as ignorance or embarrassment) as the main impediments to parent-young person communication about sex, participants in our study identified the central obstacle to be a reticence on the part of the young person to engage in such dialogue. Participants described various blocking techniques apparently used by the young people, including claims to have full prior knowledge on the issue, physically absenting themselves from the situation, becoming irritated or annoyed, or ridiculing parents' educational efforts. In our analysis, we consider our findings in light of the shifting power of children historically and the new cultural aspiration of maintaining harmonious and democratic relations with one's offspring.

Adolescent men's attitudes in relation to pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes: A systematic review of the literature from 1980-2009

This review article reveals a long-standing gender bias in academic and policy research on adolescent pregnancy, which has led to the neglect of adolescent men's perspectives. The review summarizes the available literature on adolescent men's attitudes in relation to pregnancy occurrence and pregnancy outcomes in the context of addressing three questions: (1) What are adolescent men's attitudes to an adolescent pregnancy? (2) What are adolescent men's attitudes in relation to pregnancy outcomes? (3) What explanations are offered for the identified attitudes to adolescent pregnancy and resolution? The review establishes a foundation for future quantitative and qualitative research on adolescent men's perspectives. It emphasizes that a greater understanding of adolescent men's perspectives could lead to a re-framing of adolescent pregnancy away from being seen solely as a woman's issue. Furthermore, it is argued that the inclusion of adolescent men would lead to more effective adolescent pregnancy prevention and counseling programmes.

Family support, social capital, resilience and adolescent coping

All too often young people are excluded in practice from the general policy and professional consensus that partnership and participation should underpin work with children, young people and their families. If working with troubled and troublesome young people is to be based on family support, it will require not only the clear statement of that policy but also demonstration that it can be applied in practice. Achieving that involves setting out a plausible theory of change that can be rigorously evaluated. This paper suggests a conceptual model that draws on social support theory to harness the ideas of social capital and resilience in a way that can link formal family support interventions to adolescent coping. Research with young people attending three community-based projects for marginalized youth is used to illustrate how validated tools can be used to measure and document the detail of support, resilience, social capital and coping in young people's lives. It is also suggested that there is sufficient fit between the findings emerging from the study and the model to justify the model being more rigorously tested.

Alternative Factor Models and Heritability of the Short Leyton Obsessional Inventory-Children's Version

An alternative models framework was used to test three confirmatory factor analytic models for the Short Leyton Obsessional Inventory-Children's Version (Short LOI-CV) in a general population sample of 517 young adolescent twins (11-16 years). A one-factor model as implicit in current classification systems of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a two-factor obsessions and compulsions model, and a multidimensional model corresponding to the three proposed subscales of the Short LOI-CV (labelled Obsessions/Incompleteness, Numbers/Luck and Cleanliness) were considered. The three-factor model was the only model to provide an adequate explanation of the data. Twin analyses suggested significant quantitative sex differences in heritability for both the Obsessions/Incompleteness and Numbers/Luck dimensions with these being significantly heritable in males only (heritability of 60% and 65% respectively). The correlation between the additive genetic effects for these two dimensions in males was 0.95 suggesting they largely share the same genetic risk factors.