Does interpreter-mediated CBT with traumatized refugee people work? A comparison of patient outcomes in East London

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The Development of a Research Programme to Translate and Test the Personal Well-being Questions in Sylheti and Urdu

A pilot research programme was undertaken in order to translate and cognitively test the personal well-being questions developed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the UK into Urdu and Sylheti. These are both complex languages spoken by minority ethnic groups in the UK; monolingual speakers of these languages have been identified as being at risk of lower general health, and thus potentially of a lower well-being than the general UK population. The research programme involved two key stages in the production of these translations: translation workshops and cognitive testing of the translations. The translation workshops brought together experts in questionnaire development and personal well-being with native speakers of the languages from the community and bilingual interviewers in order to attempt to underpin the essence of the four personal well-being measures and arrive at the translation to be tested. The cognitive interviews that followed assessed these translations and the level of appropriateness of these measures with monolingual speakers in the UK. This article discusses the merits of each stage of this research programme in arriving at the best and most suitable translation for the personal well-being questions in Sylheti and Urdu

An Analysis of Early Renal Transplant Protocol Biopsies - the High Incidence of Subclinical Tubulitis

To investigate the possibility that we have been underestimating the true incidence of acute rejection, we began to perform protocol biopsies after kidney transplantation. This analysis looks at the one-week biopsies. Between March 1 and October 1, 1999, 100 adult patients undergoing cadaveric kidney or kidney/pancreas transplantation, or living donor kidney transplantation, underwent 277 biopsies. We focused on the subset of biopsies in patients without delayed graft function (DGF) and with stable or improving renal function, who underwent a biopsy 8.2 ± 2.6 d (range 3-18 d) after transplantation (n = 28). Six (21%) patients with no DGF and with stable or Improving renal function had borderline histopathology, and 7 (25%) had acute tubulitis on the one-week biopsy. Of the 277 kidney biopsies, there was one (0.4%) serious hemorrhagic complication, in a patient receiving low molecular weight heparin; she ultimately recovered and has normal renal function. Her biopsy showed Banff 1B tubulitis. In patients with stable or improving renal allograft function early after transplantation, subclinical tubulitis may be present in a substantial number of patients. This suggests that the true incidence of rejection may be higher than is clinically appreciated

Literacy for What? An Exploration of the Literacy Practices, Relationships, and Schooling Experiences of a Latino Family

In this two-­year post-­critical ethnography, critical literacy was used as a theoretical framework for exploring the literacy practices, relationships, and public schooling experiences of a Latino child, Javier, and his mother, Nina. The study illustrates the push and pull between school and home, and between cognitive and critical literacies, in a way that attends to the complexities of enacting critical literacy practices in a context where schooling is authoritatively maintaining a cognitive, individualized construction of literacy. This authority is compounded by a culture that privileges individual performance on high-­stakes standardized texts and sees difference from the white, middle-­class, academic definition of literacy in deficit terms. Findings highlight the varied and vibrant literacy practices in which Javier and Nina engage, as well as the relationships between child, mother, and researcher. The study reveals how school authoritatively trespasses on these relationships and, in doing so, narrows Javier’s literacy practices and his understanding of literacy. Recommendations are made for researchers and educators to embrace the wealth of literacy practices that exist in students’ homes and to seek spaces in which to engage in critical literacy practices.Doctor of Philosoph

Human substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area involvement in computing social error signals during the ultimatum game

Social norms play an essential role in our societies, and since the social environment is changing constantly, our internal models of it also need to change. In humans, there is mounting evidence that neural structures such as the insula and the ventral striatum are involved in detecting norm violation and updating internal models. However, because of methodological challenges, little is known about the possible involvement of midbrain structures in detecting norm violation and updating internal models of our norms. Here we used high-resolution cardiac-gated functional magnetic resonance imaging and a norm adaptation paradigm in healthy adults to investigate the role of the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA) complex in tracking signals related to norm violation that can be used to update internal norms. We show that the SN/VTA codes for the norm's variance prediction error (PE) and norm PE with spatially distinct regions coding for negative and positive norm PE. These results point to a common role played by the SN/VTA complex in supporting both simple reward-based and social decision making

Asymmetry in functional connectivity of the human habenula revealed by high-resolution cardiac-gated resting state imaging

The habenula is a hub for cognitive and emotional signals that are relayed to the aminergic centers in the midbrain and, thus, plays an important role in goal-oriented behaviors. Although it is well described in rodents and non-human primates, the habenula functional network remains relatively uncharacterized in humans, partly because of the methodological challenges associated with the functional magnetic resonance imaging of small structures in the brain. Using high-resolution cardiac-gated resting state imaging in healthy humans and precisely identifying each participants' habenula, we show that the habenula is functionally coupled with the insula, parahippocampus, thalamus, periaqueductal grey, pons, striatum and substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area complex. Furthermore, by separately examining and comparing the functional maps from the left and right habenula, we provide the first evidence of an asymmetry in the functional connectivity of the habenula in humans. Hum Brain Mapp 37:2602-2615, 2016. © 2016 The Authors Human Brain Mapping Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Developing expenditure questions: Findings from R2 cognitive testing

The Nuffield Foundation has funded a collaborative research team from NatCen Social Research, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Oxford and Cambridge Universities to develop a standard question or questions designed to capture household spending. This is because household spending can be an indicator of household living standards and can overcome some of the limitations of income as an indicator of living standards. The project has involved conducting focus groups with people from a range of household types to explore how people thing and talk about household spending. New questions were then designed, base on existing questions but adapted to reflect the findings of the focus groups, for example that using the term household in questions about spending can be confusing. Following a reveiw of the new questions by the steering group, a round of cognitive testing was then carried out to test these questions. Key findings from round one are presented in section 1.1.2. Following the first round of cognitive testing further adaptations were made to the questions. A second round of cognitive testing was carried out to re-test the question formats which seemed most worth developing further. Additional testing was needed as a result of changes to these questions and to ensure respondents with a range of financial situations were included. This report presents the findings of this second round of cognitive testing

Developing expenditure questions: Findings from focus groups

Currently there is no established way to measure expenditure in the context of a general purpose survey. Therefore NatCen's Questionnaire Development and Testing (QDT) Hub, working in collaboration with the Institute for Fiscal Studies and collaborators from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, are looking at how best to measure expenditure in a social survey context. This report provides findings from a series of focus groups investigating how people think about household expenditure and what issues people may have in reporting household expenditure in a social survey context. The information collected in the focus groups will be used as a starting point for designing new questions on household spending for use in future social surveys. Subsequent stages of work will include cognitively testing any new questions produced and consulting a panel of experts over the proposed questions. This project was funded by the Nuffield Foundation