Evaluating Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue's Community Fire and Safety activities

To further understand the impact and effectiveness of Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue’s (LFR) Safe and Well Checks (SWC) both from an organisational perspective and within the community, LFR commissioned the University of Lincoln to conduct an evaluation of the SWC component of their Community Fire Safety activities specifically. The aim of this report is to help LFR be able to demonstrate the following: • The activities carried out have value for money, including evidence of the social return on investment (SROI) being made • The activities are being targeted at the most vulnerable across the County • The activities being carried out are supporting Partner Agencies prioritie

Who Is Satisfied With Effort?: Individual Differences as Determinants of Satisfaction With Effort and Reward

The effort required to obtain certain rewards may influence the level of satisfaction with the following reward. Since people differ in beliefs about the availability of willpower resources required to pursue effortful actions, we investigated how willpower beliefs affect the perception of effort and satisfaction with reward. We hypothesized that people with limited willpower beliefs (i.e., believing that exerting effort leads to depletion of their inner resources) will perceive cognitive tasks as more effortful and will be less satisfied with the subsequent reward than those with non-limited beliefs (i.e., believing that exerting effort is invigorating rather than depleting). We tested this hypothesis by manipulating effort with different difficulty levels of the N-back task and measuring participants’ perception of effort expenditure and subjective satisfaction with a reward depending on their willpower beliefs. In accordance with the predictions, we found that those with limited willpower beliefs perceived the task as more effortful than those with non-limited willpower beliefs. Furthermore, when asked to subjectively rate their satisfaction with the reward gained for the task, limited believers rated their satisfaction lower than non-limited believers. These findings suggest that people take their willpower capacities into effort-satisfaction calculations. Results are discussed within the context of other models of effort, and practical implications of the findings are suggested

An examination of social support, personality and psychological wellbeing in police employees

Introduction: Enhancing health and wellbeing of employees is becoming a growing concern for researchers, employers, policy makers and practitioners in today’s society. The promotion of employees’ psychological wellbeing can be mutually beneficial for individuals and organisations (Wright, 2010). Research has found that psychological wellbeing in a workforce is associated with a range of positive outcomes, including increased work performance (Ford, Cerasoli, Higgins & Decesare, 2011), enhanced job satisfaction (Wright & Cropanzano, 2000) and reduced voluntary staff turnover (Wright & Bonett, 2007). Given the desirability of these outcomes for employers, employees and broader society, this highlights the importance of understanding how psychological wellbeing can be enhanced and maintained in the workplace. Policing is becoming an increasingly complex and demanding work environment (e.g., Hesketh, Cooper & Ivy, 2015), and police can be exposed to a variety of stressors that can have a detrimental impact on health and wellbeing (Juniper, White & Bellamy, 2010). Higher levels of perceived organisational support have been associated with increased psychological wellbeing (Pannaccio & Vandenbergh, 2009), while an individual’s personality has also been identified as an important predictor of wellbeing (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998). To date, little research appears to have examined links between psychological wellbeing, social support and personality characteristics in policing. Therefore, the primary aim of the study was to examine the relationship between psychological wellbeing with received and perceived support from colleagues and personality characteristics in police. Design: The present study utilised a cross-sectional design. The variables assessed were psychological wellbeing, received social support, perceived social support and five personality characteristics, comprising agreeableness, openness to experience, emotional stability, conscientiousness and extraversion. Methods Participants: All operational and non-operational employees of a police force in the Midlands region of England were invited to participate in the study, with a total of 381 employees (M age = 42.49, SD = 9.85; female n = 187; male n = 183; unspecified gender n = 11) agreeing to take part (17.8% response rate). Ethical approval was obtained from a school ethics committee at a British university. Measures: Participants completed an online questionnaire via Qualtrics. The questionnaire comprised the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS; Tennant et al., 2007), an adapted version of the shortened Inventory of Socially Supportive Behaviours (ISSB; Barrerra, Sandler & Ramsay, 1981), Social Provisions Scale (SPS; Russell & Cutrona, 1987), and Ten-Item Personality Inventory (Gosling, Renfrow & Swann, 2003). Responses for the WEMWBS and ISSB reflected a four-week period prior to completing the questionnaire. Data analysis Data were analysed in SPSS 22. Initially, data were examined to establish whether the assumptions required to run parametric tests were satisfied. Visual inspection of scatterplots and results of normality tests revealed that data for psychological wellbeing, perceived support, received support, and personality characteristics were not normally distributed. As a result, the median, interquartile range, and standard deviations of these measures were calculated, and non-parametric analyses undertaken. A Spearman’s rank order correlation analysis was conducted to examine relationships between the study variables. A multiple logistical regression analysis was used to examine whether perceived support, received support, and personality characteristics predicted psychological wellbeing. Results: Results of the Spearman’s rank correlational analysis showed that psychological wellbeing was significantly (p < .05) and positively associated with perceived support, received support, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience. The multiple logistical regression analysis indicated the likelihood of each variable predicting psychological wellbeing. In terms of social support, psychological wellbeing was significantly (p < .05) predicted by received support and perceived support. With regards to the predictive capacity of the personality characteristics, only extraversion and emotional stability significantly predicted psychological wellbeing. The remaining variables in the model, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness, were not significant predictors of psychological wellbeing. Discussion and Conclusions: The current findings advance understanding of the association between psychological wellbeing and received and perceived support, and personality in police employees. Both received and perceived support significantly predicted psychological wellbeing, demonstrating that employees that received more support from colleagues, and perceived support to be more readily available from colleagues, had elevated psychological wellbeing. Furthermore, the personality traits of extraversion and emotional stability significantly predicted psychological wellbeing, such that employees characterized by greater levels of these traits reported enhanced psychological wellbeing. These findings emphasise the important role that both received and perceived support, and certain personality traits, could have with respect to psychological wellbeing in police employees. These findings add to the organsational psychology literature, provide recommendations for employers of emergency service workers, and could help to inform the design of tailored psychosocial interventions

The role of collaborative, multistakeholder partnerships in reshaping the health management of patients with noncommunicable diseases during and after the COVID-19 pandemic

Background: Policies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic have disrupted the screening, diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of noncommunicable (NCD) patients while affecting NCD prevention and risk factor control. Aims: To discuss how the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic affected the health management of NCD patients, identify which aspects should be carried forward into future NCD management, and propose collaborative efforts among public–private institutions to effectively shape NCD care models. Methods: The NCD Partnership, a collaboration between Upjohn and the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, held a virtual Advisory Board in July 2020 with multiple stakeholders; healthcare professionals (HCPs), policymakers, researchers, patient and informal carer advocacy groups, patient empowerment organizations, and industry experts. Results: The Advisory Board identified barriers to NCD care during the COVID-19 pandemic in four areas: lack of NCD management guidelines; disruption to integrated care and shift from hospital-based NCD care to more community and primary level care; infodemics and a lack of reliable health information for patients and HCPs on how to manage NCDs; lack of availability, training, standardization, and regulation of digital health tools. Conclusions: Multistakeholder partnerships can promote swift changes to NCD prevention and patient care. Intra- and inter-communication between all stakeholders should be facilitated involving all players in the development of clinical guidelines and digital health tools, health and social care restructuring, and patient support in the short-, medium- and long-term future. A comprehensive response to NCDs should be delivered to improve patient outcomes by providing strategic, scientific, and economic support

Assessment of variation in immunosuppressive pathway genes reveals TGFBR2 to be associated with risk of clear cell ovarian cancer.

BACKGROUND: Regulatory T (Treg) cells, a subset of CD4+ T lymphocytes, are mediators of immunosuppression in cancer, and, thus, variants in genes encoding Treg cell immune molecules could be associated with ovarian cancer. METHODS: In a population of 15,596 epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) cases and 23,236 controls, we measured genetic associations of 1,351 SNPs in Treg cell pathway genes with odds of ovarian cancer and tested pathway and gene-level associations, overall and by histotype, for the 25 genes, using the admixture likelihood (AML) method. The most significant single SNP associations were tested for correlation with expression levels in 44 ovarian cancer patients. RESULTS: The most significant global associations for all genes in the pathway were seen in endometrioid ( p = 0.082) and clear cell ( p = 0.083), with the most significant gene level association seen with TGFBR2 ( p = 0.001) and clear cell EOC. Gene associations with histotypes at p < 0.05 included: IL12 ( p = 0.005 and p = 0.008, serous and high-grade serous, respectively), IL8RA ( p = 0.035, endometrioid and mucinous), LGALS1 ( p = 0.03, mucinous), STAT5B ( p = 0.022, clear cell), TGFBR1 ( p = 0.021 endometrioid) and TGFBR2 ( p = 0.017 and p = 0.025, endometrioid and mucinous, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Common inherited gene variation in Treg cell pathways shows some evidence of germline genetic contribution to odds of EOC that varies by histologic subtype and may be associated with mRNA expression of immune-complex receptor in EOC patients

A Qualitative Exploration of Psychological Wellbeing in Police Officers and Staff

This report provides a synthesis of qualitative data concerning psychological wellbeing and stressors attained from employees at a regional police force as part of a collaboration with the University of Lincoln

The influence of feedback on effort discounting

This project is an online study about the influence of (informational) feedback on effort discounting. We employ personality questionnaires (Need for Cognition, Willpower Beliefs) and three groups (No Feedback, Real Feedback, Sham Feedback) in a working memory task (2-back to 5-back) with effort discounting (CAD Paradigm)

Registered_Report_SCSS

This is the repository for the Registered Report Project on the Self-Control Strategies Scale (SCSS), which will be translated and validated across multiple studie