Implementing peer support in higher education: A feasibility study

Background: When experiencing mental distress, many university students seek support from their peers. In schools and mental health services, formalised peer support interventions have demonstrated some success but implementation challenges have been reported. This study aimed to assess the feasibility, acceptability and safety of a novel manualized peer support intervention and associated data collection processes. Methods: A longitudinal mixed methods study was conducted following the pilot of a peer support intervention at a large London university between June 2021 and May 2022. The study utilised data routinely recorded on all students who booked a peer support session, focus groups with nine peer workers and five staff members implementing the intervention, pre-post intervention surveys with 13 students and qualitative interviews with 10 of those students. Results: 169 bookings were made during the pilot, of which 130 (77%) were attended, with November the peak month. Staff and peer workers described strong motivation and commitment to implement the intervention, noting that the peer support model and peer worker role addressed previously unmet needs at the university. However, students described implementation problems relating to the coherence of the intervention and the burden of participation. While students mostly described acceptable experiences, there were examples where acceptability was lower. No adverse events were reported during the pilot. Conclusion: The training and supervision of peer workers, and the provision of one-to-one peer support to students was found to be feasible, mostly acceptable, and safe. However, sustained implementation difficulties were observed. These pose challenges to the scalability of peer support in universities. We make recommendations to improve implementation of peer support including improving reach, greater clarity about the intervention, and fuller involvement of students throughout

Sampling and interpreting lichen diversity data for biomonitoring purposes

Although lichen diversity values are broadly used as bioindicators, mainly for air pollution, lichen communities can be substantially influenced by other ecological factors, such as tree species and forest structure, and microclimatic conditions. In particular, species composition may be a suitable indicator for climate and landuse effects as well. For effective utilization of lichen diversity data in biomonitoring studies including air pollution, ecosystem functioning, and forestry studies, standardized sampling procedure and avoiding sampling and non-sampling errors are the important aspects to be considered. Further interpretation of lichen diversity data requires careful data analysis for providing affirmative results related to ambient air quality. In any lichen biomonitoring program, expected deliverables are based on a hypothesis, which may be achieved by standardization of the sampling procedures based on the functional requirement of the dependent environmental variables. The chapter discusses the procedures and methodology for sampling and interpreting lichen diversity data for biomonitoring purposes