ICT Interventions for Schoolgirls Do Matter! Understanding the Factors Influencing ICT Career Intentions through Partial Least Squares Analysis.

Intervention programs aimed at promoting study and work opportunities in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) field to schoolgirls (Interventions) have been encouraged to combat a decline in the interest among girls to study ICT at school. The goal of our study is to investigate the influence of Interventions on schoolgirls’ intentions to choose a career in the ICT field by analysing the  comprehensive survey data (n = 3577), collected during four interventions in Australia, using the Partial Least Squares method. Our study is also aimed at identifying other factors influencing ICT career intentions. We found that the attitude towards interventions has an indirect influence on ICT career intentions by affecting interest in ICT. Our results also challenge several existing theoretical studies by showing that factors that had previously been suggested as influencers were found to have little or no impact in this study, these being same-sex education and computer usage

Understanding the Impacts of Online Mental Health Peer Support Forums: Realist Synthesis

Background:Online forums are widely used for mental health peer support. However, evidence of their safety and effectiveness is mixed. Further research focused on articulating the contexts in which positive and negative impacts emerge from forum use is required to inform innovations in implementation.Objective:This study aimed to develop a realist program theory to explain the impacts of online mental health peer support forums on users.Methods:We conducted a realist synthesis of literature published between 2019 and 2023 and 18 stakeholder interviews with forum staff.Results:Synthesis of 102 evidence sources and 18 interviews produced an overarching program theory comprising 22 context-mechanism-outcome configurations. Findings indicate that users’ perceptions of psychological safety and the personal relevance of forum content are foundational to ongoing engagement. Safe and active forums that provide convenient access to information and advice can lead to improvements in mental health self-efficacy. Within the context of welcoming and nonjudgmental communities, users may benefit from the opportunity to explore personal difficulties with peers, experience reduced isolation and normalization of mental health experiences, and engage in mutual encouragement. The program theory highlights the vital role of moderators in creating facilitative online spaces, stimulating community engagement, and limiting access to distressing content. A key challenge for organizations that host mental health forums lies in balancing forum openness and anonymity with the need to enforce rules, such as restrictions on what users can discuss, to promote community safety.Conclusions:This is the first realist synthesis of online mental health peer support forums. The novel program theory highlights how successful implementation depends on establishing protocols for enhancing safety and strategies for maintaining user engagement to promote forum sustainability

News from Affiliated Committees/ Nouvelles des Comités associés

We are looking forward to seeing all interested in digital history at the business meeting in Regina. Please attend, especially if you are interested in being part of the committee as chair or co-chair. Since we last met in Toronto, we have been maintaining the CCDH Facebook page. We are still looking to grow this network and encourage others looking for curating experience to consider volunteering to help manage the page and a Twitter account. There will be a co-sponsored Canadian Committee for Digital History (CHA) and Canadian Society for Digital Humanities Panel at Congress. This panel was also successful in obtaining financial support from the Federation for this session. As part of the committee’s ongoing efforts to undertake a small conference to support digital skills development, we will be working on a SSHRC Insight grant in March

Syndromics: A Bioinformatics Approach for Neurotrauma Research

Substantial scientific progress has been made in the past 50 years in delineating many of the biological mechanisms involved in the primary and secondary injuries following trauma to the spinal cord and brain. These advances have highlighted numerous potential therapeutic approaches that may help restore function after injury. Despite these advances, bench-to-bedside translation has remained elusive. Translational testing of novel therapies requires standardized measures of function for comparison across different laboratories, paradigms, and species. Although numerous functional assessments have been developed in animal models, it remains unclear how to best integrate this information to describe the complete translational “syndrome” produced by neurotrauma. The present paper describes a multivariate statistical framework for integrating diverse neurotrauma data and reviews the few papers to date that have taken an information-intensive approach for basic neurotrauma research. We argue that these papers can be described as the seminal works of a new field that we call “syndromics”, which aim to apply informatics tools to disease models to characterize the full set of mechanistic inter-relationships from multi-scale data. In the future, centralized databases of raw neurotrauma data will enable better syndromic approaches and aid future translational research, leading to more efficient testing regimens and more clinically relevant findings

Women's views of pregnancy ultrasound: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: Ultrasound has become a routine part of care for pregnant women in most countries with developed health services. It is one of a range of techniques used in screening and diagnosis, but it differs from most others because of the direct access that it gives parents to images of the fetus. A review of women's views of ultrasound was commissioned as part of a larger study of the clinical and economic aspects of routine antenatal ultrasound use. METHODS: Studies of women's views about antenatal screening and diagnosis were searched for on electronic databases. Studies about pregnancy ultrasound were then identified from this material. Further studies were found by contacting researchers, hand searches, and following up references. The searches were not intentionally limited by date or language. Studies that reported direct data from women about pregnancy ultrasound were then included in a structured review. Studies were not excluded on the basis of methodological quality unless they were impossible to understand. They were read by one author and tabulated. The review then addressed a series of questions in a nonquantitative way. RESULTS: The structured review included 74 primary studies represented by 98 reports. Studies from 18 countries were included, and they employed methods ranging from qualitative interviewing to psychometric testing. The review included studies from the very early period of ultrasound use up to reports of research on contemporary practice. Ultrasound is very attractive to women and families. Women's early concerns about the safety of ultrasound were rarely reported in more recent research. Women often lack information about the purposes for which an ultrasound scan is being done and the technical limitations of the procedure. The strong appeal of diagnostic ultrasound use may contribute to the fact that pregnant women are often unprepared for adverse findings. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the highly varied study designs and contexts for the research included, this review provided useful information about women's views of pregnancy ultrasound. One key finding for clinicians was the need for all staff, women, and partners to be well informed about the specific purposes of ultrasound scans and what they can and cannot achieve

Understanding the impacts of online mental health peer support forums:A realist synthesis

BackgroundOnline forums are widely used for mental health peer support. However, evidence of their safety and effectiveness is mixed. Further research focused on articulating the contexts in which positive and negative impacts emerge from forum use is required to inform innovations in implementation.ObjectiveTo develop a realist programme theory to explain the impacts of online mental health peer support forums on users.MethodsRealist synthesis of literature published 2019-2023 and 18 stakeholder interviews with forum staff. ResultsSynthesis of 102 evidence sources and 18 interviews produced an overarching programme theory comprising 22 context-mechanism-outcome configurations. Findings indicate that users’ perceptions of psychological safety and the personal relevance of forum content are foundational to ongoing engagement. Safe and active forums that provide convenient access to information and advice can lead to improvements in mental health self-efficacy. Within the context of welcoming and non-judgmental communities, users may benefit from the opportunity to explore personal difficulties with peers, experience reduced isolation and normalization of mental health experiences, and engage in mutual encouragement. The programme theory highlights the vital role of moderators in creating facilitative online spaces, stimulating community engagement, and limiting access to distressing content. A key challenge for organizations that host mental health forums lies in balancing forum openness and anonymity with the need to enforce rules, such as restrictions on what users can discuss, in order to promote community safety.ConclusionThis is the first realist synthesis of online mental health peer support forums. The novel programme theory highlights how successful implementation depends on establishing protocols for enhancing safety and strategies for maintaining user engagement to promote forum sustainability.<br/

Understanding the Impacts of Online Mental Health Peer Support Forums : Realist Synthesis

BACKGROUND: Online forums are widely used for mental health peer support. However, evidence of their safety and effectiveness is mixed. Further research focused on articulating the contexts in which positive and negative impacts emerge from forum use is required to inform innovations in implementation. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to develop a realist program theory to explain the impacts of online mental health peer support forums on users. METHODS: We conducted a realist synthesis of literature published between 2019 and 2023 and 18 stakeholder interviews with forum staff. RESULTS: Synthesis of 102 evidence sources and 18 interviews produced an overarching program theory comprising 22 context-mechanism-outcome configurations. Findings indicate that users' perceptions of psychological safety and the personal relevance of forum content are foundational to ongoing engagement. Safe and active forums that provide convenient access to information and advice can lead to improvements in mental health self-efficacy. Within the context of welcoming and nonjudgmental communities, users may benefit from the opportunity to explore personal difficulties with peers, experience reduced isolation and normalization of mental health experiences, and engage in mutual encouragement. The program theory highlights the vital role of moderators in creating facilitative online spaces, stimulating community engagement, and limiting access to distressing content. A key challenge for organizations that host mental health forums lies in balancing forum openness and anonymity with the need to enforce rules, such as restrictions on what users can discuss, to promote community safety. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first realist synthesis of online mental health peer support forums. The novel program theory highlights how successful implementation depends on establishing protocols for enhancing safety and strategies for maintaining user engagement to promote forum sustainability. TRIAL REGISTRATION: PROSPERO CRD42022352528; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=352528