Assessing the impact of university students’ involvement in the first year of Nurture-U: a national student wellbeing research project

This is the final version. Available on open access from BMC via the DOI in this recordAvailability of data and materials: Anonymised data is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.Background Students experience lower levels of wellbeing than the general, age-matched population. A whole-university approach to mental health is encouraged, which must work for individuals from all backgrounds and experiences. Student input is vital in researching and designing these solutions. Nurture-U is a national, large-scale research project exploring better ways to support student wellbeing, with a Student Advisory Group (SAG) that feeds into project decision making. With the first year of the project now completed, we now critically review the processes and effectiveness of the SAG and how well the project is engaging and working with students. Methods Assessment of the SAG’s impact on the project, the student advisors, and the researchers was undertaken through a content analysis of team meetings and collection of advisor and researcher feedback using the Patient Engagement Quality Guidance Tool. Results 142 students worked on different tasks in the first year of the Nurture-U project. The SAG was involved in the project branding and marketing, and in the development and co-design of interventions and tools. They reported a positive experience, with involvement boosting confidence. They felt valued but reported not always knowing whether their input was implemented in final decisions. They also recommended different methods of providing feedback. Researchers found student input beneficial to communicate the viewpoint of a different generation and increase the relevance of the study, but also suggested improvements for communication between the research team and the student group. Conclusions This critical reflection of the SAG’s public advisor role in this large-scale research project was important in highlighting what worked well and areas to improve. As the project unfolds, we aim to adapt our methods of student input, increase the transparency of decision-making processes, and in turn increase student-led decision making within the project.Medical Research Council (MRC

Advancing Alternative Analysis: Integration of Decision Science.

Decision analysis-a systematic approach to solving complex problems-offers tools and frameworks to support decision making that are increasingly being applied to environmental challenges. Alternatives analysis is a method used in regulation and product design to identify, compare, and evaluate the safety and viability of potential substitutes for hazardous chemicals.Assess whether decision science may assist the alternatives analysis decision maker in comparing alternatives across a range of metrics.A workshop was convened that included representatives from government, academia, business, and civil society and included experts in toxicology, decision science, alternatives assessment, engineering, and law and policy. Participants were divided into two groups and prompted with targeted questions. Throughout the workshop, the groups periodically came together in plenary sessions to reflect on other groups' findings.We conclude the further incorporation of decision science into alternatives analysis would advance the ability of companies and regulators to select alternatives to harmful ingredients, and would also advance the science of decision analysis.We advance four recommendations: (1) engaging the systematic development and evaluation of decision approaches and tools; (2) using case studies to advance the integration of decision analysis into alternatives analysis; (3) supporting transdisciplinary research; and (4) supporting education and outreach efforts

Participant and musical diversity in music psychology research

Research on music psychology has increased exponentially over the past half century, providing insights on a wide range of topics underpinning the perception, cognition, and production of music. This wealth of research means we are now in a place to develop broad, testable theories on the psychology of music, with the potential to impact our wider understanding of human biology, culture, and communication. However, the development of widely applicable and inclusive theories of human responses to music requires these theories to be informed by data that is representative of the global human population and its diverse range of music-making practices. The goal of the present paper is to survey the current state of the field of music psychology in terms of the participant samples and musical samples used. We reviewed and coded relevant details from all articles published in Music Perception, Musicae Scientiae, and Psychology of Music between 2010 to 2022. We found that music psychologists show a substantial tendency to collect data from young adults and university students in Western countries in response to Western music, replicating trends seen across psychology research as a whole. Even data collected in non-Western countries tends to come from a similar demographic to studies of Western participants (e.g., university students, young adults). Some positive trends toward increasing participant diversity have been evidenced over the past decade, although there is still much work to be done, and certain subtopics in the field appear to be more prone to these sampling biases than others. Recommendations for future diversification of research in our field are made, with the aim of increasing our confidence in music psychological theories and their relevance to humans and music in the broadest sense

A Review and Classification of Approaches for Dealing with Uncertainty in Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for Healthcare Decisions

The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is increasingly used to support decisions in healthcare involving multiple and conflicting criteria. Although uncertainty is usually carefully addressed in health eco-nomic evaluations, whether and how the different sources of uncertainty are dealt with and with what methods in MCDA is less known. The objective of this study is to review how uncertainty can be explicitly taken into account in MCDA and to discuss which approach may be appro-priate for healthcare decision makers. A literature review was conducted in the Scopus and PubMed databases. Two reviewers independently categorized studies according to research areas, the type of MCDA used, and the approach used to quantify uncertainty. Selected full text articles wer

A mixed-data evaluation in group TOPSIS with differentiated decision power

[[abstract]]This main objective of this paper is to provide decision support for mixed data in group Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Idea Solution (TOPSIS) with differentiated decision power. We use a signum function to compare the ordinal performance of alternatives on any qualitative criterion, or the partial information provided by decision makers. The proposed process for ordinal information is uniformly coherent with the traditional TOPSIS steps, preserving the characteristic of distance-based utilities. Ordinal weights are also considered herein, and the decision power of the group members is formulated by their weights under an agreement in the group. Two examples demonstrate that the proposed approach has some benefits and achieves robustness with two types of sensitivity analyses. Some discussions and their limitations to the approach are also provided.[[notice]]補正完