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This chapter discusses the different types of researcher/participant relationship described in the case study chapters, alongside the extent to which the projects were (and could be) pre-defined in terms of structure and expected outcomes. The case studies ranged from secondary data analysis methods with no researcher/participant contact, those with structured one-off interviews, those with more ongoing, but still researcher-led, relationships between researcher and participant, to more ethnographic and participatory research where relationships were negotiated between researcher and participant and, in some cases, led by the participants. This chapter highlights that researcher/participant relationships lie parallel to the structure of the project and the extent to which the outcomes are pre-defined. Despite the range of types of relationship, however, all the case studies highlighted the value of trust in those relationships, for participants to feel happy to share the details of their personal lives beyond that which is usually visible in the formal education setting of school. Edwards' (2017a) concepts of relational agency, relational expertise and common knowledge are used to help explain why these relationships matter in research on out-of-school learning – to understand activities that we do not know about, which take places in spaces that we are unfamiliar with.

The purpose of this study was to make sense of the individual perspectives of former undergraduate student mentors from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields who took part in an after-school STEM mentoring program. The study examined the following research questions: (1) How do former undergraduate student STEM mentors interpret and give meaning to their after-school STEM mentoring experiences? (2) In what way can an after-school STEM mentoring experience lead to a deeper understanding of the long-term implications of a STEM mentorship program?

The sample comprised 21 former undergraduate STEM mentors. The study was guided by the methods of content analysis and repertory grid (RepGrid), with data collected via highly structured interviews. Eight elements were pre-selected for the RepGrid to elicit constructs from participants. These include (1) mentoring, (2) teaching, (3) research, (4) career, (5) workforce, (6) Nebraska STEM for you (NE STEM 4U), (7) networking, and (8) communication. The researcher employed content analysis for cross-case analysis and used interpretative clustering to analyze nuanced similarities and differences among participants. Personal construct theory was used to understand how former STEM mentors made sense of their experiences.

The results highlight the diversity of viewpoints among participants, as well as their connections to various career paths, communication strategies, and mentorship styles. These insights contribute to a deeper understanding of how STEM mentorship experiences can be tailored to the experiences of mentees. The study stresses the significance of clear communication in STEM and advises professionals to avoid excessive technical jargon to convey complex ideas. Overall, the study provides valuable insights into the motivations, perspectives, and benefits of former undergraduate mentors. Ultimately, recognizing how these factors impact STEM mentoring programs is vital for the long-term success and advancement of the STEM pipeline.

The study has several limitations, including the inclusion of participants lacking knowledge or experience with the eight elements used in the RepGrids. While participants had completed a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field, not all had pursued advanced schooling or careers that required knowledge or implementation of research.

Findings underscore the importance of acknowledging the diverse career paths within STEM fields to understand participants’ perspectives toward mentorship. Considering the incorporation of STEM mentorship within regular school hours and making it a graduation prerequisite could enhance student participation and advancement. Integrating STEM outreach programs into higher education curricula could facilitate the development of essential professional skills (e.g. critical thinking, problem-solving) among STEM undergraduate students. These implications highlight the importance of diverse mentorship styles and professional skills to foster a more inclusive STEM workforce.

The study focused on the individual perspectives of participants rather than employing a thematic analysis.

User diversity has been discussed in many fields of study for decades. Nevertheless, some cohorts are rarely included in mainstream research. According to the concept of universal design of research (UDR), people with disabilities should be more often included in participant pools. There is, however, a need for certain methodological considerations to achieve UDR.

The suggested guidelines are based upon existing guidelines and research in addition to key takeaways from studies conducted by the authors over the past 15 years. Six studies are used to show how the guidelines can be applied in research involving three example cohorts, namely people with dyslexia, aphasia and intellectual disability.

Extensive guidelines are needed to increase user inclusion in mainstream studies and support researchers in conducting purposeful and ethical research. The suggested guidelines should be examined for other cohorts to ensure that all types of user needs are accommodated.

This study contributes with methodological approaches to enhance inclusion of all types of participants in mainstream research.

The main contribution is The seven principles of UDR, a further development of the original principles for UDR.

The aim of this study is to investigate how the demographics and appearance cues of potential social engineers influence the likelihood that targets will trust them and accept security risk.

Data were collected through an online survey of 635 participants, including 322 participants from Arab countries and 313 participants from the UK. The survey presented scenarios with 16 personas who offered participants the use of their mobile internet hotspot. These personas were characterized by combinations of age (young vs aged), gender (male vs female), ethnicity (Arab vs UK) and look formality (casual vs formal). The study measured both participants’ offer acceptance and trust in the persona.

Results indicated a higher likelihood of offer acceptance from female and aged personas, as well as a greater trust in these groups. Arab participants showed a preference for personas with Arabian ethnic features. In both samples, trust and acceptance were influenced by the persona’s appearance, which was found to be gender-dependent; with female personas in casual attire and male personas in formal attire being trusted more in comparison to female with formal attire and male with informal, respectively.

Findings highlight the importance of incorporating awareness of appearance-based biases in cybersecurity training, suggesting the need for culturally sensitive training programs to enhance defense against social engineering.

This study distinguishes itself by elucidating the influence of social engineers’ demographic and appearance cues on the likelihood of individuals to take security risks, thus addressing a significant gap in the literature which has traditionally emphasized the profiles of targets.

Since March 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted refugees by compounding preexisting and systemic health, social and economic inequities. In Canada, approximately 50,000 Syrian refugees arrived between 2015 and 2020 and were in the process of rebuilding their lives when the pandemic started. This study aims to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic for Syrian refugees in Canada and identify supports needed.

Drawing on frameworks for refugee psychosocial adaptation and social integration and a qualitative descriptive design, the study used thematic analysis to examine semi-structured interviews with 10 Syrians.

Findings indicated four themes that provide a snapshot of impacts relatively early in the pandemic: facing ongoing development, inequity and insecurity during integration; disruption of settlement, integration and adaptation due to the pandemic; ongoing adaptation and resilience during integration in Canada; and ongoing needs and solutions for integration and adaptation.

This study builds upon growing research concerning Syrian refugees and psychosocial adaptation, particularly during the pandemic. The findings highlight the impacts of the pandemic on a population already facing inequities in a resettlement country. While the findings emphasize the resilience of the Syrian refugee community, the study also demonstrates the need for ongoing supports and justice-oriented action to fulfill resettlement commitments, especially in the face of additional stressors like the COVID-19 pandemic. Implications for policy, practice and future research are discussed.

This study aims to examine own-race bias (ORB) in prospective person memory (PPM) and explore whether the effects of ORB were moderated by two factors that are salient to real-world missing person appeals (MPAs): the number of appeals an individual encounters and the frequency in which these appeals are encountered.

A mixed experimental design was used whereby 269 Caucasian participants studied MPAs (4 or 8 appeals) for various frequencies (once or three times), which featured both white and non-white missing individuals. Participants then completed a PPM sorting task that required them to identify missing individuals as a secondary objective.

ORB was not observed for prospective person memory performance, although participants did demonstrate a greater conservative bias for appeals involving different ethnicities. The main effect of number and frequency of appeals on PPM was significant, however, these variables did not moderate ORB.

The current study has limitations that should be taken into consideration. There was an underrepresentation of non-white ethnicities within the sample which limits the ability to determine if ORB effects vary across ethnicities. Additionally, experimental simulations of missing person identifications still lack ecological validity and thus future innovative methods are required to study missing person identifications more realistically.

This study demonstrates that PPM performance may not be influenced by ORB effects overall as found within previous generic memory tasks, although the influence of the number and frequency of appeals presented continues to demonstrate the need to improve MPAs to maximise public facial recognition and identification of missing persons.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mental health literacy of schizophrenia in a South African community sample. This study is part of the growing interest in community mental health literacy.

A sample of 192 Black African participants from municipalities (Ditsobotla and Mahikeng) between 18 and 65 years participated in this study. Participants viewed fictional (male and female) sufferers of schizophrenia vignettes and responded to the same questions regarding each vignette. They completed a questionnaire examining the capacity to recognise schizophrenia as well as the capacity to source appropriate help.

For both vignettes, a substantial majority of participants indicated that older people believe that when a male is diagnosed with schizophrenia, the cause is traditional (spiritual). In contrast, more participants with lower education believed that medical reasons cause a female person’s diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Overall, the study highlights the complexity of beliefs about the causes of schizophrenia. It underscores the importance of considering cultural and educational factors in mental health research, practice and policy development.

By uncovering the differences in perceptions between older individuals and those with lower education levels, the study sheds light on previously unexplored aspects of mental health literacy and cultural understanding of schizophrenia.

While previous research has examined cultural beliefs about mental illness, this study specifically focuses on how age and education intersect with these beliefs, particularly regarding gender differences in diagnosis.

This unique approach contributes to the broader literature on mental health disparities. It has implications for tailored interventions and public health strategies aimed at addressing stigma and improving mental health outcomes in diverse populations.

Natural environments and imagery are known to have a myriad of effects on people’s physical and psychological states. However, little is known about how exposure to nature-related imagery can influence consumers’ motivational states. This research investigates the effect of exposure to nature on consumers’ regulatory focus. More specifically, this paper proposes that consumers exposed to nature will exhibit stronger promotion-oriented focus and weaker prevention-oriented focus, and as such, these consumers will prefer promotion-framed marketing messages over prevention-framed ones. This paper aims to explore a mediating mechanism and a boundary condition for this effect.

A series of six experiments, including an Implicit Association Test, examined the effect of exposure to images of natural objects and scenes (in contrast with non-nature imagery) on consumers’ regulatory focus and whether they experienced regulatory fit when encountering promotion-framed (vs prevention-framed) advertising messages.

The results revealed that consumers exhibited lower prevention-focused and higher promotion-focused motivational orientation after exposure to nature. Furthermore, exposure to nature led consumers to experience more regulatory fit with promotion-oriented marketing messages than prevention-oriented ones. This study found that natural environments offer urban consumers a reprieve from their day-to-day life, which mediates the effect of exposure to nature on regulatory focus. This study investigated the boundary condition of engaging in maintenance of nature (e.g. mow the grass) in which the effects of nature on regulatory focus were attenuated.

This study used text and pictures related to nature as a way to expose the online participants to nature. Future research may use field studies with participants in real natural settings, with expectation of stronger effects. Second, this study examined mostly urban American participants. There may be cultural differences or living situations (e.g. living “off the grid” and in the “wild”) that influence people’s relationship with nature. Future research may examine how these differences can affect the influence of exposure to nature on motivational orientation.

The findings have direct implications for marketing managers and other related stakeholders. Exposing urban consumers to nature – even images of nature – they become more receptive to promotion-framed advertisements and marketing communications (vs prevention-framed messaging).

Little is currently known about how exposure to nature can influence psychological processes such as motivational orientation. This research contributes to the understanding of consumers’ responses to nature-related imagery in advertising and the effect that nature imagery has on consumers’ motivational orientation. This research also contributes to the body of work on regulatory focus by identifying a novel context in which consumers’ motivational orientation can be influenced.

Scholars acknowledge that trust relationships between expatriates and host nationals are important; however, previous research has demonstrated that one’s culture affects how individuals define trust, which can influence how trust is developed between expatriates and host nationals. In addition, trust can affect communication between expatriates and host nationals in many ways. Therefore, this study examined how US host nationals and Japanese expatriates conceptualized trust in the workplace as well as how trust affected their daily communication.

A total of 32 participants (16 US Americans and 16 Japanese) working in a multinational manufacturing company participated in semi-structured, individual interviews. A modified version of constant comparative analysis was employed to analyze the data.

Both groups of participants identified competence and skills, teamwork and collaboration, and open/honest communication as defining features of trust in the workplace, although there were some explanations regarding trust that were influenced by participants’ culture. Further, trust between US host nationals and Japanese expatriates affected their communication strategies, such as information flow and mentoring communication.

This study contributes to literature on the relationships between expatriates and host nationals by providing a culturally nuanced understanding of trust in the workplace. Additionally, findings from this study offer practical recommendations for multinational corporations for how to socialize and train their employees to enhance their work experience with one another.