While mounting environmental issues (e.g., climate change) mean that there is an increasing urgency for behavioural change this can be difficult to achieve. This thesis applied learning from health psychology to the issue of why pro-environmental intentions do not necessarily translate into action. Research had found that people working towards health goals were not succeeding or were making slow progress because they employed compensatory beliefs to justify succumbing to desires that conflicted with their health goals. A compensatory belief is the belief that the negative consequences of one action can be compensated for by another action. This research investigated whether, when, why and how compensatory beliefs may be used in relation to environmental behaviours. This research began with exploratory qualitative work using cognitive and semi-structured interviews. These findings were then followed up by experimental work. Study 2 found that participants who reflected on their negative environmental behaviours expressed significantly stronger (compensatory) intentions to be pro-environmental than participants who reflected on their positive environmental behaviours. Studies 3-5 explored the influence of behavioural history on compensation and licensing across a series of scenarios using vignettes. Evidence was found that participants balanced environmental (or pro-social) interests with self-interest. Study 6 looked at the effects of goal saliency and construal on compensatory behaviours, finding that, participants who inferred good progress were more motivated to be pro-environmental. Overall, the research provides some evidence (albeit equivocal) of compensation and licensing in relation to environmental behaviours. The findings as a whole suggest that prompting feelings of environmental guilt is not an advisable strategy to engage people in pro-environmental behaviour. In contrast, prompting people to reflect on their existing pro-environmental behaviours or to imagine how they would feel after engaging in environmental action does motivate environmental action.

Systematic Literature Review: The psychological impact of sudden and unexpected loss (especially of a family member) Is associated with a particularly difficult bereavement course (Rando, 1996). This is further complicated when the loss is through suicide thus Increasing the likelihood of psychological disturbance. It is now generally accepted that some bereaved children will experience a complicated or prolonged grief reaction in such circumstance. Whilst a body of research has begun to be complied, until relatively recently little was known as to the nature of these studies, nor about the efficacy of Interventions aimed at amelioreting this distress; this remains an underdeveloped area. The current paper systematically reviews the current literature base. Three bibliographic databases, namely; PsychlNFO, ISI Web of Science and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) were searched from 1980 to 6th December 2013. Identified articles of interest were closely examined and a search of their reference sections was also used to elicit further articles of relevance. Seven studies were identified and included in this narrative synthesis of quantitative Information. Outcomes; Few programmes targeted children who lost a parent to completed suicide, Instead the evaluated treatment Interventions which also Included bereavement owing to other causes; suggesting no distinction in grief between types of loss. Evidence would suggest that those Interventions where trauma was addressed prior to attending to grief/bereavement factors were more effective. There remains a significant need for further research in this area. Empirical Study: The impact over the long-term of parental suicide is poorly understood and a neglected area in psychological research. This study explored the experiences of five participants who, when they were a child, lost a parent to completed suicide. Their experiences of the grieving and re-grieving process were explored through Interview; the material from which was interpreted using thematic analysis. Three themes emerged which were characterised under the following headings: "A Way our, "Knowledge and Information" and "A Way Forward". These themes illustrate their attempts to understand and comprehend what has happened, manage the plethora of confusing emotions and find a way to live with what has happened to them and move forward in their lives. Clinical applicability of the findings is also discussed.

This study examined the experience of individuals with developmental facial disfigurements. For the majority of individuals, the face is the most significant part of the body exposed to public scrutiny on a daily basis and is significant for multiple psychological as well as functional reasons. Facial attractiveness has been a highly valued trait throughout human history. Research demonstrates that facial attractiveness conveys social advantages, whilst the opposite is true of facial unattractiveness. People with facial disfigurements feel the unpleasant results of this and often suffer from a range of psychosocial difficulties such as anxiety, depression, poor subjective quality of life and low self-esteem. The aim of this study was to investigate the experience of individuals with a specific developmental facial disfigurement and their motivations for undertaking appearance-altering surgery. The study employed a qualitative methodology, which is uncommon in this area of research. Three men and four women participated in the study. They were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. The interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Four super-ordinate themes emerged from the analysis: 'Living with a visible facial difference', 'Rationale for treatment', 'Opinions of others about treatment' and 'Dilemmas posed by treatment'. The participants experienced functional problems which they felt embarrassed about and caused others to mock them. They had a variety of reasons for wanting to have surgery, highlighting functional and aesthetic improvements. They also had some doubts about the consequences of treatment, particularly wearing braces. These findings were discussed in relation to the literature.

The present study has identified variables which significantly distinguish between environmentally concerned and unconcerned subpopulations of different ethnic groupings in South Africa, and assimilated these variables within a new model of environmental concern. This model developed from a framework relating to attitude formation, adaptation and expression and focuses on the prediction of environmental concern as an important precursor of environmentally responsible behaviour. The model proposes that the prediction of environmental concern involves a number of variables associated with structures at different levels of experience. Subjects for the study were selected by students registered for the third-year course in Environmental Psychology at the University of South Africa in 1991 and 1992. Each student's sample consisted of four boys and four girls of 14 to 16 years of age, and four men and four women over 20 years of age from the following ethnic groups: Whites, blacks, Asians and coloured. The sample for 1991 consisted of 4475 subjects with 1954 subjects in the 1992 sample. Subjects completed the Environmental Concern Scale (ECS) developed by Weigel and Weigel (1978) and named what they consider to be the three most serious threats to the environment in order of priority. Empirical data strongly support the model's conceptualisation of the emergence of environmental concern as a dynamic composition of individual experience, factors at the personal level and factors at the socio-level, and temporal and spatial structures. With regards to the personal level factors, results from the factor analyses confirmed the existence of a passively orientated mode of environmental concern that sees others as being responsible for solving environmental problems, and a mode of personal responsibility or active concern. Results from the CHAID analyses showed conclusively that ethnic grouping, as a socio-level variable, is the single-most significant and consistent predictor of environmental concern, be it passive or active concern. As anticipated, the CHAID analyses also demonstrated that correlates of environmental concern differed across the two modes of thinking: For all ethnic groupings, respondents with higher educational qualifications consistently showed higher levels of passive concern than respondents with lower qualifications across the 1991 and 1992 data sets. Depending on ethnic grouping, place of residence, exposure to environmental education programmes and home language also played a role as interacting predictors of passive environmental concern. On the other hand, however, age group, gender and leisure-time interacted with ethnic grouping as relevant variables in the prediction of active concern. Apart from confirming the multidirectional features of the model, the data also testify to the dynamic interaction between personal and socio-level variables over time. With regard to individual subjective experience, the findings on subjects' perceptions about serious threats to the environment show that, although general pollution and air pollution remained the two most popular choices across all ethnic groupings, other distinct group differences in perception emerged. More specifically, whites, Asians and coloured respondents considered global and local problems to be serious threats, while blacks were more aware of problems which affect their daily lives. The findings serve to underscore the necessity of establishing exactly what a specific target group regard as the "environment" before any attempt is made to determine their attitudes towards environmental problems. Contrary to expectations, however, there were no significant differences between concerned and unconcerned subgroups as regards perception of serious threats, and the data of the content analysis revealed that peoples' perceptions of the most serious threats to the environment did not coincide with newspaper coverage of environmental issues in the two periods prior to the data gathering in 1991 and 1992. It should also be pointed out that the model was not as effective in accounting for the data from black samples as it was for other ethnic groupings. One of the possible reasons offered is that the key to understanding groups differences in environmental attitudes lies in the territorial range of the environmental concern being examined and the way in which environmental belief systems emerge. Directions for future research on environmental attitudes are suggested. The delineation of unconcerned groups has pinpointed those groups at whom efforts to bring about changes in orientation could be directed through awareness programmes. Concerned groups, on the other hand, could be encouraged to learn new skills and become more actively involved in identifying and resolving environmental problems and issues at all levels. The suggested way to implement this would be through environmental education. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)

Since May 2008 (following the spate of young people apparently taking their lives within one local authority in Wales) Talk to me, the national action plan to reduce suicide and self harm in Wales 2009-2014 (WAG, 2009) promoted a strategic approach to developing targets for a reduction in suicide. The current research aimed to add to existing literature and research to help inform a major incident response plan to reduce suicide and suicide attempts. The study involved a single case relating to a critical incident that took place in one local authority in Wales during 2008 and 2009 involving a suicide cluster. Information gathered from professionals from three organisations involved in the critical incident response included school staff, school counsellors and educational psychologists. Data were collected through group interviews. The methodology was qualitative in nature which investigated the interaction between the various agencies to the critical incident and levels of responding in terms of the processes and procedures that were followed at the time. An analysis was undertaken firstly, in the form of grounded theory, which allowed theory to emerge from the data. In addition soft systems methodology was utilised to develop a rich picture based on the experiences of those organisations involved in the critical incident response. The expected outcome was that the current research will help improve effective collaborative responses to a critical incident in one local authority in Wales, which will lead to a decrease in referrals to agencies as a result of early intervention approaches and appropriate referrals. The current research was an exploratory study which gathered rich data that may help with early intervention. At a wider level it was considered that the findings of the research may provide greater understanding of and insight into the dynamics of inter-agency co-operation in critical incidents, which may inform future protocols, procedures and policies at regional and national level. From the grounded theory analysis, categories emerged which were interpreted though relevant psychological theory. The analysis showed that there was a difference in the way school staff, educational psychologists and counsellors’ responded to the critical incident. No new theory emerged from the grounded theory analysis possibly due to methodological limitations and a small sample size. A number of key change issues were extrapolated through SSM, including three issue based systems and one primary task. The future plan, as outlined in stage 6 of SSM, is for feasible and desirable changes to current systems to be debated between the senior management within the three organisations. There were a number of limitations to the current study, particularly with respect to the grounded theory data collection and data analysis. The use of an abbreviated version of grounded theory may have reduced the breadth of analysis as there was no iterative process in the data collection. The socially sensitive nature of the study prevented the researcher from reporting participants’ verbatim; this may have prevented others from interpreting the data. One positive aspect of the design was that the group may have acted as a debriefing. Throughout the study every effort was made to overcome any potential barriers that the researcher’s status as an educational psychologist in the local authority may have had on the research process. In the current study, implications for educational psychology practice have been identified when supporting schools during a critical incident response. The study highlights the importance of increased educational psychologist involvement in emergency planning at different levels and identifies the need to enhance psychological support and training offered to school staff. The current research suggests that greater multi-agency collaboration and communication is required during a critical incident response. There is a need for additional empirical research to inform future critical incident response. Finally, continued development of an integrated model of crisis response for school psychologists is paramount.

As coastal communities become increasingly exposed to the risks posed by sea-level change, understanding their beliefs and responses becomes more important. While studies have identified differences in lay and expert understandings of climate change, little research has investigated how these groups understand sea-level change. This thesis uses a mental models approach to explore and compare expert and public perceptions of sea-level change on the Severn Estuary, a threatened coastal environment in the southwest of the United Kingdom. A three-phase methodology is adopted. First, expert perceptions are investigated through semi-structured interviews, probability elicitations and cognitive mapping with experts in the field of sea-level change on the Severn Estuary (N=11). Second, public perceptions are investigated through mental models interviews that include a semi-structured discussion, a picture sorting task, and a cognitive mapping session (N=20). Third, perceptions raised during public interviews are explored by way of a wider survey of members of the public living around the Severn Estuary (N=359). These perceptions are then compared and contrasted. A grounded approach is utilised to explore themes emerging from expert and public qualitative interviews, while regression analyses explore the relationships between themes explored in the quantitative public survey. Results show areas of public understanding consistent with expert understandings: most public respondents think that sea levels will rise, leading to increased flooding and property damage. However, the Severn Estuary public does not feel well informed about sea-level change, and there are a number of key differences between expert and public perceptions. For example, there is low public salience of some of the key drivers of sea-level change and its indirect impacts. Perceptions are influenced by many factors including information sources, the ways in which individuals think about the future, and the biases that they hold. Many findings are consistent with climate change research more generally. For example, respondents tend to express low concern about sea-level change in relation to other matters such as the economy; they feel detached from the issue, seeing it as something that will happen in the future to other people; and they perceive that neither the causes of nor responses to sea-level change are their responsibility. From an applied perspective, the study fills a research gap in how the Severn Estuary public perceives sea-level change in their region, and provides insights into how it might best be communicated. From a methodological perspective, the study illustrates the utility of using mixed methods, interdisciplinary approaches for investigating public and expert perceptions of specific climate change risks.

The research component comprises of a literature review, a research paper and a public domain paper. The literature review evaluates the evidence relevant to older adult-pet attachment, to explore how pet attachment impacts on psychological wellbeing. The research paper describes a study exploring socially isolated older adults' experiences of pet ownership and the impact these relationships may have on their wider psychological wellbeing and functioning. It is intended that both papers will be submitted to 'Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin'. The public domain paper summarises both the literature review and research paper.

Background. This topic was proposed by the Service User and Carer Advisory Panel (SUCAP) which informs and supports Clinical Psychology training at The University of Nottingham. The project developed due to their concern about the ambiguity of crisis. They suggested that their understandings may be different from that of professionals. The reconfiguration of acute mental health services influenced the nationwide implementation of community treatment alternatives. However, crisis has remained a poorly operationalised concept, which can lead to problems in clinical practice. An increase in empirical efforts has aimed to establish clarity and increase the clinical utility of definitions. Despite these efforts, little is known about how service users and carers understand crisis. As suggested by the SUCAP, it is unclear if there is commonality within understandings of crisis. Due to the multiple stakeholders, exploring understandings of crisis from multiple perspectives could be useful in clinical practice. Aim. This study aimed to use Q-methodology to investigate multiple perspectives of crisis. By including service users, carers and professionals the research aimed to highlight consensus and discrepancy within these perspectives. Method. Twenty-six participants were recruited from a National Health Service crisis team, a third sector crisis service and an independent carer support group. In Phase One, clinical interviews with 16 participants (taken from each group) were conducted. Qualitative analysis aided the process of constructing a Q-set of 78 statements that represented the understandings of a crisis experience. In Phase Two, 13 participants (some of whom took part in Phases One and Two) completed the Q-sort procedure, in which they rated the extent to which each statement was characteristic of crisis. To support analysis and interpretation, demographic information was obtained, and pre/post questions elicited reflection on their completed Q-sorts. An inverted factor analytic method was used to analyse the Q-sort data. Results. The results of each Phase are discussed. The rotated two factor solution accounted for fifty percent of variance in people’s understandings of crisis. Factor one related to the understanding of crisis as an experience which can be defined by changes in awareness and perception of reality. Factor two related to the understanding of crisis as intense emotional pain, which is largely related to fear, anxiety and despair. Contrary to existing definitions of crisis, risk and mental illness were not highlighted as central characteristics of crisis. Different pairs of ‘groups’ (service user/professional; carer/professional; service user/carer) had little impact on the amount of shared understanding. However, understandings of crisis were highly variable between individuals. Furthermore, service users’ understandings were more variable than those of professionals or carers. Discussion. Although the findings offer some support to current theories of crisis, they contrast with the dominating characteristics of crisis represented in policy and empirical literature. This suggests that over deterministic definitions of crisis, that focus on risk and mental illness, are insufficient. These findings have implications for both clinical practice and future research.

The present study has identified variables which significantly distinguish between environmentally concerned and unconcerned subpopulations of different ethnic groupings in South Africa, and assimilated these variables within a new model of environmental concern. This model developed from a framework relating to attitude formation, adaptation and expression and focuses on the prediction of environmental concern as an important precursor of environmentally responsible behaviour. The model proposes that the prediction of environmental concern involves a number of variables associated with structures at different levels of experience. Subjects for the study were selected by students registered for the third-year course in Environmental Psychology at the University of South Africa in 1991 and 1992. Each student's sample consisted of four boys and four girls of 14 to 16 years of age, and four men and four women over 20 years of age from the following ethnic groups: Whites, blacks, Asians and coloured. The sample for 1991 consisted of 4475 subjects with 1954 subjects in the 1992 sample. Subjects completed the Environmental Concern Scale (ECS) developed by Weigel and Weigel (1978) and named what they consider to be the three most serious threats to the environment in order of priority. Empirical data strongly support the model's conceptualisation of the emergence of environmental concern as a dynamic composition of individual experience, factors at the personal level and factors at the socio-level, and temporal and spatial structures. With regards to the personal level factors, results from the factor analyses confirmed the existence of a passively orientated mode of environmental concern that sees others as being responsible for solving environmental problems, and a mode of personal responsibility or active concern. Results from the CHAID analyses showed conclusively that ethnic grouping, as a socio-level variable, is the single-most significant and consistent predictor of environmental concern, be it passive or active concern. As anticipated, the CHAID analyses also demonstrated that correlates of environmental concern differed across the two modes of thinking: For all ethnic groupings, respondents with higher educational qualifications consistently showed higher levels of passive concern than respondents with lower qualifications across the 1991 and 1992 data sets. Depending on ethnic grouping, place of residence, exposure to environmental education programmes and home language also played a role as interacting predictors of passive environmental concern. On the other hand, however, age group, gender and leisure-time interacted with ethnic grouping as relevant variables in the prediction of active concern. Apart from confirming the multidirectional features of the model, the data also testify to the dynamic interaction between personal and socio-level variables over time. With regard to individual subjective experience, the findings on subjects' perceptions about serious threats to the environment show that, although general pollution and air pollution remained the two most popular choices across all ethnic groupings, other distinct group differences in perception emerged. More specifically, whites, Asians and coloured respondents considered global and local problems to be serious threats, while blacks were more aware of problems which affect their daily lives. The findings serve to underscore the necessity of establishing exactly what a specific target group regard as the "environment" before any attempt is made to determine their attitudes towards environmental problems. Contrary to expectations, however, there were no significant differences between concerned and unconcerned subgroups as regards perception of serious threats, and the data of the content analysis revealed that peoples' perceptions of the most serious threats to the environment did not coincide with newspaper coverage of environmental issues in the two periods prior to the data gathering in 1991 and 1992. It should also be pointed out that the model was not as effective in accounting for the data from black samples as it was for other ethnic groupings. One of the possible reasons offered is that the key to understanding groups differences in environmental attitudes lies in the territorial range of the environmental concern being examined and the way in which environmental belief systems emerge. Directions for future research on environmental attitudes are suggested. The delineation of unconcerned groups has pinpointed those groups at whom efforts to bring about changes in orientation could be directed through awareness programmes. Concerned groups, on the other hand, could be encouraged to learn new skills and become more actively involved in identifying and resolving environmental problems and issues at all levels. The suggested way to implement this would be through environmental education. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)

Infertility is seen as a distressing crisis for the couple and individual. There has tended to be too heavy a focus on the female’s experience and not enough attention given to couples who go through IVF together. The aim of this research was to investigate how heterosexual couples co-construct their experience of infertility and fertility treatment. It was of interest how they construct their experience, how they construct themselves and each other, how they talk about alternatives to fertility treatment ie. adoption and childlessness, and how they each manage their own personal stake in the conversation. Both members of the couple were interviewed together to allow for co-construction. A discourse analysis was conducted from a social-constructionist epistemological position. Three heterosexual couples were recruited and data was gathered through semi-structured interviews. Dominant discourses of IVF as struggle and sacrifice, the pain of infertility and what is lost by not having their own biological children were identified. This helped to build a picture of the couples as deserving parents but also led to constructions of unfairness and resentment. Childless people were characterised as materialistic and lacking meaning in life. The analysis looked at how the couple was constructed during the interview with the dominant discourse being the ‘in it together’ discourse. This was troubled by some topics like donor gametes, who the infertile one in the couple was, and different reactions to IVF. The current research not only adds to the literature on infertility and IVF but also to how couples work together to co-construct experience and meaning. Implications, limitations and areas for future research are discussed.