• The conference workshops will take place on Tuesday, 29th of August, 2017 at the Conference Venue (Via Ugo Bassi, University of Padova) in the following rooms: Aula G, I, A, B C & D. Rooms are indicated below in each workshop tab.
  • Please also note that workshops will take place if a minimum number of participants (usually around 5) subscribed by early July. In case there are fewer subscriptions, workshops may have to be cancelled.
  • For registration please click here.
  • Please note that workshops 3, 8 & 9 have been canceled. 

N-of-1 design: Opportunities and challenges for personalised behaviour change

Karina Davidson, Dominika Kwasnicka

Half-Day Workshop

09:00 – 13:00

 Aula D

Background

Theories of the behaviour change and health behaviour change interventions are often tested in a conventional between-subject randomized controlled trial design; however behaviour change interventions aim to achieve within-subject change in participants who are likely to have heterogeneous and unique responses to the behavioural intervention. Theories of the behaviour change also apply to individuals.

Objectives

  1. introduce N-of-1 method (also known as single-patient N-of-1 studies or trials) to test predictors of behavioural outcomes and to
  2. provide practical personalised behaviour change interventions examples;
  3. prioritise types of behavioural issues most amenable to N-of-1 approaches.

The main goal of the proposed workshop is to produce a position statement regarding use of N-of-1 designs in observational behavioural studies and in behavioural interventions. In this statement we will identify priorities for behavioural N-of-1 research and discuss potential use of the N-of-1 behavioural trials.

Activities

The workshop will be divided into four parts: (1) introduction to the N-of-1 design – presentation followed by (2) identifying priorities for N-of-1 research; in smaller groups workshop participants will discuss key priorities (e.g., application, personalising behavioural interventions, data analysis, limitations of the design) and advantages and disadvantages of using this method; (3) group voting on key priorities to be included in the position statement and identifying workshop participants to contribute to the statement; and (4) creating a workshop summary.

Intended participants

We would like to encourage behavioural scientists who have used single case design and who are planning on using this design in their future studies to attend the workshop.

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods in health psychology: an introductory workshop

Daniel Powell, Gertraud (Turu) Stadler

Half-Day Workshop

13:30 – 17:30

 Aula C

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA), otherwise known as ambulatory assessment or the experience sampling method, is a method of collecting relatively-intensive repeated measures in daily life. This workshop will provide a “how to” session on EMA research methods for those with interest in incorporating the method into their research.

Objectives

On completion of the workshop, delegates will be able to:

  1. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of using EMA methods in health psychology
  2. Identify the potential for EMA studies across different domains: behavioural, cognitive, emotions, symptoms, and physiological.
  3. Formulate a within-person research question that is relevant to their own areas of interest
  4. Design an appropriate EMA study to address a specific research question
  5. Recognise the importance of having a theory of change in EMA research

Activities

The half-day workshop will be participatory and interactive, and will assume no or little prior knowledge. Participants will debate how EMA is used in Health Psychology, recognising the benefits but also the potential pitfalls to watch out for. Delegates will learn how to formulate and distinguish within-person from between-person research questions. EMA design will be explored in a short mock protocol task in small groups, with theory of change highlighted as a means of informing design choices. Finally, delegates will be introduced to the multilevel datasets that are typically yielded from EMA studies, addressing some fundamental practical questions: What does multilevel even mean? What does a multilevel dataset look like in SPSS? How straightforward is data linkage across devices? How do I determine statistical power? How much of a problem is missing data?

Open Science Workflow for Health Psychology: how do we actually do it?

Alexandra Dima, James Green

CANCELED

Objectives

Open Science (OS) is becoming a standard in research and is increasingly supported by academic institutions, funders, and publishers. Researchers now need to conduct their studies in such a way that published results can be easily replicated and extended. This requires a new approach to research workflow, which can have domain-specific challenges. The workshop will provide practical advice to Health Psychology researchers on how to conduct OS-consistent research. After the workshop, participants should be able to: explain OS requirements and options for collecting, processing and archiving data; apply OS principles to evaluate research archives and reproduce research; adapt OS tools and practices to own research workflow.

Activities

The day will start with an overview of OS principles, requirements, and tools, as applied to Health Psychology. We will introduce concepts such as research data management, FAIR principles, research workflow, reproducibility, review data protection standards in OS, and discuss their practical implications for qualitative and quantitative studies (e.g. consent, anonymisation). Participants will be invited to discuss benefits and barriers of OS in their research. Demo sessions will present practical applications of OS tools (OSF, Github, R). Participants will familiarise themselves with OS tools via practical tasks: explore an OS repository, simulate a pre-registration on aspredicted.org, set up a basic workflow (data dictionary, file structure, basic data preparation and analysis scripts). Finally, participants will be invited to analyse their own workflow (current or future project) from the OS perspective, and plan concrete actions to optimise it.

Preparatory work will include a brief survey on their research experience and workshop expectations, and some background reading. Additional resources will be provided for anyone with little prior experience of R. Participants (maximum 30): Junior or experienced researchers interested in adopting an OS approach in their workflow; requires basic knowledge of study conduct and data analysis.

Writing High Impact Scientific Papers and Getting Them Out for Review

James Coyne

Full-Day Workshop

09:00 – 17:30

 Aula B

Objectives

  1. Familiarize participants with digital resources and the creative purposes to which they can be put.
  2. Provide participants in guided practice in crafting compelling stories and successful papers.
  3. Provide recognition of what needs to be done after submitting a manuscript, respond to reviews, decide whether to appeal rejections, and manage publicity for new papers

Rationale

Scientific writing is undergoing dramatic changes. Papers are desk-rejected without being sent for peer review. Simply reporting good science is insufficient to ensure acceptance. Manuscripts must inspire interest and tell a persuasive story, if they are going to make it to review. Rich digital resources have become freely available, allowing writers to keep updated on the literature, but also identify potential collaborators and select the best journals and reviewers. Furthermore, if impact of papers is going to be maximized, authors need to be alert to post-submission responsibilities; respond strategically to reviews including a rejection; and use social media for publicity to increase early citations.

Description of Participants

Graduate and PhD students actively involved in writing; postdocs and junior and senior faculty

Full day of powerpoint presentations and demonstrations, highly interactive sessions between participants and the presenter in crafting storylines for cover letters and responses to reviewers, picking titles and writing abstracts. Personalized feedback will be provided to participants wherever they are in the writing process.

James C. Coyne is Professor Emeritus of Health Psychology at University of Groningen where he taught scientific writing. He has over 350 publications and is designated as one of the most impactful psychologists in the world. He is a Senior Editor for EHPS’s Health Psychology Bulletin and Academic Editor for PLOS One. He has served on numerous editorial boards. He has previously presented this workshop at universities at international conferences including EHPS.

How to assess moderation in meta-analysis using meta-CART

Elise Dusseldorp, Xinru Li

Full-Day Workshop

09:00 – 17:30

 Aula A

Interventions generally consist of various components, for example, multiple behaviour change techniques (BCTs). Understanding which combinations of components are effective is a key question. Meta-analyses in health psychology research are often used to identify BCTs (or other moderators) that influence the strength of the intervention effect. It is, however, often difficult to detect combined effects of BCTs by means of traditional meta-analytic approaches. Meta-CART is a statistical method that enables the identification of effective combinations of moderators. It is an adaptation of Classification and Regression Trees for the field of meta-analysis (Dusseldorp et al. 2014; Li et al. 2017). The results of meta-CART are presented in a tree that is easy to interpret. For example, a resulting tree from a meta-CART analysis identified that particularly the combination of ‘prompt intention formation’ and ‘provide information about behaviour– health links’ was effective (Dusseldorp et al., 2014).

Objectives

After this workshop the participant is able to:

  • understand the methodology of meta-CART and meta-analysis;
  • recognize types of problems in Health Psychology that are suitable for application of meta-CART;
  • apply meta-CART to example data sets and interpret the analysis results.

Activities

This workshop consists of four sessions covering the following topics: Introduction to R, Meta-analysis and moderation, Classification and regression trees, and Meta-CART. The first part of each session consists of a lecture about the topic; the second part is a computer lab session, during which the participants perform exercises. Before the workshop, the participants obtain references to literature, and get instruction about installing R.

Intended participants

(Part-time) researchers (e.g., PhD-students, applied researchers) that are familiar with multivariate data analysis at a bachelor level of a study in the behavioural or medical sciences. Knowledge of R or meta-analysis is NOT a pre-requisite. Participants need their own laptop.

Maximum number of participants: 30

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Chronic Pain and Headache

Maria Karekla, Evangelos Karademas

Full-Day Workshop

09:00 – 17:30

 Aula I

The application of Acceptance and Commitment

The application of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for the treatment of chronic pain is well established and indeed ACT is considered an empirically supported treatment for such chronic and debilitating problems. This workshop will present the latest developments in ACT manuals for the treatment of chronic pain and headache for increasing well-being of sufferers. The latest application of these new protocols will be discussed based on findings from the European Union funded research project “ALGEA”  (the Greek word for suffering).

The main aim of the project was to examine the efficacy of ACT for the treatment of chronic pain and examine the mechanisms and processes of change in this approach.

Objectives

(1) Describe the basic tenets and core processes of ACT and how to use mindfulness, acceptance, experiential exercises, metaphors and defusion techniques, to improve well-being in individuals with chronic pain and head pain.

(2) Conceptualize chronic pain cases based on ACT processes and how to practically work with exposure of current pain

(3) Integrate RFT principles of shared perspective and lift perspective (self as context) directly when working with the client with pain in the present moment.

Activities

Concepts will be illustrated using live demonstrations, experiential exercises, metaphors, and worksheets. This workshop is designed to teach skills needed to explore ACT as an assessment model and intervention method for chronic pain. It will be mostly experiential and will balance an understanding of the model with a personal connection with the issues raised in ACT, and with skill development.

Participation

Participants can be therapists or applied health psychologists interested in the therapy of individuals suffering from chronic pain. Participants can be novices or more experienced with the ACT approach.

Maximum number of participants: 50

Introduction to Motivational Interviewing and intergration with health services research and routine health care

Konstadina Griva

Full-Day Workshop

09:00 – 17:30

 Aula G

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is an evidence-based counselling style for helping people change. Motivational interviewing is a person-centred and goal oriented approach that strengthens personal motivation and commitment to change through exploring and resolving ambivalence in an atmosphere of acceptance and compassion. Research has demonstrated that MI is a skill that is accessible to wide range of people through training, coaching and objective assessment.

The training will be both an introduction to/overview of MI, AND an exploration of how to integrate aim in health care and health services research.

It will include

  • Presentation of a new 4-process framework for use in diverse settings
  • Clarification about the common and unique elements of MI and they value for health services
  • Rapid engagement and core skills : opportunity to observe and practice the skills and discuss their integration into routine health care, the delivery of intervention and implementation of health services research
  • A focus on client change language and how it guides the practice of MI

Participants

This workshop is aimed at people who want to learn the theory and practice of Motivational Interviewing. It will be both an introduction to/overview of MI, AND an exploration of how to shape MI consistent health care. It will be of interest to both newcomers and those more familiar with MI.

Activities

A wide range of learning methods will be used, including demonstration, video observation, brief content lectures, discussion and focused practice. Above all will be the creation of a constructive, respectful and enjoyable atmosphere for learning and discussion.

Maximum number of participants: 30

What do our respondents think we are asking? Improving Measurement-Instrument content validity

Anne Marie Plass

CANCELED

Objectives

Health Psychologists often make use of existing measurement instruments that have proved valid through the statistical testing of their psychometric qualities. Yet, a critical condition for validity; verifying the interpretation of the items for a given target population, is a largely unknown step and extremely rare. However, almost every individual that has ever completed a questionnaire has experienced the unclear nature of this task, i.e. giving answers to questions that were difficult to understand.

A large body of evidence demonstrates that items researchers thought to be clear are often vague and hard to understand. One way to establish (better) content validity, and at an earlier stage, is through applying cognitive testing. Cognitive interviewing involves the study of how survey questions are interpreted, how information is recalled, and how respondents make decisions to provide a particular response. It combines two key procedures: 1. Think Aloud, and 2. Probing. Cognitive interviewing is an iterative process in which there are usually two to three rounds of interviews and, in-between, carefully structured analyses and adjustment of the items.

This workshop aims to: 1. Introduce cognitive testing; 2. Provide practicing with the interviewing method; 3. Get you acquainted with the method of analysis.

Activities

After an introduction to cognitive interviewing, participants will practice the interviewing method making use of an already existing scale, preferably one they use themselves. After the break, the structured analysis method will be introduced, and participants will make use of this in analysing the morning interviews. Finally, suggestions for item improvement will be formulated and discussed.

Intended Participants and Max number: Any health psychologist that wants to improve the measurement instruments they use up to a maximum of 20 persons. No conflict of interest

Designing qualitative research with children and translating it into health psychology practice

Catrinel Craciun

CANCELED

Objectives

Designing interventions for children requires a novel approach both in terms of evaluating intervention needs and for translating research findings into practice. Within the workshop, participants will learn about novel qualitative research methods for interviewing children (e.g. interviews based on the conversation between two children, using images as part of interviews, go-along methods etc.). An innovative approach for health promotion in children will be taught, namely developing stories as a means for facilitating health behavior change.

During this workshop participants, will learn:

  • To use innovative methods for interviewing children to assess intervention needs
  • How to use qualitative research findings to design health promotion interventions for children
  • How to use stories as a method to promote health behavior and health beliefs among children

Activities

The full-day workshop will mix power point presentations with practical exercises where participants will design their own interview guides, develop health promotion stories and exercise how to translate research findings into practice for a topic of their interest. Examples from the projects conducted by the facilitator will be used, such as developing stories to promote positive aging images in children, designing therapeutic stories for children with chronic illnesses (e.g. cancer, diabetes), elaborating health messages and story-lines for public health campaigns targeted at children. The sessions will be highly interactive and personalized feedback will be provided.

Description of the intended participants

The workshop is open to junior or senior researchers as well as students (PhD, MA) who want to acquire skills in conducting research with children and learn innovative techniques of translating research to practice.

A maximum of 20 participants is desired.