Professor Antonia Lyons
Flaunting it on Facebook: Young adults and drinking cultures in Aotearoa New Zealand
Young adults regularly engage in heavy drinking episodes with groups of friends. They are also high users of social networking technologies such as Facebook, and are said to be obsessed with identity, image and celebrity. In this talk I provide an overview of research that explored how new technologies are being used by young people in their drinking practices and cultures. In total 141 participants (aged 18-25) took part in 34 friendship focus group discussions (12 Pakeha, 12 Maori and 10 Pasifika groups), while 23 young adults took part in individual interviews where they showed and discussed their Facebook pages. Popular online material regarding alcohol consumption was also collected.
Critical, in-depth qualitative analyses across the multimodal datasets demonstrated major convergences across ethnic groups in terms of the centrality of alcohol to social life, and Facebook was central before, during and following drinking episodes. However, the meanings, risks and pleasures of these practices varied by ethnicity, gender and class. Being visible online was important and young adults ‘celebritised the self’ by routinely posting on Facebook. Digital marketing was commonplace and sophisticated in this context, and was drawn on enthusiastically and often uncritically by young adults to develop social relationships and cultural capital. The findings are considered in terms of their implications for theorizing contemporary drinking cultures and the current ‘culture of intoxication’, as well as alcohol policies and health promotion strategies.
Professor Richie Poulton, FRSNZ
Promoting the uptake of lifecourse research findings in the policy context.
Lifecourse research takes time and is costly. If done well, it can be highly generative, e.g. the Dunedin and Christchurch longitudinal studies have published well over 1700 peer-reviewed papers and reports. The transfer and uptake of information generated from these studies, however, is less than ideal. Some examples of translational efforts in recent years will be provided. This will highlight the non-linear nature of science translation and the importance of science advice mechanisms linking government with researchers.
Professor Matthew Sanders
Capable Parenting: The Key to Preventing Social Emotional and Behavioural Problems in Children
Of all the potentially modifiable risk and protective factors associated with children’s development none is more important than the quality of parent-child relationship. Good parenting is a common pathway to many diverse outcomes in children including their social and emotional well-being , academic attainment, physical health and life course opportunities. Capable parenting is the key to preventing child social emotional and behavioural problems and provides a common pathway to confident, resilient and skilled children. The Triple P-Positive Parenting Program is a multilevel system of parenting support based on three decades of research and development work in both Australia and NZ.
Triple P has evolved a range of evidence-base interventions designed to overcome a diverse developmental and clinical problems using various delivery modalities to make participation made accessible and normalised. Extensive research has shown that self-directed and technology assisted interventions as well as clinician delivered interventions can be effective. This flexibility has inspired the more recent innovation work of investigating how a behavioural change program like Triple P, can be used to reduce the negative effects of poverty on developing communities and furthermore enhance the livelihoods and wellbeing of the people in such communities. The difficulties faced and lessons learnt through implementing a large scale evidence-base positive parenting program across a diverse range of communities will be discussed.
Professor Virginia Slaughter
Theory of mind: What is it good for?
When children develop a theory of mind in early childhood, they become capable of inferring what other people want, think and feel, and they can predict the behaviours that these internal states are likely to prompt. Built into the last three decades of research on this topic has been an assumption that theory of mind acquisition is a developmental milestone that ‘transforms’ children’s social lives. Intuitively this assumption seems warranted but until recently, empirical support for it was sparse. In this presentation, I will overview the latest research to confirm that acquiring a theory of mind is indeed good for children’s communicative and interpersonal skills.