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In this article we explore the level of motivation held by students engaged in a specially designed leadership program - Emerging Leaders in Technology, Science and Mathematics (Elites). Elites was developed as part of a NSF S-STEM grant awarded to Radford University in 2014 that provides scholarships for meritorious students with financial need, which aligns with Involvement Theory (Astin, 1985). Elites was designed to incentivize student participation in high impact activities to develop their professional skills aligned with their degree program, in order to develop them into STEM leaders. Coupled with Proactive Advising (Schee, 2007, Varney, 2012), the Elites program overarching goal was to promote retention of these students at Radford University and in their STEM related disciplines. This paper presents the successes and challenges of the Elites program as measured by focus group interviews and evaluating the students’ motivation levels to engage in the Elites program that is framed on an academic motivational model: M.U.S.I.C. (Jones, 2009). The results suggest students were motivated to remain with the Elites program and perceived the Elites program as effective as they prepared for their futures as STEM leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain trauma-informed approaches (TIAs) to mental health. It outlines evidence on the link between trauma and mental health, explains the principles of TIAs and their application in mental health and explores the extent to which TIAs are impacting in the UK.

The approach is a conceptual account of TIAs including a consideration of why they are important, what they are and how they can become more prevalent in the UK. This is supported by a narrative overview of literature on effectiveness and a scoping of the spread of TIAs in the UK.

There is strong and growing evidence of a link between trauma and mental health, as well as evidence that the current mental health system can retraumatise trauma survivors. There is also emerging evidence that trauma-informed systems are effective and can benefit staff and trauma survivors. Whilst TIAs are spreading beyond the USA where they developed, they have made little impact in the UK. The reasons for this are explored and ways of overcoming barriers to implementation discussed.

This paper – authored by trauma survivors and staff – describes an innovative approach to mental health service provision that, it is argued, could have immense benefits for staff and service users alike.

Mental well-being is associated with positive outcomes throughout the life course. This study aims to examine interventions delivered by allied health professionals (AHPs) to alleviate community stressors adversely impacting public mental health and well-being.

Review inclusion criteria comprised experimental and qualitative process evaluations of public mental health interventions delivered by AHPs. Electronic searches in Cinahl, Embase, Medline, PsycINFO and the Cochrane Library, were combined with grey literature searches of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence public health guidance. A narrative synthesis and the Effective Public Health Practice Project appraisal tool were used to evaluate the evidence.

A total of 45-articles were included in the review describing AHP-delivered interventions addressing social disadvantage, trauma, bullying, loneliness, work-related stress, transitional stress, intersectionality, pain and bereavement. No articles were identified evaluating interventions delivered by operating department practitioners or orthoptists. A conceptual map was developed summarising the stressors, and a typology of public mental health interventions defined including: place-based interventions, discrete/one-off interventions, multi-component lifestyle and social connector interventions and interventions targeting groups at risk of mental health conditions.

Many mental health conditions begin in childhood, and a strength of the review is the life course perspective. A further strength is compiling a compendium of public mental health outcome measures used by AHPs to inform future research. The authors excluded many articles focussed on clinical interventions/populations, which did not meet review inclusion criteria. While playing a key role in delivering public mental health interventions, clinical psychologists are not defined as AHPs and were excluded from the review, and this may be construed a limitation. Given heterogeneity of study designs and interventions evaluated numerical analyses of pooled findings was not appropriate.

The review highlights the breadth of community stressors on which AHPs can intervene and contribute in public mental health contexts, stressors which correspond to those identified in UK Government guidance as currently important and relevant to address. The findings can inform developing community public mental health pathways that align with the UK National Health Service (NHS) Long Term Plan, on prevention and early intervention to protect community mental health and well-being. Further can inform the NHS strategic direction for AHPs including informing ways of increasing utilisation of core AHP skills to optimise contributions in public mental health agendas.

It is surprising there were not more AHP delivered evaluations of interventions for other stressors important to address in public mental health settings, for example gambling, domestic violence or that used digital technology, and these are areas for future research. Future research should identify the most active/effective dimensions of multi-component interventions which could be informed by frameworks to guide complex intervention development. The relative paucity of research identified, highlights the predominant focus of research to date on interventions for clinical mental health conditions and populations. The lack of preventative approaches is evident, and an important area for future research to align with UK health and social care priorities.

The review highlights AHP-delivered interventions impacting diverse community stressors across the life course. The findings can inform developing public mental health pathways aligned with government health service priorities to protect mental health and well-being, prioritise prevention and early intervention and increase utilisation of AHP skills across public mental health settings.

Increasingly, universities are involved in providing leadership development opportunities that support students’ academic endeavours and their personal and professional development, including employability and citizenship skills. Leadership experiences are beneficial not only for students, but also for universities, the wider community, and future employers. To develop a greater understanding of students’ perceived benefits of their involvement in peer leadership activities, a group of Australasian universities participated in a pilot survey based on the United States National Survey of Peer Leadership. Overall, the results suggest students believe they benefit from peer leadership experiences across a range of key outcomes areas, most prominently creative problem solving, appreciation of diversity, and a sense of belonging and contributing to the university community.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) rapidly became the “new normal” with profound implications for everyone's daily life. In this paper, emerging psychologists from diverse cultural backgrounds discuss four main ways in which COVID-19 impacted diverse psychological populations.

This paper was written as a reflection on how COVID-19 has impacted diverse psychological populations using authors' academic and personal experiences.

First, the authors explore inaccessible populations with a focus on domestic violence victims living in rural areas. Second, the authors consider consequences of social isolation with a focus on remote workers. Third, the authors investigate the consequences of public (dis)trust in the pandemic with a focus on migrant worker communities. Finally, the authors discuss pandemic-relevant subcultures with a focus on “anti-vaxxers”.

The paper concludes with a discussion of negative implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on diverse psychological populations, both for the present and the future, and ends with an action plan of possible interventions to overcome these limitations.

Overall, the current paper provides a broad overview of how the pandemic has shaped and will continue to shape diverse psychological populations.

Personas are lifelike characters that are driven by potential or real users’ personal goals and experiences when interacting with a product. Personas support user-centered design by focusing on real users’ needs. However, the use of personas in educational research and design requires certain adjustments from its original use in human-computer interface design. This paper aims to propose a process of creating personas from phenomenographic studies, which helps us create data-grounded personas effectively.

Personas have features that can help address design problems in educational contexts. The authors compare the use of personas with other common methodologies in education research, including phenomenology and phenomenography. Then, this study presents a six-step process of building personas using phenomenographic study as follows: articulate a design problem, collect user data, assemble phenomenographic categories, build personas, check personas and solve the design problem using personas. The authors illustrate this process with two examples, including the redesign of a professional development website and an undergraduate research program design.

The authors find that personas are valuable tools for educational design websites and programs. Phenomenography can productively help educational designers and researchers build sets of personas following the process the authors propose.

The use and method of personas in educational contexts are scarce and vague. Using the example contexts, the authors provide educational designers and researchers a clear method of creating personas that are relatable and applicable for their design problems.

A content validation process of an institutional leadership framework is described for leadership educators in higher education. We created this process to further integrate our leadership framework across campus, maintain alignment with advancements in leadership research and ensure it is broadly inclusive and culturally responsive.

Our approach included seven essential design elements and was informed by a review of leadership frameworks in practice and the literature, validation studies and a comprehensive document review.

Our approach yielded a validated leadership framework with modifications to its principles, values, competencies and outcomes. Modifications addressed pre-determined criteria and were deemed relevant to leadership research and our institutional context.

The external content validation process of our leadership framework is novel and serves as a valuable guide for those considering opportunities to strengthen their own institutional approaches to leadership education.

The purpose of this paper is to examine career engagement and perceived employability during the school-to-work transition. We studied within-person changes in career engagement and perceived employability in the transition from higher education to the labor market. We investigated their dynamic reciprocal relationship to unravel whether career engagement or perceived employability is the leading indicator in the relationship in view of providing adequate support for students during the school-to-work transition.

We conducted latent change score (LCS) analyses on a three-wave sample of 701 graduates in Flanders (Belgium). We collected data in July (right before graduation), November and May. LCS is a novel method allowing to simultaneously test change and reciprocal relationships.

Our findings demonstrated how both career engagement and perceived employability changed (within-person) non-linearly during the school-to-work transition. As for their relationship, we found that perceived employability is the driving force in the relationship. Perceived employability fueled subsequent positive changes in career engagement, whereas career engagement did not lead to subsequent changes in perceived employability.

Our study connects the career development and the graduate employability literature, and examines the school-to-work transition from preparation for the labor market to ten months after graduation. We also make an important methodological contribution, demonstrating the added value of LCS for studying employability in higher education. Our findings provide insights in how higher education institutions may support students in the school-to-work transition.