Psychology News @ Massey

Link to Latest newsletter - Aug-Nov 2009

Newsletter

Welcome to the School of Psychology newsletter which will provide regular reports on School events, staff and student activities, visitors, new initiatives and special achievements and awards.

Link to Latest newsletter - Aug-Nov 2009

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Recent News and Reports

Psychologist leads global task force to tackle poverty - Massey News 22/09/2008
http://www.massey.ac.nz/?aaadb1846e?mnarticle=psychologist-leads-global-task-force-to-tackle-poverty-22-09-2008

Psychologists throughout the world have responded to an initiative by a Massey academic who wants organisational psychologists to do more to combat poverty.

Professor Stuart Carr, based at the School of Psychology in Åuckland, launched a global task force earlier this year to encourage organisational psychologists worldwide to become involved in a United Nations lobby group. One of the UN's millennium development goals is to halve human poverty by 2015.

Better Practices for Foreign Aid - Massey News 13 August 2007 Issue 11
http://masseynews.massey.ac.nz/2007/Massey_News/issue-11/stories/03-11-07.html

Ishbel McWha was so impressed with the work of organisational psychologist Professor Stuart Carr that she returned from the front line of aid work in Cambodia to work for him and the Poverty Research Group in the University’s School of Psychology.

Professor Carr is now six months into an international project that is expected to lead to better practices in the complex world of foreign aid and the thousands who work in this field – from the poorest of local people to highly paid ex-pats. The project is called ADD-UP (Are Development Discrepancies Undermining Performance).

He has played a leading role in bringing together a team of psychologists and sociologists from 10 countries to examine the human dynamics of aid salary discrepancies and the significance of these big differences in income levels, to the outcome of projects in poor countries. ...........

Waitakere Anti-Violence Essential Services (WAVES) - November 2007
In 1992 Waitakere Anti-Violence Essential Services (WAVES) and the local District Court instituted a collaborative response to family violence that involved fast-tracking family violence cases and giving speaking rights to victim advocates in the Court. Since that time the Court has evolved protocols based on therapeutic jurisprudence to address family violence holistically through collaborating with community agencies that focus on the needs of victims, families and offenders. Recently, Judiciary at Waitakere invited a team of researchers from the School of Psychology at Massey University undertake an independent evaluation. Mandy Morgan, Leigh Coombes and Sarah McGray began negotiations with the Waitakere Anti-Violence Essential Services network and the Judiciary of the Court and developed a programme of research that would include studies on the successes and challenges facing the Court from a variety of different perspectives.

Preliminary report (May 2007)
In May of this year a preliminary report from the first study in the Waitakere Family Violence Court Evaluation Project was released. This study examined the Waitakere Family Violence Court Protocols from the perspective of the professional, state and community participants who put the Protocols into practice at the Court. The report is available as a PDF file (size 2.31Mb)

Statistical description (October 2007)
Recently the research team released the results of the second study: a statistical description of the Court's practices in relation to violence against women in intimate relationships. Databases from Viviana, a Community Victim Support outreach of Western Refuges Inc., and ManAlive, a provider of offender programmes and therapeutic interventions were analysed to address a number of questions in relation to overcoming systemic delays, protection of victims, and holding offenders accountable. This report is also available as a PDF file (size 470 kb).

Waitakere Family Violence Court – Accounting for Victim Safety (October 2008)
As part of the ongoing evaluation of the Waitakere Family Violence Court we are pleased to release our study of the safety experiences of women whose partners have been convicted of violence against them. The aim of this study was to understand the experiences of some women victims who have been clients of community victim advocates during and after court proceedings in which their partners were sentenced to “come up if called upon” as a result of pleading guilty to family violence charges. We are particularly interested in how the WFVC provision of victim advocacy services affects safety outcomes for victims and their families.

Our study concludes that the arrest of an intimate partner for a violent offence constitutes a crisis within an ongoing pattern of controlling violence and abuse. Familial, community and social expectations leave women victims carrying multiple burdens of responsibility for their own victimisation and for their safety as well as the protection of their children. In this situation, victim advocacy involves collaborative interagency responses that are able to share a few of the burdens of these responsibilities at times when victims are experiencing traumatic re-offending. Community victim advocates play a vital role in working with women victims to provide reliable information on their safety to the court. They bring specialist knowledge of the psycho-social effects of ongoing intimate violence into the court’s decision making process. In meeting the goal of protecting victims, community victim advocates are at the heart of the responses that enhance their safety. Building stronger, better resourced and more extensive coordinated responses provides the best opportunities for sharing the victims’ burdens more widely. The responsibility for stopping the violence remains with the perpetrators and within social relationships that continue to support violence in our homes.
The report is available as a PDF file (size 1.89Mb)

Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST) Grant - 16 March 2007
A project led by Dr Fiona Alpass in the School of Psychology at the University’s Palmerston north campus will receive $750,000 a year for five years for a longitudinal study which examines factors required for “positive ageing” and older people’s contribution to society. The research is in partnership with the New Zealand Family Centre and in collaboration with the New Zealand Institute for Research on Ageing, bringing together some of New Zealand’s top researchers on the effects of ageing.
http://masseynews.massey.ac.nz/2007/Press_Releases/04-16-07.html