Research                            School of Psychology Department, Victoria University

 

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DEPARTMENT MAIN RESEARCH AREAS


The Department of Psychology places a high priority on promoting an active research culture among staff and postgraduate students. The main departmental research areas include Clinical Psychology, Community Psychology, Cross-Cultural Psychology, Gambling, Health Psychology, Indigenous Issues, Neuropsychology, Organisational and Group Processes, and Sleep and Circadian Rhythms. In line with these research areas, the Department has recently formed formal research groups which are listed on the left-hand side of this page. The department is also a host to the Wellness Promotion Unit.

Clinical Psychology 

Research in Clinical Psychology explores behaviour and experience relevant to mental health issues and includes study of the broad spectrum from psychological wellbeing to mental illness. At the latter end of the spectrum, research can involve investigation of the developmental conditions (aetiology) or community milieu of mental health problems, of cognitive, emotional and social factors associated with mental health problems or various diagnostic groups, or of aspects of the psychotherapeutic treatment of mental health problems. At the other extreme, protective or preventive factors can be explored or mental health promotion measures studied. 
In balance with more traditional approaches, this Department has a special commitment to Clinical Psychology research that takes into account the family and community relationships of individuals and to research that flows from psychodynamic or depth psychology theories. Similarly, innovation is pursued in the development of qualitative methodologies, to complement quantitative research designs. 
Well over forty separate staff and postgraduate research studies in Clinical Psychology are currently active in the Department, spanning a wide range of interests. Most of these involve collaboration with government or non-government mental health or social welfare agencies and institutions beyond the university. 

Community Psychology 

Community Psychology has its roots in such fields as community mental health, organisational, applied social and more recently, environmental, ecological and health psychology. Its unique identity is defined through its recognition that the psychological well-being of individuals cannot be understood in isolation from broader social contexts - hence its focus on communities as the primary unit for understanding, research and action. Research in this field recognises that all research efforts are value-based, and typically utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods of investigation, with an emphasis on empowerment and collaboration in community-based research partnerships.
Much of the community psychology research activity conducted at Victoria University is therefore based in field settings with community agencies, consumer groups and under-resourced organisations. Examples of such settings include community mental health outreach programs, feminist health services, self-help groups, migrant communities and human service organisations in the midst of service redevelopments such as privatisation and outsourcing. Research projects have been conducted with homeless populations, sex workers and survivors of physical and sexual abuse.
Funding has been received for a range of undertakings designed to improve access to health and welfare services, particularly in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne.

Cross-Cultural Psychology

Cross-cultural psychology seeks to understand the variety of human behaviour as it emerges in the cultural context, to understand the development of certain individual characteristics in relation to cultural factors, and to understand what happens to individuals as their cultural system undergoes significant change. Increasingly, cross-cultural research has investigated what happens to individuals who have grown up in one cultural context when they have to re-establish their lives in another one. Australia is a multicultural society and Victoria University is located in an area with a large number of migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds. 
The areas of interest within the department include comparative studies examining differences between the Anglo-Australian society with migrants from Asia, especially China, Hong Kong and Vietnam, and Europe, including Greece, Poland and Malta, in the areas of self-efficacy, life satisfaction, parent-child relationship, romance and courtship norms, environmental concern, attitude towards mental illness, coping, academic achievement and participation. 
Another related area of research is research on the adaptation of migrants and the research employs a theoretical framework which sees migrant adaptation (e.g. employment destination, academic satisfaction, stress levels) as a result of influences of contextual variables such as country of origin and auspices of immigration, personal and situational factors such as social self-efficacy, value systems, locus of control and social support. 
The department places a great emphasis on the application of cross-cultural and migrant research findings on the professional training of psychology students and offers cross-cultural courses at the postgraduate level to increase the awareness of psychology graduates in cross-cultural issues. 
The courses offered include professional practice-multicultural issues, cross-cultural counselling and also a theoretical course on cross-cultural psychology. 

Gambling

According to the report compiled by the Tasmanian Gaming Commission, Australians wagered eighty billion dollars on all types of gambling activities in 1996-97. The average gambling expenditure per capita in Australia was $737. With the increase of gambling in Victoria, problem gambling has been identified as one of the major social and health problems that threaten our well being. 
Several staff have been active in gambling research and their research on Australian youth gambling is internationally recognised. Recent research conducted in this area includes studies of sex differences in poker machine gambling, predictors of youth gambling frequency and problem gambling, loneliness and women's gambling, 'illusion of control' and gambling among adolescents, a survey of changes in youth gambling patterns in the western suburbs from 1996 -1998, and evaluation of a facility for counselling problem gamblers. A project concerning gambling patterns in the Vietnamese-Australian community is currently being conducted. 
There is great potential for small and large projects to be developed by psychological researchers in this under-studied field. 

Health Psychology 

Health psychology is a new specialty area in psychology and a broad field. The department has a number of staff working in this area. Their research is both qualitative and quantitative in method and covers a range of health psychology areas. Areas covered include adjustment to illness and chronic illness such as diabetes, dermatitis and systemic lupus erythematosus and investigation of psychological intervention and therapy where illness or chronic illness is a major concern.
Measurement of psychological states in the health setting and the use of short assessment measures to facilitate wellbeing is another research area. Further the experience of health services or systems and patient provider relations are part of the health psychology area as are health issues such as pain and grief.

 Indigenous Issues 

Several members of the department are also members of the APS Aboriginal Issues Interest Group and a fourth year unit is offered on Aboriginal People and Psychology. This has given rise to a new, small, but reasonably active research interest in psychological aspects of indigenous issues. The main focus has been on Aboriginal-White relations and recent and current projects include the measurement of racist attitudes, Aboriginal-White intermarriage, Aboriginality and the construction of difference, the dynamics of guilt in Aboriginal-White relations, the psychology of apology and trans-generational transmission of trauma.
The Department has no plans to expand its research profile in this area, but a modest level of continuing activity expected. 

Neuropsychology 

There is a wide range of active research interest in clinical neuropsychology in the Department. Whilst much of this research is conceptualised in a developmental framework and focuses on acquired and developmental brain disorders in children and adolescents it also embraces several topics in the adult part of the life span, increasingly the disorders of late adulthood. Active research projects include some that are explicitly aimed at developing or improving intervention (ie. treatment or rehabilitation) for the brain impaired, as well as those that are oriented to a better understanding of the characterisation of disorders. 
These research programs are led by three staff members. Currently we have 13 postgraduate students conducting research projects in conjunction with these staff members. Specific research areas include, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, nonverbal learning disorder, non insulin dependent diabetes, head injury in adolescents, cognition in underweight adolescents, sundowning behaviour in the elderly, memory assessment in acute adult brain disorder, treatment programs for children with learning difficulties. 

Organisational and Group Processes 

A number of staff in the Department have provided supervision of research into various organisational and group development practices. The major trends evident in this research are: measuring the activities of organisational psychologists in government, industrial and consulting settings; the development of corporate practices in local government; organisational change management in the privatisation of public services; the application of imagery training and reinforcement practices in (sports) team performance; the application of counselling practices in organisational contexts and approaches to team development and the application of aboriginal education components in psychological education program.
 Research methodologies which include secondary analysis of existing databases, in-depth qualitative interviews, focus groups, action research, surveys and pre/post tests designs have been applied. While these research supervisors have demonstrated the capacity to service a wide range of research interests it is anticipated that a more concentrated range of research tasks will be sponsored in the future. 
The methodological flexibility demonstrated to date (eg. quantitative and qualitative approaches) is likely to be applied to this concentrated range of tasks in a manner which explores idiographic and nomothetic postulates.

Sleep and Circadian Rhythms

The Department has three staff who are active researchers in the area of sleep, sleep disorders and circadian rhythms. Research has proceeded in the Department's two bedroom sleep laboratory with many overnight recordings made of selected clinical populations such as insomniacs and people with narcolepsy (a disorder of excessive daytime sleepiness). In addition, students have been recruited to participate in studies on arousal thresholds and decision-making during sleep inertia. 
The Department has also acquired a number of wrist actigraphs (which continuously monitor activity) and these sophisticated devices have provided interesting data in relation to sleep/wake behaviour in people with a range of sleep disorders, children waking to smoke alarms and sleep quality during menopause. The advantage of wrist actigraphy is that it allows the monitoring of sleep/wake behaviour while people go about their usual diurnal and nocturnal activities. 
The Department's sleep researchers are currently organising research into zeitgebers (time cues) in the elderly and building on earlier work with smoke alarms and the monitoring of treatment effects in people with narcolepsy.