179566 research outputs found
Sort by
Rebuilding the self through valued action and group connections after acquired brain injury:Participant perspectives of the VaLiANT group intervention
Get PDFEffective interventions that facilitate adjustment following acquired brain injury (ABI) are needed to improve long-term outcomes and meaningful reengagement in life. VaLiANT is an 8-week group intervention that combines cognitive rehabilitation with Acceptance and Commitment therapy to improve valued living, wellbeing, and adjustment. This study explored participant experiences of VaLiANT to optimize its ongoing development. This included characterization of individually meaningful treatment outcomes, mechanisms of action, and intervention acceptability. Qualitative interviews and quantitative ratings were collected from 39 ABI survivors (Mage= 52, SD = 15; 54% stroke) following their participation in VaLiANT. Participants reported diverse outcomes which resulted in three themes being generated following reflexive thematic analysis. “A fuller toolkit for life with brain injury” indicated increased strategy usage and better daily functioning; “The value of connection and belonging” captured the importance of social experiences in shaping recovery; and “Finding the me I can be” represented cognitive, behavioural, and emotional aspects of identity reconstruction post-ABI. The content and delivery of the intervention were rated highly but participants desired greater follow-up and tailoring of the intervention. Overall, VaLiANT appears to facilitate adjustment through several mechanisms, but greater intervention individualization and dosage may be required to enhance the treatment impact.</p
Burnt bones from Dùn Bhoraraic, Isle of Islay:Untangling Hebridean ‘u-structures’, Vikings, and Iron-Age mortuary theatre
Get PDFIn terms of its material record, the Inner-Hebridean island of Islay is best known for its ancient fortifications and its Viking graves. Both types of site can be seen as important markers in early landscapes of power and control. The remains of the broch on the summit of Dùn Bhoraraic, for instance, overlooks the important early harbours in the Sound of Islay and Lochindaal, with the pagan Scandinavian grave field at Ballinaby in the Rhinns commanding sweeping views across Loch Gorm, and out over the Atlantic. At present, however, they diverge in at least one significant respect. Whereas Islay’s ancient fortifications are encountered island-wide, her confirmed Viking graves are restricted to just two discrete locations: Ballinaby, and Newton Cottage, with only a few other sites suspected. The Dùn Bhoraraic Project, on which this article is based, set out to explore the possibility of connections between the two groups of data, with a view to modelling accessible locations for further Viking burials. The point of departure was the mysterious stone setting on the slopes of Dùn Bhoraraic in the Dunlossit Estate believed locally to be the remains of a Viking grave. Following review of its geo-spatial and cultural context, including the localised Old Norse namescape, funding was secured from the Society to undertake a visual investigation and excavation of the site. While similarities were noted with the Hebridean ‘U-Structures’ discussed by Leslie Alcock in 1983, the discovery of a cremation burial without culturally diagnostic artefacts prompted comparison with a range of Viking-Age graves. In the end, radiocarbon dating traced the cremated bones to the final centuries BC – a conclusion which was unexpected but served to confirm the prestigious connotations of the location, and the general validity of the approach. It also offered a rare and valuable window onto the mortuary practices of the Atlantic Iron Age in the Inner Hebrides
“We don’t know how to talk”:Adolescent meaning making and experiences of participating in research on violence in Romania, South Africa, and the Philippines
Get PDFBackground: Current evidence on adolescent participation in violence research has primarily measured distress, harm or upset using quantitative methods. There are relatively few studies which have employed qualitative methods to understand adolescent emotional experiences, and to articulate the experiences of participation from their own perspective. Objective: This study aimed to assess adolescents’ experiences of participating in research on violence in different contexts, namely Romania, South Africa, and the Philippines. Methods: A purposive sample of adolescents (N = 53, 51% female) were recruited from rural, urban, and peri-urban areas in Romania, the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, and Metro Manila, Philippines. Semi-structured one-on-one in-depth interviews and drawings sought adolescent perspectives on their experiences of participation, including the emotions they felt, and their perceptions of research on violence. Results: Drawing on analysis of interviews and drawings, adolescents reported a layered emotional experience, ranging from sadness, anger, apprehension, and upset, to joy, relief, and laughter. Their emotional experiences were driven by participation as a relational encounter, both with the researchers involved, as well as with other children and young people they encountered. Adolescents emphasized participation as enabling disclosure of difficult experiences, and the creation of awareness of violence. Conclusions: Adolescent perspectives of participation in research on violence are nuanced and encompass their lived experience as well as the fundamentally relational nature of participation. Adolescents experienced increased awareness of topics in violence and perceived research participation as enabling disclosure and possible help-seeking. Measures of participation impact developed along with adolescents, which reflect this complexity, are needed<br/
Hidden tail chains and recurrence equations for dependence parameters associated with extremes of higher-order Markov chains
Get PDFWe derive some key extremal features for stationary kth-order Markov chains that can be used to understand how the process moves between an extreme state and the body of the process. The chains are studied given that there is an exceedance of a threshold, as the threshold tends to the upper endpoint of the distribution. Unlike previous studies with 1 ]]>, we consider processes where standard limit theory describes each extreme event as a single observation without any information about the transition to and from the body of the distribution. Our work uses different asymptotic theory which results in non-degenerate limit laws for such processes. We study the extremal properties of the initial distribution and the transition probability kernel of the Markov chain under weak assumptions for broad classes of extremal dependence structures that cover both asymptotically dependent and asymptotically independent Markov chains. For chains with 1 ]]>, the transition of the chain away from the exceedance involves novel functions of the k previous states, in comparison to just the single value, when. This leads to an increase in the complexity of determining the form of this class of functions, their properties, and the method of their derivation in applications. We find that it is possible to derive an affine normalization, dependent on the threshold excess, such that non-degenerate limiting behaviour of the process, in the neighbourhood of the threshold excess, is assured for all lags. We find that these normalization functions have an attractive structure that has parallels to the Yule-Walker equations. Furthermore, the limiting process is always linear in the innovations. We illustrate the results with the study of kth-order stationary Markov chains with exponential margins based on widely studied families of copula dependence structures.</p
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Edinburgh Research Explorer? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!