Joanne M. Williams

• PhD
• Lecturer at University of Edinburgh

Existing research exploring perspectives on gardening has primarily focused on Western populations. The present study, employing qualitative semi‐structured interviews with 21 urban‐dwelling Chinese older adults, investigated their perceived benefits and barriers to gardening. Reflexive thematic analysis of interview transcripts revealed that urban...

Perfectionism has been found to associate with bullying experiences with the consequence of depression. The connection varies across contexts. The current study aimed to further explore the symptom-level dynamics between perfectionism, bullying experiences, and depression, with a particular emphasis on gender and cultural differences. A total of 39...

Background Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) poses a significant global health challenge, with symptom presentation potentially varying between adolescents and adults. Adolescence is a critical period marked by heightened vulnerability to interpersonal stresses, yet the impact of these stresses on the structure of depressive symptoms is not well unde...

Declining student mental health is a global public health issue. Campus-based animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) are popular and effective interventions to prevent and alleviate symptoms. How to design, implement and evaluate evidence-based, student-centred interventions that enjoy sustained stakeholder buy-in and support is less known. This pape...

Background Bullying perpetration is a well-established risk factor for depression. One potential explanation for the elevated depression levels among perpetrators is reduced self-compassion resulting from the process of dehumanisation during bullying perpetration, while the effects of this may vary across cultures. Objective To explore the potentia...

Drawing upon data from a study examining experiences of accessing support for pets from the UK animal welfare charity Blue Cross, this paper illuminates reasons why people might not seek support when they need it. This applies to those who are struggling financially and are eligible for, but do not take, free/reduced cost veterinary care, or are ha...

Background: There is a growing interest in research examining the role of personal values in mental health. This study aims to investigate the relationship between value priorities and both depression and anxiety while exploring whether valued living is a better predictor of these variables compared to value priorities in a youth sample. Methods:...

This article highlights the significance of pets for five young women with care experience, examining the impact of disruptions to those relationships when moving into or between care settings. Findings show that pets support the transition to independent living and mental health. Participants’ reflections also reveal how pets are a source of comfo...

Nature-based walking interventions represent a low-cost, eco-friendly activity, designed to assist people in maintaining physical well-being and improving their mental-health status. This systematic review aims to evaluate the evidence regarding the effectiveness of nature-based walking interventions in the improvement of mental health outcomes in...

Research to date in Western contexts has indicated various physical and psychological health effects of pet ownership among children, but less is known about the role pets play in the health of children in China. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the evidence on the effects of pet ownership on physical and psychological health among...

Introduction: Childhood animal cruelty can be associated with a range of psychological issues and poor outcomes. This study is an evaluation of Animal Guardians (AG), a targeted educational intervention delivered by the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty against Animals, for children who have harmed animals. AG is a programme for primar...

Introduction: Empathy is a complex construct, and low empathy is a criterion for many externalising disorders and is linked to animal cruelty. Currently there are no validated measures of animal-directed empathy for use in childhood, so the aim of this study was to develop a new measure of human- and animal-directed empathy. Methods: The novel, pi...

General Joint Hypermobility (GJH) is a common condition found in 2–57% of the population. Of those with GJH, 10% suffer from accompanying physical and/or psychological symptoms. While the understanding of GJH in the general population is unfolding, its implication in a cohort of children, adolescents and young adults are not yet understood. This sy...

Background: General Joint Hypermobility (GJH) is a common condition found in 2-57% of the population. Of those with GJH, 10% suffer from accompanying physical and/or psychological symptoms. While the understanding of GJH in the general population is unfolding, its implication in a cohort of children, adolescents and young adults are not yet underst...

Introduction: Valued living is one of the core processes of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The main aim of this study is to systematically review the relationship between valued living and depression, and valued living and anxiety, and to examine how these relationships vary across different demographic characteristics and populations/cli...

Aim: This systematic review aims to evaluate changes in Chinese older adults’ psychosocial wellbeing after receiving horticultural therapy, and examine existing evidence regarding horticultural therapy’s effectiveness in a Chinese setting. Method: Intervention studies measuring relevant outcomes amongst older adults and conducted in China were iden...

Background Digital mental health interventions (DMHIs) have the potential to improve the efficiency, accessibility and effectiveness of mental health services for young people, with the potential to reach socioeconomically and digitally marginalised young people with mental health needs who would otherwise not seek help in person. This review aims...

Relatively little is known about how attachment influences children’s relationships to pets or mediates positive and negative interaction outcomes. We carried out in-depth interviews with 27 children, including nine children at high-risk for animal harm and 18 matched controls. We used the Child Attachment Play Assessment (CAPA), a drawing task and...

Despite growing awareness of the psychological issues associated with childhood animal cruelty, there is a scarcity of research carried out directly with children. This study investigates the psychological factors influencing the likelihood of a child harming animals, specifically the roles of attachment, empathy, executive functioning, issues rela...

Depression symptoms and assessment in China are influenced by unique cultural values of collectivism and by social-political factors specific to China. This study validated the Chinese version of the 52-item Multidimensional Depression Assessment Scale (MDAS) with clinically depressed patients in Inner Mongolia. The study sought to examine the psyc...

Background This study aimed to examine veterinarians’ experiences of treating cases of nonaccidental injury and other forms of animal abuse and to assess their support needs and barriers to reporting cases. Methods An online questionnaire was completed by 215 veterinarians. The survey included items on demographics and veterinary experience, exper...

Objective The aim of this project was to conduct a randomised control study to examine whether outdoor mindful walking in nature can effectively improve university students’ sleep quality, mood, and mindfulness during the lockdown of Covid-19 pandemic in the U.K. Methods Participants were measured at T0 (pre-study baseline), T1 (pre-intervention),...

Background Major Depressive Disorder is a severe and highly disabling mental illness. Almost all self-reported questionnaires have overlooked the interpersonal symptoms of depression which are important across gender and culture. The Multidimensional Depression Assessment Scale (MDAS) developed by Cheung and Power (2012) entails comprehensive emoti...

Background Animal-assisted Education (AAE), including Reading to Dogs (RTD), is an area of growing interest internationally across all phases of education, and increasingly considered an innovative approach to improving pupil outcomes. As creating RTD interventions necessitates a combination of expertise from the fields of education and human-anima...

Veterinarians’ perceptions of animal stress influence their practice. Therefore, the aim of this research was to evaluate how veterinary students perceive stress in dogs. Two hundred and eighteen 4th year veterinary students of the University of Cordoba (Spain) participated in the study. An online questionnaire measuring veterinary students’ percep...

[In press in Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin (HAIB)]. Human-animal interaction (HAI) is associated with positive psychological adjustment. Although these benefits are hypothesized to be most pronounced for individuals who experience adversity and compromised social relationships, such as LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and oth...

Several perspectives inform research on Childhood Animal Cruelty (CAC), but these perspectives are poorly integrated with each other and there is little dialogue with the rest of the child–animal interaction (CAI) literature. This study reviews the current empirical and theoretical literature on CAC to explore issues regarding research definitions...

Background Reading to Dogs (RTD) interventions have become increasingly prevalent in UK primary schools. However, there is a need for research examining teachers’ perspectives on RTD, as this could be key in influencing the uptake and adherence to school RTD interventions. Purpose This study sought to examine primary school teachers’ views of RTD...

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a Scottish SPCA animal welfare education intervention, “Rabbit Rescuers,” on 5- to 7-year-old children’s belief in animal minds, rabbit welfare knowledge, attitudes toward cruelty, and attachment to pets. “Rabbit Rescuers” was a one-week intervention comprising daily 15-min rabbit welfare activities deliver...

Animal welfare education aims to nurture compassion, respect and kindness to animals but there remains a need for more rigorous evaluations of such programmes to assess the most effective approaches. Incorporating technology into animal welfare education is a relatively novel field. This study examines the process of designing, developing, and eval...

Childhood animal cruelty (CAC) is a risk for later interpersonal violence and a red flag for other forms of violence in the household, yet very few studies have spoken to children directly about their cruelty to animals. Animal Guardians (AG) is a humane education program run by the Scottish SPCA for children of age 5 to 12 years who have been crue...

Background Pregnancy involves physiological changes in reproductive and endocrine systems, and social role changes that can increase the risk of mental health problems. In China, greater emphasis has been given to postpartum depression and its negative impact on infant development. This study examined depression in pregnant women in Inner Mongolia,...

Public concern for farm animal welfare is increasing in the UK, as is evidenced by recent legislation. Calls have been made to enhance awareness of food, farming, and farm animal welfare among school children, yet educators have very little research available to aid meaningful design of farm animal welfare education. Our research used an interdisci...

Adult attitudes toward animals have received extensive research attention. By contrast, despite the importance of child–animal interactions for children’s development and animal welfare, children’s attitudes toward animals have not been fully explored. The aim of this study was, therefore, to examine Spanish children’s attitudes toward animals. A 1...

Assessing the risk for animal cruelty is imperative, yet understudied and problematic due to the sensitivity of the topic. Early prevention is critical, yet very little research examines cruelty when it first appears in childhood. The aim of this study was to explore children’s attitudes towards types of animal cruelty, to investigate potential dem...

The precise nature of attachment to pets and differences between girls' and boys' relationships at age 11, 13 and 15 years are investigated in this paper. Data from the 2010 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey in Scotland were used to examine various qualities of adolescents' attachments to their pet dogs, cats and small mammals....

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: To assess the effects of animal-assisted therapy for improving quality of life for people with stroke. A secondary objective is to assess outcomes relating to the feasibility and potential barriers of providing animal-assisted therapy for stroke patients, includ...

Simple Summary The aim of this study was to design and evaluate a new digital game ‘Farm Animal Welfare’ to teach children about farm animal welfare. The game focuses on chickens and cows, and children played the game on touchscreen netbooks. To evaluate the game, we measured children’s knowledge, attitudes, compassion, and beliefs about whether fa...

Beliefs concerning the mental experiences of nonhuman animals have been related to how people treat, see, and take care of nonhuman animals. Whereas this issue has been the subject of several studies on adults, few have been conducted with children. Taking advantage of a recently published scale, the Child-BAM questionnaire, we aimed to explore the...

High demand for dogs in countries like the UK can lead to illegal intensive breeding and illegal importation of puppies for the pet trade. The current study investigates the effects of intensive breeding or ‘puppy farming’ on canine behaviour, explores new ways of predicting negative outcomes and categorising dog behaviour, and probes whether vario...

Background Research on adolescent Mental Health Literacy (MHL) is rapidly increasing; however, equivalent research in children is lacking. Exploring children's mental health conceptualisations reveals how their knowledge develops and provides the evidence base for the development of mental health education for younger age groups. Methods A total o...

This paper reports a case-control study of a horse riding intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A sample of 26 children, aged 6 to 9 years, were assigned to either the intervention (n = 12) or control group conditions (n = 14). Pre- and post-tests were carried out using the Childhood Autism Rating Scale, Second Edition (CAR...

Attachment to pets has an important role in children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development, mental health, well-being, and quality of life. This study examined associations between childhood attachment to pets and caring and friendship behaviour, compassion, and attitudes towards animals. This study also examined socio-demographic differen...

Nonhuman animal welfare education aims to promote positive relationships between children and animals and thus improve animal welfare, yet few scientific evaluations of these programs exist. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an education program developed by the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) that i...

Despite growing research into human-nonhuman animal relationships, little is known about childhood cruelty to nonhuman animals. The purpose of this review was to investigate the potential psychological risk factors for childhood cruelty to animals. The aim was to assemble, synthesize, and evaluate the quality and breadth of existing empirical resea...

The relationship between adolescents’ communication with their significant others (mother, father, and best friend) and quality of life (KIDSCREEN) was investigated in 2262 Scottish adolescent pet owners. The variable attachment to pets was also tested and assessed as a mediator of this relationship. A positive relationship between adolescents’ com...

The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of pet ownership among adolescents in Great Britain and identify any sociodemographic differences between pet owners and non-pet owners. A total of 14,328 11-to 15-year-old adolescents from England, Scotland, and Wales were included in the analysis. Results revealed 15-year-old adolescents were sig...

Children are increasingly viewed as important recipients of educational interventions to improve animal welfare, yet research examining their perspectives is lacking, particularly within the UK. Helping children to care appropriately for animals depends, not least, on an ability to understand the needs of different species and correctly identify cu...

Children and animals can have a great impact on each other’s lives, yet little is known about the underpinnings of these relationships. Children’s interactions with animals may be influenced by their belief in animal minds, that animals are sentient and experience thoughts and feelings. This study introduces a newly developed measure of children’s...

This study describes the development of the SAPS and investigates its reliability and validity within the context of the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children Survey (HBSC) which gathered data on representative samples of school pupils aged 11, 13 and 15 in Scotland and England. In the development of SAPS, following a comprehensive review of the...

Understanding how best to nurture children’s respect for, and care of, other living beings is a concern within education and animal welfare science. Relationships with individual animals are often seen as a ‘bridge’ to caring about the broader environment (of people, animals and ecosystems). However, little is known about children’s actual care of...

We examined implicit learning in school-aged children with and without developmental dyslexia based on the proposal that implicit learning plays a significant role in mastering fluent reading. We ran two experiments with 16 typically developing children (9 to 11-years-old) and 16 age-matched children with developmental dyslexia using the artificial...

The CREativity in Science and Technology (CREST) scheme, a student-run science project supported by the science, engineering, and technology network, is cur-rently being implemented in schools across the United Kingdom to increase stu-dent engagement and motivation in science. The central aim of this research was to explore the infl uence of CREST...

The study reported was part of a large thinking skills intervention for 11–12-year-old children. This paper focuses on the impact of a thinking skills intervention on children's understandings of intelligence. A total of 178 children (n = 86 girls and n = 92 boys) across six schools participated in the study. Children were individually pre-tested i...

This paper aims to provide developmental data on two connected naïve inheritance concepts and to explore the coherence of children's naïve biology knowledge. Two tasks examined children and adolescents' (4, 7, 10, and 14 years) conceptions of phenotypic resemblance across kin (in physical characteristics, disabilities, and personality traits). The...

This paper is linked to a previous paper outlining an evaluation of a thinking skills intervention (Burke & Williams, 2008). Following extensive requests for the assessment tools used in the intervention, this short paper presents the development and potential uses of two thinking skills assessment tools. The aim of the paper is simply to make thes...

Purpose – The aim of this study is to investigate perceptions of cycle commuting barriers in relation to stage of change, gender and occupational role. Stage of change is a key construct of the transtheoretical model of behaviour change that defines behavioural readiness (intentions and actions) into five distinct categories. Design/methodology/ap...

Purpose This study aims to provide an in‐depth individual level understanding of the psychological factors that affect cycle commuting. Design/methodology/approach A total of 15 participants (eight cycle commuters and seven potential cycle commuters) from a “cycle‐friendly” employer based in a Scottish city took part in the study. Semi‐structured...

Implicit learning was explored in typical and developmental dyslexic children using the AGL paradigm (Reber, 1967). Two experiments were conducted; Experiment 1: non-transfer condition and Experiment 2: transfer condition. Typical children showed intact implicit learning under both conditions and transfer of knowledge. Children with developmental d...

Conceptual conflict, especially that generated by group discussion, has been shown to advance children's understanding of physics. The present study assessed whether this effect holds for biology, and more specifically concepts of inheritance, despite apparent differences between the characteristics of knowledge in the two domains. Pre-test intervi...

Children’s understanding of naïve psychology is the main focus of this study. Research evidence suggests that 2- and 3-year-olds understand some aspects of naïve psychology. By 4 years, they develop internal representations of mental states. Previous studies have also reported cross-cultural variations in naïve psychology development. The majority...

This paper examines the development and consistency of children's (4, 7, 10, and 14 years) naïve concepts of inheritance using three tasks. A modified adoption task asked participants to distinguish between biological and social parentage in their predictions and explanations of the origins of different feature types (physical characteristics, disa...

We explored implicit learning in a group of typically developing and developmental dyslexic primary school children (9-12 y) using a modified artificial grammar learning task. Performance was calculated using two measures of performance: a perfect free recall (PFR) score and a grammaticality judgment score. Both groups of children required the same...

nimals play important roles in children's lives. Many children in the UK, and internationally, grow-up in households with companion animals. The most common family pets in the UK are dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, caged birds and fish. Kidd and Kidd (1985) found that 99.3% of 3 to 13 year-olds reported that they wanted a pet and 57% had a prefer...

Research on children’s concepts of intelligence has not considered how children conceptualise specific thinking skills. This study extends previous research on the development of children’s concepts of intelligence and produces novel data on children’s understandings of effective thinking and thinking skills. Seventy‐five children were sampled from...

Through this study researchers sought to evaluate the effects of qualification on instructional delivery modes of practicing preschool teachers in Nigeria. The sample consisted of 93 preschool teachers and 2,859 pupils aged 4 to 5 years. Schools were selected through stratified random sampling to ensure adequate representation of private, public, u...

This paper explores implicit learning in typically developing and primary school children (9-12 years old) with developmental dyslexia using an artificial grammar learning (AGL) task. Two experiments were conducted, which differed in time of presentation and nature of the instructional set (experiment 1--implicit instructions vs experiment 2--expli...

It is increasingly popular to ‘teach’ thinking skills in schools. A diverse variety of programmes exist to support practitioners in this task, and some research has been gathered on the effectiveness of individual approaches. However, the difficulties when assessing the development of thinking skills are widely documented. This study aimed to inves...

Children have been shown to hold misconceptions about illness, and previous work has indicated that their knowledge can be improved through the use of interventions. This study aims to evaluate interventions based on the provision of factual information for improving understanding of contagious illness. The participants were 96 children from two ag...

The study reported in this article examines primary teachers' understandings of thinking skills within the curriculum. All respondents were from primary schools within a local authority in central Scotland, and in total thirty-six schools were represented. Practitioners' perceptions were explored by analysing their quantitative responses to questio...

Studies from different theoretical traditions investigating children’s inheritance and genetics concepts have adopted a cross-sectional method. This paper is the first to examine both cross-sectional and longitudinal changes in children’s basic genetic concepts. It forms part of a larger investigation into the development of intuitive inheritance a...

This study explored social and experiential differences in children's (aged 4 to 14 years) concepts of inheritance. The study utilized semi-structured interviews including four tasks that were designed to elicit judgements and explanations about different aspects of inheritance understanding. A variety of social and experiential factors were examin...

This study was designed to provide a more comprehensive picture of children's understanding of illness and injury than previous studies by interviewing 83 children from 4 age groups (4/5 years, 7/8 years, 9/10 years and 11/12 years). They were asked questions about how they defined illness and health as well as questions regarding different feature...

The present study explored typically developing children's (n = 77) understanding of the causes, controllability and chronicity of disabilities. Children in each of four age groups (4-5 years, 6-7 years, 9-10 years and 11-12 years) were interviewed to explore their ideas about children with physical disabilities (minor: missing thumb; major: wheel-...

This study explores children's understanding of the causal origins of disabilities. Using a forced-choice explanation task, children's understanding of social-psychological, physical, and biological causal explanations of disabilities was considered. We presented 79 children (26 4- to 5-year-olds, 26 6- to 7-year-olds, and 27 10- to 11-year-olds) w...

Many studies have documented poor understanding of intuitive psychology among children with autism; however, few have investigated claims of superior understanding of intuitive physics said to be evident in this group. This study aimed to investigate the reported differential preference of intuitive psychology and intuitive physics among children w...

This study investigated intuitive concepts of biology, physics and psychology in typical preschoolers (N = 23), children with autism (N = 20) and children with Down's syndrome (DS; N = 18). Three tasks from Peterson and Siegal (1997) (false belief (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985), false photo (Zaitchik, 1990) and innate potential (Gelman & Well...

This study aimed to explore children's understanding of illness and attempted to improve their knowledge through the presentation of a factual story and group discussions. Children's responses to questions pertaining to three ailment types (contagious illness, non-contagious illness and injury), for three process variables (cause, time from cause t...

The present study explored typically developing children's (n = 77) understanding of physical, cognitive and social competencies of children with impairments. Children in each of four age groups (4-5 years, 6-7 years, 9-10 years and 11-12 years) were interviewed to explore their ideas about the abilities of children with physical impairments (minor...

Relations between self-esteem, pubertal timing, and body image were investigated with a representative sample of Scottish schoolgirls 11 (n = 1,012, X = 11.53 years, SD = 0.32) and 13 (n = 799, X = 13.53, SD = 0.32) years of age. Data were derived from the Health Behaviour in School Children: WHO Cross-National Survey, specifically the Scottish sur...

The present study explored 4(N = 22) and 7‐year‐olds’ (N = 24) under‐Standing of biological inheritance in cows and horses. An intervention technique adapted from Springer (1995) in which children are taught the basic facts of intrauterine development and birth, in story form, was used in an attempt to improve children's conceptual understanding of...

Pubertal timing has consequences for adolescent adaptation, and Moffitt has theorized that puberty is a motivating factor for delinquency. Pubertal timing and self-reported delinquency were examined in a questionnaire-based survey of 14-year-old boys (n=99). The questionnaire was completed anonymously, under test conditions, in the school classroom...

To measure the age and sex distribution of self reported sports and leisure injuries in a 12 month retrospective recall period among a representative national sample of Scottish adolescents, and to examine the characteristics (gender, age, handedness, and level of sports participation) of sports related injuries in relation to injuries sustained du...

Many different methods for assessing injury severity have appeared in the literature. This paper discusses the commonly used measures, many of which are subjective and depend on clinical practice or sociological factors. Even if apparently objective measures are used their appropriateness for use in children is questionable. Particular problems occ...

Injuries are the major cause of morbidity among children and adolescents in developed countries, but there is a lack of consensus on the relationship between socioeconomic status and risk of injuries. A self-complete questionnaire survey, to gather information on non-fatal injuries and sociodemographic details, was administered in schools during Ap...

In a self-report survey of a representative national sample of 4081 Scottish schoolchildren, injuries requiring medical assistance were more common in left-handers; these were also more severe and likely to involve an overnight stay in hospital. Particularly at risk were adolescent girls with a 32% greater chance of being injured if they were left-...

To measure the incidence and age and sex distribution of self reported experience of injuries in the preceding 12 month period among a representative national sample of Scottish schoolchildren and to validate the findings against other data sources. Self completed questionnaire administered in schools, April-June 1994. 4710 pupils aged 11, 13, and...