Lynne Diane Roberts

Curtin University · School of Psychology

The becoming of, and being, an early-career academic is a dynamic journey, marked by movement through learning, adapting, and adopting new skills and capacities, being ‘thrown in the deep end’ of academic responsibilities, and beginning to develop an academic identity. We explored how early-career women academics within Australian universities conc...

Consensus moderation, where collaboration and discussion take place to reach an agreement on mark allocation, is a frequently used approach to quality assurance in higher education. This study explored expert academics’ perceptions of consensus moderation through 12 semi-structured open-ended interviews. Data were analysed using thematic analysis a...

We explored how middle-career women academics within Australian public higher education conceptualise their academic identities, and the subject positions made available through middle-career women's discourse. Five subject positions were identified – The Pragmatic Woman (who constructs a practical positioning in learning how to survive in academia...

Indigenous youth are overrepresented in the Australian criminal justice system, yet little is known about how they differ from non-Indigenous youth in terms of criminogenic risk and need profiles in relation to reoffending. The aim of the study was to examine the differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth in terms of criminogenic risk...

Interprofessional identity development is an emerging area of research. Whilst there is a growing body of studies exploring interprofessional identity development and interprofessional education, little is known about interprofessional identity development in healthcare professionals and the impact of interprofessional identity on practice. This st...

Consensus moderation, where collaboration and discussion take place to reach an agreement on mark allocation, is a frequently used approach to quality assurance in higher education. Unit coordinators play a vital role in facilitating consensus moderation, yet limited research has focused on their role in moderation practices. This study explored un...

There is a wealth of research that shows juvenile justice systems that utilize structured and validated assessment tools, such as the YLS/CMI, are far more effective at reducing rates of recidivism than those who do not. In line with this research, the Department of Justice (DoJ) in Western Australia adopted the YLS/CMI as the standard risk assessm...

Consensus moderation is an approach to quality assurance where collaboration and discussion take place to agree mark allocation. This study explored sessional academics’ perceptions and experiences of consensus moderation in higher education. Data from four focus groups were analysed using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. The findings reveal four di...

The increasing prominence of qualitative inquiry in psychological research has been accompanied by reflection on teaching and learning practices within undergraduate and postgraduate psychology courses. To date, there is limited empirical understanding of how experienced qualitative researchers approach teaching students about qualitative research...

There is a growing body of research evidencing the benefits of dedicated interprofessional placements in preparing healthcare students for interprofessional practice. However, little is known about if and how students develop their interprofessional identity during interprofessional placements. This study addresses this knowledge gap by exploring f...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a crime that is afflicted by a current or previous romantic relationship partner. One in four women has experienced IPV at least once in their lifetime, with physical and psychological consequences. IPV cases tend to go largely unnoticed and under-reported, with low rates of intervention by bystanders. This cross-...

Transformative learning theory is widely considered one of the pre-eminent theories of adult education, and has been adopted as a means of developing and understanding adult learning across a range of disciplines. While the representation and conceptualisation of transformative learning experiences has grown within Australian Indigenous studies cur...

Online shaming, where individuals participate in social policing by shaming supposed wrongdoings on the internet, is a rapidly increasing and global phenomenon. The potential impacts of online shaming are said to be extensive and wide-reaching, however minimal empirical research on this topic has been conducted to date, with existing coverage being...

A plea of guilty is a long-accepted factor mitigating sentence in many countries, including Australia, although academic debate over the merits and application of the discount is ongoing. This paper presents findings from a national Australian study on public opinion on the guilty plea sentencing discount, with a particular focus on sexual offences...

This article presents data from questions about sex offender registration orders in a large national survey on Australian public opinion about adult sex offenders. It outlines the legislative frameworks that govern these registers in Australia and discusses the use of public registers, the research on the effectiveness of sex offender registers, an...

Conducting sensitive topics research online can allow researchers access to a wider range of participants with “sensitive topics” experience; however, additional ethical considerations need to be considered when conducting this research. Online research can either involve active or passive data collection, with each requiring extra thought around c...

Personal trainers are a popular source of exercise guidance for the public but have been shown to have fundamental errors in their knowledge, and hold misconceptions about some exercise and nutritional concepts. Critical thinking skills have been found to relate inversely to misconceptions in other populations but this has not been examined in pers...

Identity development within the interprofessional field is an emerging area of research. This scoping review aims to establish how professional and interprofessional identities are defined, conceptualized, theorized and measured within the interprofessional literature. Six databases were systematically searched for papers focusing on professional a...

Background: Little is known about how nursing and other healthcare students develop professional and interprofessional identities. Objectives: This study a) measures changes in students' professional and interprofessional identities between the start and end of a faculty-wide interprofessional first year programme, and b) identifies factors infl...

Diffusion of pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) is known to be influenced by the perceived social status of those behaviors, but little is known about what gives PEBs social status. A sample of Australian residents ( N = 601) were asked to rate the social status of 16 PEBs and report their self and public environmental identities. Environmental ide...

Peer-assisted study session attendance is associated with multiple indicators of student success. However, attendance levels are generally low. We applied an extended theory of planned behaviour model, incorporating student role identity, to the prediction of peer-assisted study session attendance. Participants were 254 undergraduate students enrol...

The attraction, selection, and attrition model posits that individuals actively self‐select into vocational and educational environments based on their personality traits and values. The present study investigated whether pre‐existing empathy and psychopathic personality trait differences in newly enrolled first year undergraduate students predicte...

Facebook and offline social comparisons have been associated with depressive symptoms, however no study has simultaneously examined comparison tendencies across both settings as predictors of depressive symptomology. Accordingly, this study investigated the difference between comparison orientation (tendency to make comparisons) and direction on Fa...

Despite a significant body of literature espousing the transformative impacts of Australian Indigenous Studies curriculum upon students, there remains a limited body of work related to how these students experience and learn within this complex environment. This is particularly notable for research aligned with Mezirow’s transformative learning the...

Quantitative research methods underpin psychological literacy and evidence-based practice in psychology. Despite this, many students struggle to identify appropriate statistics for different types of research questions and data types. StatHand (see https://stathand.net) is a free application that facilitates this statistical decision making process...

Objective This study sought to provide up‐to‐date normative data on the productivity and citation impact of publications by Australian academic psychologists at each academic level (lecturer to professor) and for each university grouping (e.g., Group of Eight [Go8], Australian Technology Network, etc.). Method Publication and citation data for a r...

This research note adds to a growing body of literature supporting Skype as an effective method for conducting interviews by describing its use in research on a sensitive topic in psychology. Considerations before beginning research and the advantages and disadvantages of using Skype in sensitive topics research are discussed. Drawing on our own re...

For mixed methods research in psychology to expand, a body of psychologists, and psychology academics who have the knowledge and expertise to conduct and review mixed methods research is required. Reviews of mixed methods articles in psychology (e.g., Bartholomew and Brown, 2012; Bartholomew and Lockard, 2018) have highlighted issues related to the...

While more is becoming understood about the effects of Indigenous Studies health curricula on student preparedness and attitudes toward working in Indigenous health contexts, less is known about how tutors in this space interpret student experiences and contribute to the development of preparedness. Reporting on a qualitative study, this article pr...

Increasingly, students completing undergraduate dissertations in Australia are expected by their supervisors to produce publishable research. Despite this, limited resources are available for supervisors of undergraduate dissertation students on how best to supervise students toward this aim. Building on our previous research on the perspectives of...

Australians of European descent reconstruct Australian history to silence the mistreatment of Indigenous Australians and to favour the coloniser perspective. Literature suggests that although this reconstructed history is typically accepted uncritically, in recent times, young people may have become more critical of this historical account. Explori...

Learning analytics enable automated feedback to students through dashboards, reports and alerts. The underlying untested assumption is that providing analytics will be sufficient to improve self-regulated learning. Working within a feedback recipience framework, we begin to test this assumption by examining the impact of learning analytics messages...

Background: The Environmental Stress Hypothesis provides a conceptual framework detailing the complex relationship between poor motor skills and internalizing problems. Aims: This integrative research aimed to synthesize studies that have evaluated complex pathways posited in the framework. Method: This study followed the four stages of an int...

Higher education institutions are developing the capacity for learning analytics. However, the technical development of learning analytics has far exceeded the consideration of ethical issues around learning analytics. We examined higher education academics’ knowledge, attitudes, and concerns about the use of learning analytics though four focus gr...

Australian undergraduate programmes are implementing curriculum aimed at better preparing graduates to work in Indigenous health settings, but the efficacy of these programmes is largely unknown. To begin to address this, we obtained baseline data upon entry to tertiary education (Time 1) and follow-up data upon completion of an Indigenous studies...

The Attraction, Selection and Attrition (ASA) model posits that people are attracted to organizations that embody similar personality traits and values to their own. These traits are thought to be further shaped by the organization's culture, ultimately creating a homogenous workforce within the organization (Schneider, 1987). This research applies...

Despite the rise of teaching academic (teaching only) roles in Australia, the UK, the USA, and Canada, the experiences of teaching academics are not well documented in the literature. This article reports from a university-wide study that responded to the introduction of teaching academic roles during a major restructure of academic staff. Thirteen...

Australian undergraduate programmes implementing Indigenous studies courses suggest transformative educational outcomes for students; however, the mechanism behind this is largely unknown. To begin to address this, we obtained baseline data upon entry to tertiary education (Time 1) and follow-up data upon completion of an Indigenous studies health...

Recent research has shown that many Australians see pro-environmental behaviour as desirable and identify as being green. However when compared to other countries, Australians score poorly on pro-environmental behaviour measures, engaging mostly in tokenistic pro-environmental actions, and demonstrate low levels of concern for the environment. In t...

There is a paucity of research, training, and material available to support supervisors of undergraduate dissertation students. This article explores what ‘good’ supervision might look like at this level. Interviews were conducted with eight new supervisors and six dissertation coordinators using a critical incident methodology. Thematic analysis o...

This qualitative study reports on findings from interviews with ten academics in an Australian university six to twelve months following academic workforce reshaping and the widespread introduction of teaching academic roles. The research aimed to determine how the workforce reshaping impacted on the capacity of academics with teaching responsibili...

Poor motor skills have been associated with a range of interpersonal and intrapersonal difficulties, including poor self‐competence, peer problems, and internalizing problems such as anxiety and depression. The Elaborated Environmental Stress Hypothesis provides a theoretical framework for understating these relationships. Studies have recently beg...

The strength of health science students’ identification with their chosen profession is associated with their attitudes towards interprofessional education (IPE). However, little is known about the factors that might mediate this relationship. In this article, we examine the relationships between professional identification, communication and teamw...

With the increased capability of learning analytics in higher education, more institutions are developing or implementing student dashboards. Despite the emergence of dashboards as an easy way to present data to students, students have had limited involvement in the dashboard development process. As part of a larger program of research examining st...

Background: The elaborated environmental stress hypothesis (EESH) provides a framework that describes how motor skills may indirectly cause internalizing problems through various mediating psychosocial factors. While there is evidence to support this framework, little is known about how the proposed relationships may vary across different stages o...

PROJECT CONTEXT AND AIMS: Quantitative research methods underpin psychological literacy and are critical for the development of professional competence in psychology. They feature prominently in the undergraduate psychology curriculum in Australia and internationally, and are reflected in the course learning outcomes and graduate attributes specif...

Whether or not disadvantaged students are realising the same benefits from higher education as their peers is of fundamental importance to equity practitioners and policymakers. Despite this, equity policy has focused on access to higher education and little attention has been paid to graduate outcomes. The Australian study reported here used natio...

Australian undergraduate programs are implementing curriculum aimed at better preparing graduates to work in culturally diverse settings, but there remains uncertainty over the role of extant student attitudes towards Indigenous Australians. To begin to address this, we obtained baseline data on student attitudes upon entry to tertiary education. 1...

This study extends knowledge about the relationship of Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) to other established mental disorders by exploring comorbidities with anxiety, depression, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and assessing whether IGD accounts for unique variance in distress and disability....

The rapid adoption of learning analytics in the higher education sector has not been matched by ethical considerations surrounding their use, with ethical issues now slated as one of the major concerns facing learning analytics. Further, adoption of learning analytics within universities has typically involved small-scale projects rather than unive...

In this chapter we present a critical case study analysing the emergence and evolution of a higher education Community of Practice (CoP) centred on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). This CoP exists in the context of an institution attempting to re-position itself as ‘research intensive’, where there are ongoing tensions between resea...

Increasingly, higher education institutions are exploring the potential of learning analytics to predict student retention, understand learning behaviors, and improve student learning through providing personalized feedback and support. The technical development of learning analytics has outpaced consideration of ethical issues surrounding their us...

Across disciplines, many introductory research methods students present as uninterested and unmotivated to learn a topic they see as lacking in relevance (Earley, 2014); psychology is no exception (Ruggeri et al., 2008). This is problematic as research methods and statistics are central to the development of professional competence and evidence bas...

Objective Personal values guide, and are used to justify, behaviours both within and beyond organisational contexts. Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y are purported to vary in the values they espouse and hence their behaviours. The aim of this research was to examine and compare self-ratings and out-group perceptions of the importance of...

Background Reflexivity is fundamental to developing methodologically and ethically sound research and is particularly important for researchers exploring experiences of oppression.Method We offer reflections on the process of engaging in participatory research with people with an intellectual disability (ID). A reflexive journal was maintained thro...

There has been a recent rapid growth in the number of psychology courses offered online through institutions of higher education. The American Psychological Association has highlighted the importance of ensuring the effectiveness of online psychology courses (Halonen et al., 2013). Despite this, there have been inconsistent findings regarding stude...

Australian higher education equity policy focusses mostly on access and participation with the implicit assumption that disadvantage will be ameliorated through educational achievement. Less is known as to whether patterns of disadvantage continue post-completion. In a context in which graduate employability is becoming an important yardstick again...

Job embeddedness is a construct that describes the manner in which employees can be enmeshed in their jobs, reducing their turnover intentions. Recent questions regarding the properties of quantitative job embeddedness measures, and their predictive utility, have been raised. Our study compared two competing reflective measures of job embeddedness,...

Objectives: Poor motor skills are associated with a range of psychosocial consequences, including internalizing (anxious and depressive) symptoms. The Elaborated Environmental Stress Hypothesis provides a causal framework to explain this association. The framework posits that motor skills impact internalizing problems through an indirect effect via...

Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) is in the early stages of recognition as a disorder, following its inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association(1)) as a condition for further study. Existing measures of Internet gaming pathology are limited in their ability to measure IGD as defined...

In Australia the tradition of conducting quantitative psychological research within a positivist framework has been challenged, with calls made for the inclusion of the full range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies within the undergraduate psychology curriculum. Despite this, the undergraduate psychology curriculum in most Australian uni...

Research integrity is core to the mission of higher education. In undergraduate student samples, self-reported rates of data fabrication have been troublingly high. Despite this, no research has investigated undergraduate data fabrication in a more systematic manner. We applied duplication screening techniques to 18 data sets submitted by psycholog...

Students often complain that they cannot see the relevance of what they are being taught in foundation physics classes. While revising and adjusting the curriculum and teaching are important, this study suggests it might also be useful to help students view their learning in relation to their future career aspirations. This paper reports on a study...

Although essential to professional competence in psychology, quantitative research methods are a known area of weakness for many undergraduate psychology students. Students find selecting appropriate statistical tests and procedures for different types of research questions, hypotheses and data types particularly challenging, and these skills are n...

Poor motor skills have been shown to be associated with a range of psychosocial issues, including internalizing problems (anxiety and depression). While well-documented empirically, our understanding of why this relationship occurs remains theoretically underdeveloped. The Elaborated Environmental Stress Hypothesis by Cairney et al. (2013) provides...

Psychological literacy, a construct developed to reflect the types of skills graduates of a psychology degree should possess and be capable of demonstrating, has recently been scrutinized in terms of its measurement adequacy. The recent development of a multi-item measure encompassing the facets of psychological literacy has provided the potential...

Quantitative research methods are essential to the development of professional competence in psychology. They are also an area of weakness for many students. In particular, students are known to struggle with the skill of selecting quantitative analytical strategies appropriate for common research questions, hypotheses and data types. To begin unde...

This paper reports two experiments in which the prominence of university sponsorship on Web surveys was systematically manipulated, and its effects on dropout and item non-response were observed. In Study 1, 498 participants were randomised to online surveys with either high or low university sponsorship. Overall, 13.9 percent of participants comme...

Fellowship Overview The issue addressed in this fellowship was the paucity of material available to support supervisors of dissertation students in coursework degrees (undergraduate, honours and masters by coursework) in Australian universities. Most universities provide policy and procedural documents relating to dissertation supervision, but limi...

Completing a dissertation for the first time can be a challenging, but rewarding, undertaking. Your supervisor(s) will provide guidance to support you through the process as you develop as a researcher. If you are about to commence working on a dissertation project for an undergraduate, honours or masters by coursework degree, this guide is designe...

Intellectual disability is commonly conceptualised as stigmatised identity with which one has to live. However, within the literature the notion of a damaged identity is contested. The aim of this research was to explore the social construction of intellectual disability, with an emphasis on the identities and social roles of people with an intelle...

Client engagement is a necessary component of psychotherapy, but it can be challenging to foster in clients with severe and complex problems. Telehealth technology influences the clinical dyad in unique ways and offers new opportunities for approaching the challenge of client engagement. In this article, we present a qualitative case study of a cli...

Increasingly, psychologists are extending their research to include online methods of data collection. Psychologists’ use of qualitative data obtained or generated online for research purposes poses unique challenges because of the “traceability” of quotes, often sensitive content of data and potential impact on both individuals and online communit...

The assessment of parenting has been problematic due to theoretical disagreement, concerns over generalisability, and problems with the psychometric properties of current parenting measures. The aim of this study was to develop a comprehensive, psychometrically sound self-report parenting measure for use with parents of preadolescent children, and...

This study examined the utility of the Theory of Planned Behavior model, augmented by descriptive norms and justifications, for predicting self-reported research misconduct and questionable research practices in university students. A convenience sample of 205 research active Western Australian university students (47 male, 158 female, ages 18–53 y...

People in romantic relationships can develop shared memory systems by pooling their cognitive resources, allowing each person access to more information but with less cognitive effort. Research examining such memory systems in romantic couples largely focuses on remembering word lists or performing lab-based tasks, but these types of activities do...

Warr, Cook, and Wall's Job Satisfaction Scale (JSS) is a widely used measure of job satisfaction in industrial/organisational (I/O) psychology research and practice. However, the factor structure has not been adequately explored, with two-factor and three-factor solutions previously proposed. This study tested the factor structure of the JSS using...

Intellectual disability is commonly conceptualised as stigmatised identity; however, within the literature, the notion of a damaged identity is contested. The aim of this research was to explore the social construction of intellectual disability from the perspective of staff who work closely with people with intellectual disabilities. Informed by a...

Online surveys are increasingly used in educational research, yet little attention has focused on ethical issues associated with their use in educational settings. Here, we draw on the broader literature to discuss 5 key ethical issues in the context of educational survey research: dual teacher/researcher roles; informed consent; use of incentives;...

Psychological literacy, the ability to apply psychological knowledge to personal, family, occupational, community and societal challenges, is promoted as the primary outcome of an undergraduate education in psychology. As the concept of psychological literacy becomes increasingly adopted as the core business of undergraduate psychology training cou...

Supervising dissertation students can be one of the most rewarding aspects of working in academia. Supervision provides the opportunity to work with individuals or small groups of students over an extended period of time, facilitating their learning and guiding their development as researchers. If you are about to supervise a student for the first...

Elevated levels of Neuroticism and lower levels of Extraversion have been reliably shown in patients with anxiety and depressive disorders and some studies have demonstrated these patterns amongst patients diagnosed with Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD). However, because comorbid anxiety and depression is common in OCD, it is unclear whether the...

The adoption of mixed methods research in psychology has trailed behind other social science disciplines. Teaching psychology students, academics, and practitioners about mixed methodologies may increase the use of mixed methods within the discipline. However, tailoring and evaluating education and training in mixed methodologies requires an unders...

Current child pornography laws in Australia extend to cases where minors transmit sexually explicit material of themselves or others via digital communication (‘sexting’). This is the first study examining attitudes of the Australian adult public regarding criminal laws that can apply to sexting by minors. A sample of 285 Australian adults complete...

Undergraduate psychology students have been largely excluded from interprofessional education (IPE) initiatives. In contrast to many health professions, undergraduate psychology students do not engage in work placements as part of their degree, and many enter careers outside the health care context. However, the collaborative skills gained through...

This study’s primary aim was to investigate if trait anxiety and other emotion processing variables would be additive predictors that will differentially predict primary and secondary psychopathy, as previous research has yet to examine the relative contributions of these constructs in a non-criminal population. A convenience community sample (N =...

In psychology, there has been a growing interest in mixed methods approaches, however, only a minority of published research explicitly use this methodology. This study aimed to explore the full range of attitudes toward mixed methods research in psychology held by students and academics, using the model of attitudes by Eagly and Chaiken as a frame...

The use and teaching of qualitative research methods in psychology is increasing, but to date no measure has been developed to identify and measure changes in attitudes towards qualitative research in psychology student, academic, and scientist-practitioner populations. In this article, we present the development and initial validation of a new mea...