Sarah Foley

• Doctor of Psychology
• Lecturer at University College Cork

Emerging evidence from other disciplines indicates that women's engagement with fitness content and communities on social media can have both positive and negative impacts, with particular concerns arising around misinformation, body image and privacy. To investigate this further, we conducted a three-step data collection process, including a quali...

Online social platforms can provide important benefits to users following pregnancy loss. However, while research to date has provided insights into the opportunities and challenges of online platform use after pregnancy loss, we have a limited understanding of how users actively work to navigate these environments in order to successfully share th...

Available research suggests autistic mothers experience greater dissatisfaction with maternity care compared to non-autistic mothers. Limited research exists exploring autistic mothers’ experiences of maternity care, and no research to date has considered maternity care professionals’ experiences of delivering care to autistic mothers. This qualita...

Cervical cancer is one of the top three cancers diagnosed in women globally. When women have access to a testing programme, abnormal cells can be detected to prevent the development of cancer. Research to date indicates that social and cultural barriers are the top two barriers in accessing cervical screening. In Ireland there may be a lack of trus...

Background High rates of poor employee mental health and wellbeing have spurred growing demands for initiatives that support wellbeing in the workplace. The promotion of positive mental health and wellbeing is an essential component of workplace wellbeing initiatives, focusing on enhancing positive aspects of work, workers’ capacities, and positive...

Background Poor employee mental health and wellbeing are highly prevalent and costly. Time-related factors such as work intensification and perceptions of time poverty or pressure pose risks to employee health and wellbeing. While reviews suggest that there are positive associations between time management behavior and wellbeing, there is limited r...

Endometriosis is an incurable chronic condition associated with debilitating pain and subfertility, affecting 1 in 10 women. The current study aims to explore the perceptions and experiences of women with endometriosis regarding the diagnosis, support and treatment options available in Ireland. It will further determine whether additional supports...

Several systematic reviews support the use of nature–based interventions (NBIs) as a mechanism of enhancing mental health and wellbeing. However, the available evidence for the effectiveness of these interventions is fragmentary and mixed. The heterogeneity of existing evidence and significant fragmentation of knowledge within the field make it dif...

Background Poor employee mental health and wellbeing are highly prevalent and costly. Time-related factors such as work intensification and perceptions of time poverty or pressure pose risks to employee health and wellbeing. While reviews suggest that there are positive associations between time management behavior and wellbeing, there is limited r...

Autistic adults experience high rates of metal health difficulties and face significant barriers to accessing appropriate mental health care. Empirical research and recent professional guidelines emphasise the importance of modifying standard mental health interventions to best meet the needs of autistic adults. This systematic review explored ment...

Background: Though conceptualized in different ways, time, namely how it is used and experienced, has implications for health and wellbeing. Thus, time-related interventions may offer new ways to support human flourishing. This qualitative study introduces and evaluates a reflective time journaling technique in relation to leisure time and wellbein...

This textbook aims to support counsellors, psychotherapists, and counselling psychologists to develop a creative research-informed practice. Following from the authors' earlier title Enjoying Research, the book covers qualitative, quantitative, pluralistic, and mixed methods approaches with a special focus on diversity, researcher support and innov...

This chapter provides theoretical and practical guidance for conducting qualitatively-driven mixed methods research. The chapter considers how to carry out research this way, and when and how it can be appropriate for conducting counselling and psychotherapy research. A range of study designs for this research approach is described. Ethics, quality...

Recent HCI research has addressed emerging approaches for public engagement. One such public-facing method which has gained popularity over the previous decade have been open design events, or hackathons. In this paper we report on DemVR, a hackathon event that invited designers, technologists, and students of these disciplines to design Virtual Re...

Several systematic reviews support the use of nature–based interventions (NBIs) as a mechanism of enhancing mental health and wellbeing. However, the available evidence for the effectiveness of these interventions is fragmentary and mixed. The heterogeneity of existing evidence and significant fragmentation of knowledge within the field make it dif...

A qualitative study examining the impact of COVID-19 on HIV prevention service users in Ireland.

Designing for social inclusion in dementia requires careful consideration, appropriate interactions and technologies to effectively enrich and support engagement. Intergenerational interactions between young people and people with dementia have been widely documented to be mutually beneficial through challenging perceptions of one another. As such,...

Engaging in participatory research in HCI raises numerous ethical complexities such as consent, researcher relationships, and participant compensation. Doing HCI work in the area of dementia amplifies these issues, and researchers in this area are modelling ethical stances to ensure researcher-participant relationships focus on meaningful engagemen...

There is a growing body of HCI work that seeks to understand and enhance the lived experience of people with dementia. The majority of this work involves researchers working alongside people with dementia and their carers, focused on the design project outcomes. In order to enrich the social context of this work, we explore broadening participation...

Focusing on the person with advanced dementia as a social being presents a new opportunity for Experience-Centered Design (ECD), opening design to appreciate the agency and intentional actions of the person with advanced dementia. If Human-Computer Interaction is to shift from the predominantly assistive approach to a focus on experience, a theoret...

The application of Pluralism in Qualitative Research (PQR) allows for a multi-perspective approach to understanding the nuanced social and psychological phenomenon. The complexity of what it means to qualitatively analyse and respond to sensitive data from the reflexive position of the analyst, is the focus of this paper. We introduce previous work...

Participatory approaches are used to design interactive systems, services and products to improve their impact and usability. However, these approaches are not always suitable for people with cognitive limitations such as dementia. This workshop will focus on participatory approaches for working with people living with dementia, challenge assumptio...

Whereas there have been significant improvements in the quality of care provided for people with dementia, limited attention to the importance for people with dementia being enabled to make positive social contributions within care home contexts can restrict their sense of agency. In this paper we describe the design and deployment of 'Printer Pals...

While there have been considerable developments in designing for dementia within HCI, there is still a lack of empirical understanding of the experience of people with advanced dementia and the ways in which design can support and enrich their lives. In this paper, we present our findings from a long-term ethnographic study, which aimed to gain an...

We explore the role of digital media in supporting intergenerational interactions between people with dementia and young people. Though meaningful social interaction is integral to quality of life in dementia, initiating conversation with a person with dementia can be challenging, especially for younger people who may lack knowledge of someone's li...