Tiago Zortea

Really nice piece on @psychmag.bsky.social by @jamiecummins.bsky.social this month!

Thanks for writing this Jamie! 👌🏼

Night-time view of the Bodleian Library’s Old Schools Quadrangle in Oxford. A small Christmas tree wrapped in warm white lights stands in the centre of the stone courtyard, framed by the illuminated historic building and a dark sky above.

Christmas at the @bodleian.ox.ac.uk🎄

📷 Instagram | Madam_Scientist

Text reads: About synthetic panels Recruiting the right participants for a study can be difficult. You may not get the exact demographics you need, and the shorter the deadline, the less sure you can be that everyone will answer on time. One possible solution can be to use synthetic panels. Synthetic panels are powered by a first party proprietary AI model developed here at Qualtrics. Our synthetic panel is trained on thousands of responses from a variety of demographic backgrounds in order to more accurately predict how certain populations would respond to a survey. Our synthetic panel is based on the United States General Population, and is only available in English. This panel comes with ready-made quotas and target breakouts in order to represent your chosen population and make it easy to launch your survey right away.

Text reads: Question-writing best practices To get the most reliable and actionable results from synthetic audiences, consider these question-writing best practices: Ask forward-looking and attitudinal questions. Synthetic panels perform best with perceptions, preferences, and intent-based questions. For example, “How likely are you to try…?” Synthetic panels are less applicable for studies on past behaviors, detailed recall, brand recall, or awareness questions. For example, “When did you last visit…?”

Text reads: Discussion The current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis of the TPB when applied to health behaviours which addressed the limitations of previous reviews by including only prospective tests of behaviour, applying RE meta-analytic procedures, correcting correlations for sampling and measurement error, and hierarchically analysing the effect of behaviour type and sample and methodological moderators. Some 237 tests were identified which examined relations amongst model components. Overall the analysis indicated that the TPB could explain 19.3% of the variance in behaviour and 44.3% of the variance in intention across studies. This level of prediction of behaviour is slightly lower than that of previous meta-analytic reviews which have found between 27% (Armitage & Conner, 2001; Hagger et al., 2002) and 36% (Trafimow et al., 2002) of the variance in behaviour to be explained by intention and PBC.

Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)?

Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"

1. Transparency is necessary for credibility
2. Transparency is hard to change
3. Require transparency*
4. Transparency is not magic
5. Journals are part of problem
6. Expect more from journals
7. Peer review is not magic
8. A crisis can look a lot like „normal“ science
9. Meta-analysis is not magic

Yay, congratulations Prof!! 🍾🎈

Interview: Career advice from Heidi Hjelmeland Professor Heidi Hjelmeland currently works at the Department of Mental Health, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. What are your research interests? They have changed quite a lot over t…

"We should be having open debates to hear the viewpoints of people who disagree with one another, both at conferences or in journals. But those in power do not want that, they shut it down and in my view that is not just unscientific but also unethical."– Heidi Hjelmeland

netecr.org/2018/10/10/i...

😵😵😵

My brain is to small to comprehend this place 😅

Hello everyone!

A friend of mine, Dr Alastair Cockburn, wrote this *very important* paper. This reading is a must to work in the field of suicide prevention. It highlights many of the problems of using AI and prediction tools in clinical settings.

doi.org/10.1192/bjp....

🌈 Do you know anyone passionate about researching LGBTQ+ suicide, suicide prevention and suicide bereavement, experienced in qualitative methods, and looking for work?

Send them my way because I'm recruiting for a post-doctoral research fellow!

elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

I successfully defended my Habilitation today, and was honoured by the committee’s positive feedback. I am very grateful for my colleagues, collaborators and students at the University of Bern who made this a very rewarding journey.

You're an inspiration of dedication, hard work, transparency, honesty, commitment, and integrity, my friend! The University of Bern is very lucky to have you, so are we all for the opportunity to learn so much from you!!

A recent study in American Psychologist marks the most comprehensive review of #loneliness interventions in more than a decade and highlights the need for scalable, evidence-based solutions. Read the press release from the APA 🔗 https://bit.ly/4nJU0tj

🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼

Don't miss our upcoming webinar: Queer Lives and the Politics of Categories. In this webinar, Dr Kevin Guyan shares insights from his book Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion.

📅 5 November 2025, 20:00 AEDT
🔗 http://bit.ly/499OXyH

Absolutely incredible journey!!

netECR (International Network of Early & Mid-Career Researchers in Suicide & Self-Harm; an independent, intl. network of early-career and mid-career researchers working in or contributing to the field of self-harm/suicide research) moves to Bluesky (1.691 followers on X)

Bluesky @netecr.bsky.social

Transformation starts at the periphery of networks where pushback is less - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Transformation starts at the periphery of networks where pushback is less

Intervening on a central node in a network likely does little given that its connected neighbors will "flip it back" immediately. Happy to see this position supported now.

"Change is most likely [..] if it spreads first among relatively poorly connected nodes."

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Sex difference in parental risk of suicide attempt during and after pregnancy in Sweden - Nature Human Behaviour A Swedish study examined whether the risks of maternal and paternal suicide attempt differ during and after pregnancy and found a reversed sex difference in risk of suicide attempt during and after pregnancy compared with the general population.

Very interesting and (at least for me) surprising findings in this study where #fathers seem to be at higher risk of suicide attempts during perinatal periods.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks Jamie! This is very interesting and a good start for me to begin understanding more about the topic! Cheers buddy - hope you’re doing well! 🙏🏼

The Commission sets out 12 key recommendations, including:
💡 Decriminalise self-harm
🤝 Co-produce care with lived experience
🪷 Invest in culturally adapted interventions
📊 Improve global data & monitoring

Read the blog 👉 buff.ly/Y2DSzn3

Fascinating data. There are three things here that really matter to people, and they think matter to everyone:

Healthcare
Economy
Prices

There is ONE thing that they assume matters to everyone, because it dominates so much of the narrative, but it is NOT affecting them personally:

Immigration

Wow, thanks Jamie! This is very very interesting and I wasn't very aware of that. Following your publication, I've been wondering whether this has reached qualitative research too?

I also have worked with many families bereaved by suicide whose loved ones were classified as “low risk” before they ended their own lives. In addition, the NICE guidance is clear, so is the evidence. I think researchers should just stop trying to predict who will die or who will survive…

It’s actually very sad to see that risk prediction has never gone away, despite so much evidence demonstrating how awful we are at predicting suicide and its related outcomes. This is an incredibly important piece of work that we should all read.

📢 We’re hiring: Assistant Communications Officer

Join our External Affairs team and help deliver engaging content across web, social media, newsletters and more, to support our mission to improve mental health and promote CBT.

🗓️ Deadline: 12 October 2025

👉 Find out more: babcp.com/about/vacanc...

Don't miss the upcoming IASP/ IASR Research Webinar chaired by Professor Chan Lai Fong.

📅 Thursday 25 September 2025, 19:00 MYT. (UTC+8)

🗣️ Featuring:
Professor Matthew Spittal
Assoc Professor Gregory Armstrong
Dr Siau Ching Sin

🔗 Register: bit.ly/465v8GK

@debruine.bsky.social lovely to see you here :D
Hope you're doing well!

Research shows that culturally responsive and safe mental health care is not only ethical – it's also more effective in meeting young people and their family's needs.

To access these free clinical practice guides, fact sheets and more, visit: bit.ly/4n2dPMS

Extremely important work by Matt Spittal, @oliviajkirtley.bsky.social and other colleagues published this week!

journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...