Welcome to the Expedition Psychology Project led by Professor Emma Barrett and Dr Nathan Smith.<\/p>\n
Register me for the participant pool!<\/a><\/p>\n What\u2019s the Expedition and Adventure Psychology Project?<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019re researching how people prepare for, adapt to, perform in, and benefit from harsh, unforgiving and often dangerous places and activities.<\/p>\n The overarching aim of our research on expeditions<\/strong> is to help people understand and cope with the hardships and maximise the positive aspects of expedition-going. Physical dangers are obvious, but sometimes it\u2019s the psychological challenges that are the most difficult to overcome. Things like enduring hardship, managing fear and anxiety, and dealing with monotony, sleep deprivation and isolation – not to mention the potential stress of being cooped up with the same small group of people for weeks on end.<\/p>\n Although expedition environments can be stressful, people often talk about the benefits of participating. For instance, participating can help people feel more confident, enhances skills and CVs, and lead to a better understanding of communicating and working with others. So as well as understanding the potential challenges faced by those participating in expeditions, we’re just as interested in the positive outcomes of venturing into extreme, isolated, and potentially hostile locations.<\/p>\n We’re also interested in adventure activities<\/strong> – which may or may not be part of an expedition. What drives people to engage in risky activities, how do they achieve peak performance, and what do they gain from the experience?<\/p>\n Who are you?<\/strong><\/p>\n Emma is Professor of Psychology, Security and Trust at University of Manchester and Honorary Researcher at Lancaster University. She is the co-author (with Paul Martin) of Extreme: Why some people thrive at the limits<\/em>, which explores the psychological aspects of extreme environments.<\/p>\n Nathan is a Sports Psychologist, most recently at the University of Northampton. He\u2019s led several research projects over the last few years, with polar, desert and mountaineering expedition groups, Antarctic research scientists, and military personnel.<\/p>\n Olivia (Liv) Brown is a PhD student at Lancaster University, supervised by Emma, researching how teams make decisions in stressful and high-pressure situations.<\/p>\n What projects are you currently working on?<\/strong><\/p>\n Emma and Nathan are collaborating on several projects. We\u2019re currently working on a study of how people transition into and out of extreme environments where we\u2019ve interviewed several expedition-goers with varying degrees of expedition experience about their experience of the transitions and the strategies they use to cope with challenges. Emma and Liv are working with a UK school on a study of the experiences and benefits of expedition-going by 14-16 year olds, and Liv has been doing research with adventure teams to study team per<\/p>\n In addition, Emma is academic advisor to the Women’s Adventure Expo project on Managing Menstruation in Extreme Environments<\/a>, Nathan is leading other studies of team expeditions looking at expedition preparation and daily responses to the challenges of expedition life, and\u00a0 Liv is carrying out research into team cohesion and decision making in challenging environments.<\/p>\n What do you class as an expedition?<\/strong><\/p>\n Good question \u2013 everyone has a different conception of what an expedition is. For some it might be wild camping in the UK for a week, for others it is a several-month trip to the Himalaya. But in general, we would class an expedition as a trip of at least 7 days, self-supported, and include an organised journey between two or more locations \u2013 that could be from a basecamp to a summit, or from a start to end location.<\/p>\n Can I get involved?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes you can! Whether you are planning your first expedition or you\u2019re an expedition veteran we\u2019ve got opportunities for you to participate in research. The first step is to sign up to join our Expedition and Adventure Psychology Participant Pool (EAP3)<\/strong>. We\u2019ll then send you details of opportunities to join new and ongoing research studies \u2013 it\u2019s entirely up to you which ones you volunteer for. There\u2019s no minimum commitment and you can leave at any time.<\/p>\n What does being a member of EAP3 involve? <\/strong><\/p>\n It depends on the study! Research studies may include interviews (often by Skype, at a time convenient to you). We might send you surveys and questionnaires to complete \u2013 either a one-off or at a series of time points. If you want to carry out research during an expedition, this might involve you and your team mates filling in short \u2018daily diary\u2019 sheets, or \u2013 if conditions allow \u2013 recording video entries. We might also run experiments – usually online, where we test your reaction times of memory.<\/p>\n Participation in a study is voluntary \u2013 you don\u2019t have to volunteer and even if you do, you can withdraw from a study at any point during data collection. After the data is collected you\u2019ll also have the chance to withdraw your data up to a certain point (usually 3 months after).<\/p>\n We\u2019ll send you updates on the projects we\u2019re running and on the results as they emerge so you can see what you and your fellow EP3 members are helping to discover.<\/p>\n Is there a minimum commitment?<\/strong><\/p>\n No. Once you\u2019ve registered you will have the opportunity to participate in studies but you don\u2019t have to volunteer for any of them. You can leave the participant pool at any time.<\/p>\n Can I suggest a research topic?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes! We\u2019re keen to do research that you\u2019d find useful and interesting. At the moment there\u2019s only the three of us so there\u2019s a limit to how much we can do and how quickly. We\u2019re looking for more funding to enable us to recruit PhD students and research assistants for more ambitious projects and pursue collaboration with established researchers working in related areas.<\/p>\n Who funds you?<\/strong><\/p>\n At the moment we are doing this alongside our \u2018day jobs\u2019. We will be applying for research funding and may also seek industry funding for research projects. When we launch a new project we\u2019ll always make it clear who is funding it.<\/p>\n Is your research ethical and will my data be safe?<\/strong><\/p>\n All research projects will be cleared in advance by our university ethics boards, which check that the research won\u2019t put anyone at risk, your involvement will be confidential, and that information you provide will be protected.<\/p>\n Lancaster University (where your data will be held) has strict information security policies<\/a> to protect sensitive data and comply with the Data Protection Act. The EAP3 database will be stored in encrypted form. Only the research team will have access to your data.<\/p>\n I\u2019m a psychologist \u2013 can I join the research team?<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019d love to hear from you. We\u2019re keen to build a community of researchers as well as research participants. If you are a masters\u2019 student looking for a dissertation topic or a funded PhD then there may be opportunities to gather and analyse data as part of one of our projects. If you\u2019re an established researcher there might be opportunities for us to collaborate on funding applications. Get in touch and we\u2019ll talk!<\/p>\n I have other questions \u2013 where can I find out more?<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019d love to hear from you. Email Emma at emma.barrett@manchester.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n I want to join!<\/strong><\/p>\n Great. Click here to fill in the form<\/a>. It will take about 5 minutes and you’ll be a member of the pool!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Welcome to the Expedition Psychology Project led by Professor Emma Barrett and Dr Nathan Smith. Register me for the participant pool! What\u2019s the Expedition and Adventure Psychology Project? We\u2019re researching how people prepare for, adapt to, perform in, and benefit from harsh, unforgiving and often dangerous places and activities. The overarching aim of our research Read more about About the Expedition and Adventure Psychology Project<\/span>[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":569,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/expeditionpsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/expeditionpsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/expeditionpsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/expeditionpsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/569"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/expeditionpsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/expeditionpsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/expeditionpsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/expeditionpsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}