EXTERNAL PhD Quarterly meeting

This academic year, we are thrilled to continue our peer-to-peer meetings for externally funded PhDs and our PhDs abroad, albeit with a new name and format! These events will be called External PhD Quarterly meetings and occur four times a year. They will be scheduled on different days and times, ensuring that interested PhDs can attend one or more sessions throughout the year. Each 2-hour meeting will allow several contributions.

We invite all BSI externally funded PhD students and PhDs abroad to join our online event (via Teams) on Wednesday, 9 April, from 12:00 to 14:00 a.m.

Programme

The following topics will be presented by (former) externally funded PhDs, and they will share their work and experience with you:

In this talk, Marjolein Koementas-de Vos will share her experiences conducting an external PhD research project at GGZ Noord-Holland-Noord (mental health institute), which emerged from her training as a clinical psychologist. Her project is an example of practice-oriented research, with its unique benefits and challenges. Marjolein will discuss key learning points, offer practical advice for colleagues working on similar projects, and provide a brief summary of her research findings and future plans.

Marjolein Koementas-de Vos, Speaker

Sociometric procedures, which ask students to name those classmates who best match specific positive or negative descriptors, are widely used in school settings. These measures utilize youths’ perceptions of their peers and have proven to be valid and reliable assessments capable of identifying peer relationships, as well as the social status and behaviors of youth. Despite these strengths, ethical concerns have been raised because the use of peer nominations makes youth more aware of their peers, which may negatively impact those who receive many nominations for negative descriptors. This issue, which we will term the negative impact hypothesis, has received limited attention in the literature (Bell-Dolan et al., 1989; Mayeux et al., 2007).

The goal of the current study is to investigate the negative impact hypothesis in a large sample of primary and secondary school students. That is, are youth, particularly those of low social status, negatively impacted by completing a sociometric assessment? To accomplish this goal, self-report instruments were developed to examine the immediate experience and short-term impact of a sociometric procedure. Immediate experience describes the assessment's difficulty, enjoyment, and perceived usefulness for improving the class dynamics. The short-term impact, which was measured one week after the assessment, describes feeling worried, relieved, and if students had been treated differently in the week following the assessment. We examined whether adolescents’ responses to these questions were associated with low social status (i.e., being disliked or unpopular).

Pedro M. González-Moreno, Speaker

Friendship quantity is crucial for adolescent wellbeing, yet deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) adolescents in mainstream schools often have fewer friendships than their hearing peers. This study examines whether DHH adolescents differ from their hearing classmates in reciprocal and unilateral friendships and explores the role of social behavior—prosocial, antisocial, and withdrawn—in shaping these friendships. Preliminary findings indicate no significant differences in reciprocal friendships but show that DHH adolescents receive fewer friendship nominations from peers. These results contribute to understanding the social dynamics of mainstreamed DHH students and have implications for interventions promoting social inclusion.

Hille van Gelder, Speaker

We look forward to seeing you there!

Additional dates for 2025:

• 26 June 2025 (15.00-17.00)