Question: what does your studies consist of ?

Alice Jones Bartoli answered on 13 Jun 2011:

I run a few different studies, but I’m going to tell you about two of them.

The first study that I’m working on now is a study on why children get involved with bullying. I work with local primary schools, and go into each class in the junior school and work with the whole class – they rate all their classmates, telling me who is ‘co-operative’, who is ‘a good leader’ and who are the children who are difficult to get on with. We then work with the children who are rated as being difficult to get on with, we are looking for reasons why their classmates think they are so tough to get on with. So far, we have found the children who are rated as being difficult to get along with have difficulties with understanding their own emotions and the emotions of others – we can use this information to develop ways of helping children in class. We also tell teachers about our findings so that they can help the children in their class who are at risk of being excluded.

The second sort of study that I am running is with children who are in a special school for children with behavioural problems. We have developed a new type of treatment, and I am seeing how well it works. Teachers and parents fill in questionnaires about the children’s behaviour and I look at how behaviour changes over time. It is brilliant to hear parents and teachers talk about how much their children have changed. If behaviour changes enough, some children will be able to go to a mainstream school, which is great.