The relationship between change in routine and student mental wellbeing during a nationwide lockdown.

OBJECTIVE: During March 2020, the UK entered a national lockdown, causing a sudden change in undergraduate students' routines. This study uses this event to investigate the impact routine change had on students' mental wellbeing; in particular looking at depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, and eating behaviors. METHOD: Participants reported their daily routine timings (waking, breakfast, lunch, evening meal and bedtime) and activities (e.g. exercise amount, time with friends, time studying, etc) on a typical Monday, Wednesday and Saturday during term time and lockdown. Additionally they completed the PROMIS measures of anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbance, and the Eating Pathology Symptom Inventory. RESULTS: Lockdown saw small but significant shifts in routine timing (on average 1.5 h) However, there was no clear overall pattern of relationships between mental wellbeing and routine structure or magnitude of routine change. There was some evidence of changes in amount of exercise relating to reported anxiety. DISCUSSION: These findings are consistent with the current literature reporting lockdown effects on behavior. Routine timings shifted, but this change was small and largely did not affect the mental wellbeing reported by undergraduate students. The change in amount of exercise posed by lockdown did appear to be an important factor in wellbeing, and more research should focus on the wellbeing implications of closing places for exercise.

Dispositional Disinhibition and Alcohol Use Disorders: Personality, Risk Appraisal and Problematic Alcohol Consumption.

Background: The relationship between psychopathic personality and problematic alcohol consumption could be important for understanding risk and potential interventions. This existing work on psychopathy and alcohol abuse is typically conducted in criminal and hospitalized populations and little attention has been paid to investigating the general populations' psychopathic personality and problematic consumption of alcohol. The psychopathy-focused Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM) and the more general Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of personality (RST) focus on individual differences related to low self-control and sensation seeking, and could relate to problematic alcohol consumption in non-forensic samples. The current study brings together RST and psychopathic personality traits to predict alcohol use disorders. We hypothesize that impulsivity and anxiety predict problematic alcohol consumption and related risk appraisal. Methods: We analyzed data from a sample of 349 general population participants who had completed measures of the TriPM, RST, alcohol use disorders (AUDIT), and their perceived negative outcomes of high risk behavior with the Cognitive Appraisal of Risky Events (CARE) measure. Results: We find some evidence that TriPM's disinhibition and RST's anxious personality traits relate to AUDIT scores. We find limited evidence that personality traits predict the negative appraisal of risky events, but alcohol use was related to increased perceptions of the negative outcomes of alcohol consumption. Conclusions: Overall this study shows that individual differences do relate to problematic alcohol consumption but not the appraisal of risks related to alcohol consumption. This has implications for the structuring of intervention for those at-risk of problematic consumption of alcohol.

It Takes Two: The Round-Robin Methodology for Investigative Interviewing Research.

Investigative interviews are complex, dyadic, and social interactions typically studied by evaluating interviewers' questioning strategies. In field settings, interviewers naturally vary in their interviewing practice. Thus, it is important to conduct research reflective of idiosyncrasies in witnesses, interviewers, and the resulting unique pairings. This study explored sources of variation in an interview by using a "round-robin" design. Each session of the study involved five witnesses observing five separate events. Witnesses were then simultaneously, but independently interviewed by four different interviewers, or completed a self-administered written interview. This sequence was repeated until each witness had seen every event and had been interviewed by each interviewer. Over nine sessions (N = 45) this produced 225 total interviews. Individual interview performance (accuracy and level of detail) as well as experience (subjective ratings) were then analyzed in relation to the typical performance of the interviewer, the witness, the event, and the unique paring. We found that witnesses and interviewers could have an effect on statement quality; however, the unique interview experience variance had the greatest influence on interview performance. This study presents the round-robin methodology as a useful tool to study realistic variation in interviewer, witness, and dyad behavior. The preprint of this paper is available at psyarxiv.com/tv5gz/, and materials and data are available at osf.io/ef634/files/.