Congratulations to all Psychology recipients of this year's SSHRC Insight Grants

July 26, 2021

Congratulations to the researchers from the Department of Psychology who received the 2020 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grants! The researchers include professor Jodi Viljoen and assistant professors Ryan Fitzgerald and Yuthika Girme.

Insight Grants support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities. Funding is available to both emerging and established scholars for research initiatives of two to five years. Stable support for long-term research initiatives is central to advancing knowledge. It enables scholars to address complex issues about individuals and societies, and to further our collective understanding.

Read more about their research grants below.

Jodi Viljoen
Title: "Implementation Outcomes for Violence and Reoffending Risk Assessment Instruments."

To help reduce violence and offending, justice agencies throughout the world have adopted risk assessment instruments. These instruments are used to guide nearly every decision that is made about adolescents and adults in the justice system, including when they are released from prison and what treatment programs they receive. To determine if these tools can bring about benefits, we will evaluate the implementation of a risk assessment instrument with youth on probation throughout BC over a 13-year period. We will also synthesize implementation research from other countries and settings.

Ryan Fitzgerald
Title: "Improving the Science and Practice of Eyewitness Identification."

The goal of this research project is to improve police lineups, which are used in criminal investigations to collect evidence from eyewitnesses. The current practice of constructing lineups can bias the witness toward identification of whichever lineup member is suspected by the police, and this puts innocent suspects at an increased risk of wrongful conviction. This project will test a new strategy for selecting lineup members that is hypothesized to reduce the risk of lineup bias.    

Yuthika Girme
Title: "Support From My One and Only: Single Peoples' Perceptions of Social Support from Romantic Partners versus Close Others."

Single people represent a fast-growing demographic across the globe. Yet, research on single people is under-represented in psychological literature. Furthermore, the little research there is on singlehood often yields contradictory findings. For example, single people tend to report lower perceived support compared to coupled people (i.e., perceive that close others are available for help and support) despite being more socially integrated than coupled people (i.e., have larger and higher-quality social networks). The focus of Dr. Girme’s Insight Grant is to reconcile these inconsistencies with the aim of maximizing single peoples’ social support and psychological wellbeing outcomes.

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