News & Features

Research to help Australian families break the cycle of disadvantage and stop the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ widening will continue at ISSR.

The Institute for Social Science Research at The University of Queensland has claimed an international Award for Excellence from the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

University of Queensland Professor Rhema Vaithianathan has developed methods to screen child abuse calls - using machine learning tools - that are being adopted around the world. 

Professor Karen Thorpe, Deputy Director-Research at the Institute for Social Science Research at The University of Queensland, has been named as a finalist in The Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence Awards for 2019.

Tertiary institutions and other organisations could do more to give university graduates an equal start in the job market, according to a new report led by Dr Wojtek Tomaszewski from The University of Queensland.

The latest training schedule for ISSR’s popular Methods for Social Analysis and Statistics short course program has just been released. Courses in essential statistics, social cost-benefit analysis, program evaluation and longitudinal data analysis will run in Brisbane in November and December 2019.

The appointments of Professors Lisa McDaid and Rhema Vaithianathan help position ISSR to respond to rapidly evolving challenges to the health, social and economic wellbeing in Australia and overseas. Professors Lisa McDaid and Rhema Vaithianathan join ISSR from the United Kingdom and New Zealand respectively, bringing deep expertise in health, social science, and social data analytics.

Drug use, addiction and drug-related harms are at an all-time high in Australia and internationally, meaning that more people are using drugs. Through annual in-depth interviews with people who regularly use ecstasy and related stimulants or inject drugs in Queensland, ISSR researchers are contributing to the national Drug Trends survey research program as it enters its 23rd year producing first-hand insights into the experience of drug use in Australia.

Young drivers in Australia are falling asleep at the wheel, with one in four reporting a crash or near crash in the past year due to fatigue. Could a new ISSR sleep program create change? Associate Professor Simon Smith and his team are developing and testing an intervention to help young people to “bank” sleep and increase their resilience to fatigue.

Parents and early childhood educators don’t see eye-to-eye on sleep practices. While 80% of early childhood education and care providers set a mandatory sleep time for preschool children, 79% of parents do not want them to nap. So, who knows best when it comes to our kids’ sleep? A new $705k longitudinal study led by ISSR’s Professor Karen Thorpe aims to find out.

We spend around a third of our life asleep and ISSR is trying to find out how we make the most of it. In March 2019, ISSR researchers presented to a sold-out crowd on The Science of Sleep as part of UQ’s Global Leadership Series.

Mental health issues are pervasive in society, and as one of Australia’s leading social science research institutes, ISSR is committed to understanding the impacts. With mental health featuring in much of our work in recent years, we have grown our capacity for examining and understanding mental health and wellbeing with a uniquely rich interdisciplinary life course approach.

How well are we helping the helpers? This question is at the centre of ISSR’s new flagship project: a $2.6m evaluation of a federal initiative designed to build the capability of key workforces in supporting the positive mental health of Australian young people, the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program. This exciting three-year project sees ISSR collaborate with the Telethon Kids Institute to interrogate the program’s effects and develop a plan for the government to keep measuring those effects over time.

A new report from ISSR, released September 2018, dives deep into the lived experiences of people navigating the unique human service landscape of far west Queensland. In research for the Queensland Mental Health Commission, ISSR used a mixed methods approach to investigate how to improve the ability of people with a lived experience of mental health difficulties and/or problematic alcohol and other drug use to take up referrals to services. The report identifies the enablers and barriers for individuals and provides insights for service system improvement.