Transcript
Dr Jacqui Brewer
Good morning and welcome to the third and final session in BETA's BI Connect 2024 series, showcasing work across the behavioural insights community. Thank you very much for joining us today. My name is Jacqui Brewer and I'm a director in the Behavioural Economics team of the Australian Government, better known as BETA. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which we're meeting today across Australia and in New Zealand. For me in Canberra, it's the lands of the Ngunnawal people, and I would also like to recognise any other people or families with connections to the lands of the ACT and region. I pay my respects to elders past and present, and I extend that respect to First Nations people here today. As a very brief introduction, BETA sits within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. We work across government to apply behavioural science to a range of policies and programs. Our mission is to improve the lives of Australians by generating and applying evidence from the behavioural and social sciences to find solutions to complex problems. A core part of our mission involves building capability. This event is one of many initiatives we run to share knowledge and build awareness of behavioural insights. You'll see the role of behavioural insights can have in supporting the development of government services, policies, and programs. If you're feeling inspired by today's presentations, please visit our website where you can see further information about BETA's projects. There are also various tools and resources that can help you learn more about applying behavioural insights to a project of your own.
Today's session is titled Working at the Margins and offers us a chance to spend some time thinking about how to best undertake research with hard to reach, vulnerable or under-served populations. For behavioural interventions to be successful, co-design with the intended group can be critical. In this session we're going to hear how behavioural insights practitioners working at the margins are designing successful interventions which take account of the complexities and challenges that can be present when working with a range of groups in society. Before I welcome the presenters, I would like to mention that this conference session may raise topics that can be confronting to some. If you need to talk to someone, support is available. We have listed some support numbers on screen and we'll share a link shortly. And as always, please feel free to leave today's session if you need to. The format of today's session will be 3 presentations, followed by an opportunity to ask questions. I encourage you to add your questions to the Q&A function, which can be found at the top of the window. Please be mindful that this is a public forum and continue consider the suitability of sharing personal experiences. There are captions available for this live event too.
Dr Jacqui Brewer
So let's get started. Our first presentation today is from The Research Agency in New Zealand. Lindsey Horne and Gai Bishop have a great project to inspire us today. Lindsey has a background in neuroscience and applied behavioural science and works across complex behaviour change challenges. Her approach to behaviour change is holistic, from border cultural and social change through to behavioural economics and nudges. Gai is a highly experienced researcher, advisor and project manager within the public sector in New Zealand. She has interviewed and advised on vaccination uptake, financial education and in ensuring an equity point of view in preventable accidents. She's an active member of the Māori Women's Welfare League. Welcome Lindsey and Gai.
Lindsey Horne
Thanks Jacqui, Kia ora kotou everyone. Jacqui, can you just give me a thumbs up that you can hear me? I just want to make sure I'm all good on that front. Yes, OK, excellent. Kia ora kotou, ko Mauo te maunga, ko Tauranga Moana te moana, ko tangata te tiriti, tena koutou tena koutou, tena koutou katoa, everyone.
I'm Lindsey Horne. What I just said then is that I am from Tauranga. I would say the most beautiful spot in Aotearoa New Zealand But I think Gai is going to try claim that from where she is from. But I'm from the East Coast of the North Island here in Aotearoa, and it's a real pleasure to be part of this session today. So thank you so much for having us. And I'm also going to pass over to Gai now to introduce her as well, my colleague and my friend Gai Bishop. Oh, you're just still on mute there, Gai.
Gai Bishop
Trust me to be the first one to forget to unmute. Tena koutou katoa, ko Gai Bishop toku ingoa, ko Nga Puhi, ko Ngati Porou. What I've just said is to introduce myself. I'm Gai Bishop, and I am (descended) from two of the larger Iwi in New Zealand. One of them is NgaPuhi in the mid and the far north and Ngati Porou which occupies most of the East Coast of the North Island. And I am equally, equally happy to be here today and very excited for what we have to offer for you. And I'll go back to Lindsey, please.
Lindsey Horne
Thanks, Gai. So we are here on behalf of our organisation, TRA or The Research Agency, and we work both in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. And today we're going to be presenting on behalf of our client Sport New Zealand. So that's going to be the topic of discussion today, but we'll get you all across the research objectives and what we set out to do. But before we get into that, I guess the whole crux of what we would like to share with you today is kind of zooming out to the field of behavioural insights and behavioural economics. And it has kind of quite rightly had some constructive criticism in the in the past that it's been really quite focused on individual behaviour as opposed to looking at social dynamics or looking at systems level change.
And it has been really focused in the past or historically on what we call WEIRD audiences, which I'm sure a lot of people would know that acronym. But if you don't, it stands for Western, educated, industrialised or urban populations that are rich and quite often democratic. So that has often been the target audience or people that this field has tended to focus their research on. And that's why it's really amazing to see this initiative here around how can we break out of that and zoom out to look at system level change, but also look at some of our other populations. And so Gai and I will be talking to you about our Māori population. I would just like to say that in Aotearoa New Zealand, we don't see our population as marginalised or on the margins. They're actually 20% of our population and they are growing. But we think that some of the research and the findings can still will be applied to those audiences that are on either side of the bell curve or not quite in the middle of the bell curve as well. But just wanted to flag that, yeah, our Māori population is very like integral to our Aotearoa and we wouldn't always see them as marginalised, but sometimes our different populations can be hard to recruit and get in touch with. So definitely relevant here. So in terms of what we'd like to share with you today, it's how can you actually overcome some of these aspects. And there's definitely ways that you can do that through recruitment and who you're actually speaking to. But what we would like to share with you today is how you can apply different frameworks or thinking to your research projects or to the work that you're doing within your organisation. So it's more than just sampling, but it's how can you apply different frameworks or different models to bring in that broader insight? Because it's more than just who you're talking to, but it's how you're doing your analysis, how you're bringing that thinking into it. And we're going to be sharing an example of how you can build in different frameworks and blend them together to broaden your thinking, broaden your analysis. And what we found off the back of it is that your insights are just so much richer. And how you interpret your data can be so much richer when you kind of broaden that thinking and go beyond just the COM-B model, for instance.
Cool. So Gai and I are representing Sport New Zealand watches our client for this Mahi or this work. And Sport New Zealand is a public sector organisation. Their overarching vision is that they would like to see all New Zealanders be active or have everybody active. And the way that they do that essentially to kind of simplify it down as they are, they are a system leader. So they set a lot of direction and strategy for activity engagements in Aotearoa and their partnership network is really important. So who they work with and how they go about their work through their delivery partners is keep as a key aspect to that as well. And then who they invest and fund is also a large part of how they work. And as like all of our government agencies, we are working to Te Tiriti or our Treaty of Waitangi. And a big part of that is improving equity. And that is a big part of that is for our tangata whenua or for our Māori audiences as well. So that was a key part of Sport New Zealand and what they're setting out to achieve. And I guess the other really key aspect of what underpins Sport New Zealand strategy is their longitudinal study called Active New Zealand. And anyone who's been involved in a long term survey or a long term longitudinal study knows the value of that data, not only for projecting forward and helping you with those insights, but tracking that change and seeing how far your organisation has come. And it's a really key part that underpins and not only Sport New Zealand strategy, but a lot of their partners. So Active NZ is really crucial to a whole range of organisations that Sport New Zealand works with. And the reason why I'm kind of harping on about this Active NZ study is anyone who's been involved in like any kind of long term tracking or a longitudinal study knows that you don't really want to muck with it. And this has been set up since the early 90s. And so for an organisation to reflect on their long study or their long term surveys knows they're not doing this likely lightly. It's a big change for longitudinal data. But honestly, that's what Sport New Zealand came to us with.
They wanted to relook at their survey and understand, are they asking the right questions and are they asking it in the right way, Not just in general, but for particular groups, including Māori and our rangatahi, which is our youth audience and which is a really big part of Sport New Zealand’s strategy and approach. So I know it sounds like, oh, maybe they're just, you know, updating their survey, but when it's a longitudinal study, it's quite that underpins the strategy of not just your organisation, but other partnership organisations. It's quite a big deal. So they were re looking to refresh their survey and making sure that it was working for the right kinds of population. So that's what we were tasked to do. We were looking at this survey and understanding if we're asking the right questions to continue to inform the ongoing strategy.
So at a high level this was our approach. I'm not going to go into in heaps of detail, but at a really high level we started off with the contextual audit or a rapid literature review and then for the majority of the work it was contextual and behavioural qualitative research. So we did behavioural and qualitative research over a seven day. With over 50 participants, including a key cohort of Māori as well as young people. And then off the back of it, we did a deeper dive into what we call contextual inquiry, where we followed alongside so we could actually track actual behaviour, not just self reported behaviour, as well as expert interviews as well. So that's just a really brief overview of the methodology, but what I really want to talk to you all about is more about the frameworks. But before I get into that, I'm just going to pass over to Gai, who's going to explain our approach to working with Māori respondents as part of this research.
Gai Bishop
Thank you very much. So the first thing we I would particularly like to speak to you about is a framework that has been designed in house by TRA and it is called the Twin Rivers Approach. And I must express a gratitude to the research agency firstly for employing me because it was a pretty crazy ride and you know, an investment but a risky one. And the Twin Rivers Approach takes the stance that you can take to streams, and as you work your way through the ways in which they may or may not react and interact, you come to an outcome that is mutually appreciated. But neither of those streams is diluted by the other, which for Māori is absolutely critical. It actually stems from two, which I'll briefly describe that already exist outside in the research community, particularly in New Zealand. I don't know about anywhere else, but it is. One is called braided river and the other is called the twisted rope. And what they have included in the past is that the rivers are going to be interacting and integrating in some way, as is the twisted rope, the strands of the twisted rope. Now, the negative perception that we have as Māori to those two things is what the expectation is of the outcome is. It's going to be some kind of amorphous integration. And because we are still but going hard to make the difference, much smaller population than the general population. Then tea o Māori, which stands for the Māori world and the Māori voice will become diluted. And there will be this unified space that is made to exist for which we know we're not particularly, as you can understand, happy. And that means that we have used this within this particular project and being ensured that that would take place, that there wasn't any of the integrating work would be done, but there was certainly collaboration everywhere, which was great. And I'll come back to you, please, Lindsey.
Lindsey Horne
Thank you, Gai. Yes, it's the Twin Rivers approach. We find it's really helpful, as Gai mentioned, if you're trying to essentially avoid assimilation and blend too much of an audience that is different to another together. Sometimes it's as Gai mentioned, it's best to have those two approaches running parallel as opposed to blended and at the risk of one audience's voices, as Gai mentioned, getting diluted. I love quoting Gai. It's always, she always drops the best sentences and cool.
So that's another really key aspect to our Twin Rivers approach. And as I was mentioning before, you can do this through, you know, your sampling and having distinct audiences, but then what does that mean when it comes to analysis and your actual research methodology and the questions that you are asking? And So what we'd like to continue to share with you as the frameworks that we built into this research project around understanding people's approach to sport, recreation and staying active, which is a really broad topic as a lot of us are working on. I know a lot of us are working on indistinct challenges with a lot of broad scope where you can go quite broad. So having a framework can be really helpful. So that's what we're going to cover off today is what frameworks we use to kind of maintain that Twin Rivers approach, but still treat our audiences with the care and respect that they needed. So let me just switch to the next slide.
Here we go. So we actually used three different frameworks, which I know sounds like a lot. Anyone who's a researcher will be looking at this and being like this is overwhelming. Like just keep things simple. The COM-B model is great for a reason. It's really simple. It rolls off the tongue and that's the reason why it's become so popular is for its simplicity. But I'd really like to argue that the case for bringing in a broader range of thinking into your research methodology. So we used three different frameworks. We used Te Whare Tapa Whā, we used the socio-ecological model, and we used COM-B. And I'm going to walk you through those three models in case you're unfamiliar with any of them. And then I'm going to chat you through how we actually used these models and kind of calm the beating hearts that are out there. Being like, this is too complicated. You've just made this too complex.
So the first model is the socio-ecological model. This came out of social research and I really appreciate this model because it zooms out and zooms in and it puts individual behaviour inside a broader context and it kind of takes the onus off just the individual. And anyone who has worked on complex challenges, whether it's climate emissions or reducing poverty, knows that it's not an individual problem. You have to zoom out to the broader context as well. So we use the socio-ecological model. We also use the COM-B model. I'm sure a lot of the people on this call will be familiar with this, but this has come from Professor Susan Michie after doing a review of 19 different behaviour change models. I think largely out of the health sector and whittled it down to capability, opportunity and motivation. At TRA we sometimes like to call it the know how, can do, and want to of behaviour change. And then I'm going to pass over to Gai to describe the Te Whare Tapa Whā
Gai Bishop
Thank you very much, Lindsey. Excuse me. So thank you very much. Te Whare Tapa Whā is a phrase. It just means the four walls of a house. Te Whare is a house and the Tapa Whā are the four corners. It is a, a model that was designed by a very well respected Māori health advocate, Sir Mason Durie in 1984. And it's it serves as a framework, as we've suggested, with a strictly holistic approach for health, particularly mental health and educational professionals to use. And I'm going to drop one of my sentences, sorry Lindsey, which is working in the fringes. So the in for us is, you know, a far reach from at. Now you'll notice that there are these four names and there's Taha Wairua, which is the spiritual aspect. There is Taha Hinengaro, which is the mental and emotional aspect. There is Taha Whānau, which is family and social and Taha Tinana which is the physical, which of course is where Sport New Zealand fits but we are saying you take all of these things into account when you are trying to research anything. And of course the outcome for that is Hauora and Hauora for us as well-being. And I'm not quite happy with that word. But what that does mean that all of these things when aligned, give you that beautifully balanced health status. I want to make a little note here too, that of course, this is metaphorical and very allegorical in some ways as well. But it's very easy to see that if one of these pou, as we call them, these four Tapa is shorter or not working properly and you've got a pretty crook house. So the ideals behind that of course, work perfectly in this instance. And something I'd like to just address quickly is that for Māori, all of Māori, everything that we do, all of our activations, everything we sing, we dance, we write, we say we do, is all connected together. And a lot of it, vast majority of it is metaphorical and analogical. And I've got something to say at the very end of our presentation about why that's really important to understand. But for now, I'll just leave you hanging like Dickens used to do. And, you know, I'll go back to Lindsey.
Lindsey Horne
Kia Ora, thanks, Gai. Yeah. So the Hauora model or Te Whare Tapa Whā, I wouldn't say it's not a behaviour change model. It's a health and well-being model that is, as Gai mentioned, came out of te ao Māori. And it's it makes so much sense, right? Like when you understand that being active or having health and well-being, it's so much more than just the physical approach as well. And I think to Gai’s point as well, that they all work together. It's not just like these four separate ones, but it's that kind of interconnectedness, which as again, we'll come to later, that was really, really important for Sport NZ to understand when it came to interpretation of results as well. So I'm going to go back to that. What I mentioned earlier for those who are freaking out with, it's like I, we, you know, that we bought three different models into, into this research, but I'm just going to go back a few slides and actually talk through what is the process for built for using three different models or frameworks throughout the research. And, and what we did for that social ecological model was we really used that to understand that this phase two, the culture and context. And that was our contextual audit in our literature review. And so we used the social and ecological model predominantly in that phase for us to go really broad before we kind of honed in on the individual. And what that meant is it really provided us with that broader landscape of what was going on in that kind of broader context. So we were looking at the infrastructure context, we were looking at the policy context, we were looking at our partnerships as well. And so it really helped provide us with that broader landscape or that bigger picture map and understanding of where sport recreation activity set within the broader sector as well. So that's my first learning for you all as if you're looking to bring in different frameworks or models is that you can bring them into different stages of your research methodology. And we like to go broad before we go narrow. And so I would really recommend that if you're starting off a foundational piece that you bring in a broad systems level thinking approach at that early stage. And so something like the socio-ecological model worked really well for us at that literature review phase.
And then what we did or another way that you might like to think about these different models, sorry, I'm jumping around a little bit is I guess one of the things that we like to think about is like, you don't know what you don't ask, right? And so the way that we thought about these models and particularly to Te Whare Tapa Whā and COM-B was we used that to develop the questions that we were going to ask people. And if you don't ask a person a question, you're not going to get the results from that. You know, you don't, you don't get what you don't ask. And so the way that we built COM-B and Te Whare Tapa Whā was we used it to really inform our qualitative topic frameworks or discussion guides. And we use them to inform the tasks that we were asking people in, in this kind of explorative and behavioural research or the contextual inquiries. So we used when we were asking people, you know, motivational questions or trying to understand why they would do some behaviours versus another. We weren't just using COM-B. We weren't just like, what is it a capability issue or is it just that the opportunity hasn't presented itself? We were also using Te Whare Tapa Whā to understand some of those motivational aspects, like were they choosing this one sport or activity over another one because it was providing them, you know, taha whanau or family positivity or was it because it was adding to their taha wairua or their spirit? You know, so we're using it to, we're blending these two research methodologies or sorry, these two frameworks to inform our questions as well. And that's when the kind of the story comes through. And I think a lot of people think that when you use a research framework or model, you have to report against it. And you don't always have to do that. You can use it to build it into your questionnaires or into your qualitative questions. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to fill in the framework afterwards. It can just be used to develop questions and then the key insight will still emerge. It doesn't, just because you have these three models doesn't mean you have to fill them out at the end. They can just be used to inform your questions. So that was a key learning for us and how we use those three different models across the research process.
And what did that mean for us and what did that mean for Sport New Zealand? Well, we had, what it meant for us and Sport New Zealand is that we could provide them with insights at a system level as well as at a survey level. So when we built in the social ecological model into that systemic literature review, it meant that we were able to provide system level and contextual understanding in general, but also specifically that relate to Māori. And that provided Sport New Zealand with confirmation that many of the core barriers were systemic and they weren't just individual and motivational related and that they couldn't, you know, you can't fix everything with a campaign. And as I mentioned, Sport New Zealand, a lot of their work is their partnerships and their funding. And so this was confirmation of who and how they're working at that more systems level change. But then to go back to the actual survey, it did provide us with opportunities for survey updates as well as interpretations of the results as well. So an example of that was there's obviously in the survey a whole lot of barriers and motivation questions. And historically a lot of those questions around why people might take part in activity or not was around, you know, because I do it for relaxation and recreation, which is quite broad. But we were able to through the Te Whare Tapa Whā model and broaden that out to Taha Hinengaro and Taha Wairua which is around mental and emotional Hauora or health or spiritual health as well. And so we were able to expand that question set as well as the interpretation of it as well. And understanding that those concepts are really connected. And also that a lot of the questions were adapted to from being individually focused around your personal motivations or why you personally might like to do something to more whanau or family focused questions. Because what we were noticing again through to Te Whare Tapa Whā, which is tea o Māori that people are taking part in activity not just for themselves, but for other people and other members in their whanau as well. And honestly, I think if we had just used the COM-B model, we would never have gotten to that approach. So blending that in with some of the more standard behaviour change frameworks really enhanced our findings, particularly for Māori, but also for all of our respondents as well. So I'm just going to pass over to Gai now, who's going to chat through some more of our specific survey designs that we or survey recommendations that we were also able to provide to Sport New Zealand. And just a reminder that, you know, this sounds just like our tweak to a survey, but you know, changing a longitudinal study. Yeah, take any, any change is a big consideration.
Gai Bishop
Thank you very much for that, Lindsey. Thanks very much, Lindsey. And I'll be concise. We did achieve I think a great amount and the client was really delighted with the outcome and what they had been handed, albeit admitting that there was a whole lot of work to be done. So one of the things that the things that came up was that things that were Māori traditional opportunities could count alongside ones that were taken as value with within the survey as it is. And also that others that were quite not so much but were being still used by Māori, but in a more contemporary context could perhaps be merged with others. But my underlying note which I gave you know you a little hint of before was that one of the things that rests when there was inside the client's feedback ways in which they would like to merge them together into what already existed. For instance, heavily traditional things like Waka Ama, which is like they wanted to put perhaps would be good to put that with rowing or kayaking, which it is not because it has a huge traditional meaning to it as well. And Kapa Haka, which you know about the Haka, well, Kapa Haka by 10,000 people at once in one place could go with dance, for instance. And I'd like to make the point that there is a, a meritocratic perspective within research that we do it in the in the mainstream that rests on the laurels of intelligence and materiality as having the supreme value than the outcome and that space from a very of course, Western value point of view. And when you use as I signalled right at the beginning, something like the te ao Māori point of view which relies on essential Māori ways of thinking and doing, which are metaphorical and analogical, then they are disputed because they seem to be much more poetic and perhaps literary then they are scientific. So there are still those things to be resolved. But we had come a long way for that to be revealed, and they were very happy to be told something akin to that without getting too cross. So I'll go back to Lindsey to close, shall I Lindsey?
Lindsey Horne
Cool. Thank you, Gai yes. And so I guess the final point that we wanted to make was that sometimes our standard behaviour change frameworks or behavioural insight frameworks aren't enough. Or that the idea that if you blend different broader ranges of thinking, you can really enhance your results. And that it's not really an either or, but it's that idea that you don't get what you don't ask. So we would definitely encourage you to bring in not just, you know, expanding your recruitment, but expanding your thinking with blending different models and ways of thinking into your research and blending them into your questions that you're asking as well as the analysis. And that's it from me and Gai, thank you so much for listening to us.
Dr Jacqui Brewer
Thanks so much, Lindsey and Gai, what an interesting presentation. And I particularly love the visual imagery of the frameworks with the streams and the house. And I think I might have to borrow from you the COM-B shorthand of know how, can do, and want to. I love that. So I'm going to borrow that if you don't mind. I'm sure our audience is really keen to know more about this work. So please continue to submit your questions for our presenters through the Q&A function at the top.
We're going to move on now to hear from Professor Swee-Hoon Chuah. Swee-Hoon is a Professor of Behavioural Economics at the University of Tasmania, where she is the founding Director of the Tasmanian Behavioural Lab. She holds a PhD in Behavioural and Experimental Economics from the University of Nottingham in the UK. Her research expertise lies in cross cultural behavioural economics, in particular the impact of cultural factors such as ethnicity, religion and social identity on socio economic behaviour. Thank you for joining us, Swee-Hoon, over to you. Thank you, Jacqui.
Professor Swee-Hoon Chuah
Just checking Jacqui that you can hear and see me? Good. So thank you, Jacqui. My name is Swee-Hoon and thanks to the BETA team as well for inviting me to present. The title of my presentation is Behaviourally Informed Strategies for Better Engagement with Communities. CALD stands for culturally and linguistically diverse communities and in this presentation in particular, I'll be talking about migrant and refugee communities and about better engaging with them in an employment context. So just to give you a little bit of background to this presentation, I'm currently working on this project led by the Multicultural Council of Tasmania. So I'm from beautiful Tasmania. You can see my T-shirt led by the Multicultural Council of Tasmania and funded by the Tasmanian Community Fund and we have Jobs Tasmania as well as the Migrant Resource Centre as partners in Tasmania. People from CALD communities, particularly those from migrant and refugee backgrounds, face significant barriers in entering the workforce. Many are working below well below their skill level. There is significant over representation in entry level jobs and in sectors with low pay and conditions. So we are, you know, falling woefully behind. We're failing to fully capitalise on the knowledge and the skills which our cultural diversity brings. And although this is a Tasmanian project, I'm sure that this is true on the mainland, the rest of Australia as well.
So traditionally we address such issues from the supply side. So what we do is, you know, we make sure that people from such communities learn better English, write better CVs that work more. Sometimes they're told to de-emphasise their cultural backgrounds. So for example, anglicise their names so that it's easier for people to pronounce and so on. So the onus is actually on the job seekers. So the burden is on the supply side. So in this project what we are doing is just flipping that around and addressing the demand side, the employers, what are their barriers to hiring, engaging and retaining people from CALD backgrounds and how can we help and remove help to address and remove these barriers. So this is the three-year project in the middle of it. So no outcomes yet, but we have done lots and lots of work in terms of consulting with Tasmanian employers and CALD employees to hear about their views and their stories via a mix of surveys and focus groups. So as part of this work, I was invited to give a keynote to the Multicultural Tasmanian Employers Conference. So this is the annual conference which brings together more than 150 delegates from across Tasmanian government and industry. So they say to me, well soon, you know, as employers we already know the benefits of having a diversified workforce. So you don't need to convince us of that. You know, we know about bias, racism, discrimination and we are trying to overcome this. But tell us something new, something we don't know that we can immediately put into action. That's what they said. So this is the presentation that I'm about to share with you. This is the keynote that I gave them. So it's pretty high level, tailored to a government and industry audience, so who are not perfectly across behavioural science concepts. So if you're not one of them, so you may be a little bit bored, but hey, bear with me. So I'll come back this presentation from the point of view of a CALD community member. So I'll discuss some of the barriers members of this community space when they're engaging with you. You was listening to me as a potential employer of CALD people and somebody who wants to better engage with CALD people. And then I'm going to discuss some strategies that you can take to help core communities overcome these barriers and to help them better engage with you.
Now, these strategies will be based on behavioural insights. What are strategies based on behavioural insights? Well, these are strategies that appeal to the psychology that underlies people's behaviour. So once we understand why people do what they do, the psychology that underlies their behaviour, we will be able to design the choice architecture. I'm sure you're familiar with this design. Design the choice architecture in such a way that we gently steer people into a certain direction. So we don't but also forbid with legislation. We don't incentivise or disincentivise with subsidies or taxes. But these are the typical policy tools that you may be more familiar with. So instead with behavioural insights, what we do is we make it easier and we make it more attractive for people to behave in a certain way. And I think many of you would be familiar with this example. And if you are not, well, just to give you an example of a school that wants to encourage its students to eat healthy when they come into the cafeteria. Behavioural insight strategy is to make sure that the healthy food is at eye level and it's the first thing they see when they come into the cafeteria. Presented effectively and they are able to access this healthy food effect easily. The unhealthy food is still there, but it's hidden somewhere at the back up, down, harder to get to and perhaps not presented as nicely. So you notice that, you know, they don't only serve healthy food, right? And that's actually mandating they don't make healthy food cheaper or unhealthy food more expensive. You know, that's incentivising this insight advising. So that's a strategy example of a strategy that's based on being brought insights. So in our case, what we want to do is we want to use behavioural insights to formulate strategies to encourage called community members to engage with employers. So present for broad behaviourally informed strategies and discuss with you the barriers that they overcome. These strategies are based on the framework developed by the Behavioural Insights team, which I'm sure many of you are already familiar with. The principle is this, if you want to encourage a certain behaviour, you need to make it easy, attractive, social, timely, hence EAST.
So firstly. So our first strategy to engage with CALD employees is to make it easier for them to engage. Why? What it has to do with our working memory. Our working memory is essential processing information to perform tasks, but obviously our working memory is really limited in capacity. We can only do 3 or 4 things at the same time and once this capacity is exceeded, we experience what we call a cognitive overload. So this overload causes our grades to be drained, distracted and resulting in procrastination or failure to act. Even if we did act, our decision making is most likely faulty. So to give an example, you know, you go to the supermarket, somebody on your pharmacist, so you get me some shampoo and you go to the supermarket, you see this and you stand there and you stand there and you stand there for ages and ages and ages. You can't decide, yeah, you're somewhat paralysed. That's a paradox of choice. Too many alternatives gives you an overload and you find it difficult to act. So that's the decision paralysis there. So put yourself in the shoes of a person from a migrant or refugee background.
What is happening to them cognitively, the versus arriving and settling in a new country, establishing themselves in a new environment, learning a new language, adapting to a new culture, these are all very mentally taxing compared to the rest of us to face much higher levels of cognitive overload. Moreover many of them would be struggling with poverty and poverty itself places an additional burden on top of that. And these people, they already may be experiencing anxiety or low self esteem related to their qualifications, their language skills or their cultural fit. So help them don't add to this load. Make it easy for them to engage with you. How well it actually depends on the industry, the you know, the particular type of work or workplace. But here are some suggestions. As you can see, simplify the information provided to them, many employment related documents, the contract job description, the policies, they're so difficult for non-native speakers to understand because of the technical jargon. I have a PhD in I can't understand. So it's, it's just simplify and you know, members of the CALD communities, they may face language barriers, which can make it very difficult for them to engage. So offer language support, provide, you know, translated materials in their language or assistance through another staff member of the same language group. CALD community members you know, they may have poor computing skills, no access to technology. They will have, you know, maybe they will experience accessibility issues which may prevent them from making online applications on any form of online engagement. Everything is online these days. So I have to think of those people who actually don't have access so you can offer pen and paper options or maybe technology training. The amount of red tape that surrounds almost everything these days does not help. You can, you know, help make it as painless as possible for them to meet requirements that relate to background checks, occupational health and safety insurance and so on. So maybe pre filled application forms or streamlined processes. So finally, CALD community members, they have very little or none or very little professional networks. It's hard for them to find you. So maybe try and find them instead by appealing to all possible communication channels, you know, beyond just the mainstream, right? So that's the first one, make it easy.
Second strategy, make it more attractive for them to engage. Why? Well, because people just basically going back to the science, we have this dual system model of processing information. So this image is borrowed from BETA. I figured since we are doing a BETA talk that they don't mind, they won't mind. So we have two systems of processing, the limbic system here, which is our system 1, past rapid automatic using emotions, intuition, heuristics for past responses. And that's like the our, you know, the old animal brain that we share with our animal ancestors. And then the system 2 which is this bit here, the prefrontal cortex and that is the new human brain that is uniquely human conscious, deliberate use logic reasoning for more slower responses. So like Daniel Kahneman says, thinking fast and slow. In their everyday lives, people mostly use utilise system one. They save system 2 for more complex tasks because system 2 is working memory hungry. And you know that we are already limited in that. So mostly we use system 1. And in some, in fact, research shows that I think we use system one most, almost 90%, of the time. So rather than deliberate on a situation, people often act automatically based on what they find attractive, based on what their draws their attention, what engages their emotions, what tugs on their heartstrings. So of course, you know this, this is the piano stairs in the Stockholm metro resulted in about 66% more people using the stairs compared to the escalator just next to it, right? Because the stairs are they're attractive, people are drawn to them. As Taylor said, we like shiny things, right? So that's, that's, that's the attractiveness. Now the thing with CALD members of the CALD communities, just yeah, you can start, you get them to engage or make it more attractive to, for them to engage with you. But always remember, what's attractive to you may not be attractive to them due to cultural differences and differences in cognitive and learning styles. So for example, words sorry, colour, even colour. So Chinese people associate red with prosperity. It's good they like it. For Westerners, red is often, well, danger, right? Something to be aware of. So if you look at stock markets in Western culture right, if shares fall they are in red but in China red this one shares go up so it's a different colours. Never give Chinese person a clock or watch as a gift. That means wishing them a speedy death. Also words no, in western cultures you don't really mind saying unemployment, but in certain cultures the word unemployed carries stigma which discourages people from openly engaging. So to save face, to help some people save face, perhaps we can say seeking or exploring job options or gaining employment rather than, you know, don't say unemployment. So frame it differently -
positively. Socialising, you know, we do a lot of socialising and networking after work in the pub over a few beers, but many in the CALD communities due to cultural religious reasons, they don't drink and they don't feel comfortable in the pub. It's not that they don't want to engage or socialise with you, it's just not an environment that they are comfortable. So be so in fact, to be more inclusive, maybe engaged with them, you know, during lunch breaks or you know, something during lunch, something during work hours that don't really that don't involve alcohol. Finally, the point about representativeness. Let me give you an example from my own experience. I'm a professor of economics and I'm female around Australia, if you look at all the professors of economics, that's only less than about less about 17%, 16% of us in this position. And when I go to my classrooms, I see the number of girls to boys. It's 30/70. So lots of girls are not studying economics. And this is this is basically one of my passions, right, to get girls more girls to study economics. But why? Why? So when you go and Google and you type in the best economies in history, this is what you see. And this is called the representativeness heuristic. People make decisions based on prototypes of something they have in their heads. And girls see this and they go out don't belong in this field. I won't be welcomed here. This career choice is not attractive to them, so they don't gear towards it. They veer away from. But we can counter the representativeness heuristic with what we call the availability heuristic, which people make decisions based on what is visible to them and what they can recall easily. So if girls increasingly see these sorts of images than they will feel whether it's true or not, they will feel that there are more women in the field and that they would be welcomed and that's this career choice becomes more attractive to them. They will feel towards it. So similarly with members of the CALD communities at your place of work, make it very clear and visible to them that your workplace is a diversified one where they are welcomed. Now you'll be more attractive to them, they will be welcomed to it. Showcase senior leaders from minority groups during recruitment and outreach efforts to demonstrate that, you know, career paths are attainable for those from migrant and refugee backgrounds at your place of work.
The third strategy. So this is the S now. So to make it social for them to engage. Why? Well, because people are social creatures. We are pack animals. Homo sapiens travelled in large packs, which is why we survived. You know, we have that being in a lunch pack is more handy to fight off predators and our predecessors I think was the Neanderthals. They travel in smaller packs and well, they got eaten so didn't survive but so evolutionarily we are social creatures. We observe what others do and to be targeted the same, especially if these people are similar to us. So this is an example. This is my own electricity bill. So you guys will know this right. So you can see the way to encourage people to reduce the energy consumption is by comparing it with others in their neighbourhood. So you can see I am a household of two and the average daily consumption in my area is 11. And look – mine is 15 oh my God. Right. So, so if you see this and you, you feel that this is your community, you want to do what your community does as well. And we saw our second future as a result so we were nudged. But you basically want to do what the rest of your community does. But think of those in CALD communities with language barriers, cultural barriers, perhaps they've experienced some racism, right then they feel isolated and feel that they don't belong in the wider community. So some communities, refugee, refugee communities, they may have faced persecution and experienced trauma in their country of origin and as a result which they have fear and distrust of governments, of authorities, of people who are in the majority. So what they do is they turn inwardly into their own communities. This is exacerbated by the fact that many people in the core communities are from collectivistic cultures just to start with. And so turning inwards is a natural defence mechanism. So you turn to your own kin for help and support in uncertain times, right? They're the only ones you can trust to have your back. Of course, in the long run we need to build trust, but this will take time. But what you can do as a starting point is to appeal to these collectivistic tendencies by involving their family, their friends and their communities. Next slide, Yes. What is the social norm in their particular community that you can draw on? Are there people within these communities who are already actively engaging with you? If so, invite them to speak at your events. The more visible these messengers are, the more they can influence their communities to engage. You need to demonstrate that others within their communities view such engagement positively. Involve community elders and respected leaders in the collectivistic cultures, right? Leaders, elders have a lot of influence. They have a lot of sway.
So that's the social and the final strategy to engage people from CALD communities is to make it timely for them to engage. Why? Because people just respond to Proms differently depending on when they occur. So timing is important in terms of rolling something out. So, you know the example of gyms. Gyms and diet websites usually intensify their campaigns during New Year when we make resolutions to look good, be thin, be healthy. Perhaps this is not as relevant for engaging CALD communities as the other three, but I guess if I left the T out I would have EAS instead of EAST. But you actually do need to be aware of those times when the call community members will not be able to work or properly engage, for example, during their cultural or religious holidays or festivals, which will be different from your own. You know, provide timely resources and information to ensure that they are informed about opportunities for engagement when they arise. And also I think it's important to be aware of the times when they will be particularly engaged because they've already been alerted to it. So for instance, during Harmony Week, this is a good time to run job ads or outreach events. They will be particularly receptive during this week. So I think that's that. So to engage by members of the CALD communities, make it easy, attractive, social and timely. Thank you, Jacqui, back to you.
Dr Jacqui Brewer
Thank you Swee-Hoon. Thanks for taking us through the EAST Framework from a CALD perspective. I think there's a lot for us to think about there. Just a reminder for our audience, you can also ask questions for Swee-Hoon in the Q&A function from the top.
We'll now move on to our final presentation for today. Doctor Annalese Bolton is currently a project lead and ethics champion within BETA. For the last 20 years, she has worked as a researcher and practitioner, supporting better decision making within forensic psychology areas. She has worked primarily with those interacting with legal systems, including child welfare systems, victims, perpetrators and those who provide services to them. Within BETA, her projects have involved reaching out to victim, survivors of family or domestic violence and other vulnerable cohorts, such as those at risk of digital exclusion. We've heard this morning about some of the considerations that are needed when working at the margins, so to speak, and Annalese is rounding out our session by looking more closely at these considerations and exploring some of the practical and ethical considerations when working in this space. Over to you, Annalese.
Dr Annalese Bolton
Thanks, Jacqui, can you hear me? Thanks, Jacqui. I'm just checking. I can't see you by the way, so you'll have to. OK, thank you. Perfect. Thanks. It's really heartening to see that behavioural insights are being applied to an increasingly wide range of policy areas, including among some of the more sensitive policy initiatives and some of the cohorts that we traditionally haven't looked at in in our BI projects in the past. And the more accurately that we, as BI practitioners can capture the perspectives of these cohorts, the greater the likelihood that our government policies and initiatives will be able to beat their needs. So when working with disadvantaged, disenfranchised or marginalised cohorts, there's a number of ethical and practical considerations that BI practitioners need to take into account. Exploring ways to ensure that we do this type of research well is called a BETA’s mission to improve the lives of all Australians. Now, that being said, there's no single prescriptive way to navigate all of these issues, and what is appropriate in one context may not be appropriate in another. At BETA, we've identified a few broad considerations for BI practitioners and today's presentation we're not going to cover an exhaustive list of all these considerations because it just isn't time, but rather some of the things we'll talk about will reflect the approaches that BETA has either taken or would consider taken and some of the lessons we've learned along the way. So today's presentation is really aimed at helping BI practitioners who want to start working in this area to give them a starting point from which they can start to consider these issues. Now, it's a very large topic, as I said, and we're not going to cover everything. So instead, what we're going to do is we're going to focus today on these 4 topics. So we're going to look at some of the reasons why some cohorts may be hard for researchers to reach. We're going to look at trauma informed principles, we're going to look at methodologies and we're going to talk about how to be participant centred. So there's a whole lot of other topics like picking ethics review committee, managing the different risks, writing distress protocols and supporting your staff to minimise the risk of vicarious trauma. All these topics are really important. We just don't have time, but we are thinking of writing a blog post that covers some of the issues we talked today, as well as some of these other important topics that we think would be useful for BI practitioners to be aware of.
So first, we're going to consider some of the reasons why you may find these cohorts hard to reach. These reasons include that marginalised cohorts can have low base rates. It might be that engagement in their research is just not a priority for them. And that they may have experienced their past experiences may have led them to feel a general sense of distrust. By low base rate, I mean that your target cohort or those eligible to participate in your research may represent a small number of people spread among a much large population. To find and recruit these participants, research approaches may require large scale oversampling. For example, if you wanted to conduct research with a target cohort that represents only 5% of the national population, you may need to reach out to about 5000 people in the general population just to find 250 people that are eligible. There are companies that provide access to research participants and these companies can collaborate if necessary to provide access to enough participants if your target population base rates are very low. This generally comes in an extra financial cost and you will need to check that the provider has a plan to ensure that participants were registered with multiple panel providers don't complete your research activity multiple times through different providers. Another approach is to recruit through organisations. If you take this approach, you'll need to think carefully about whether this makes for a representative sample of the group that you're trying to say something about.
Another reason why marginalised cohorts can be hard to reach is that many have even more pressures competing for their time, energy, and resources than the general population does. Therefore, for these cohorts, it's particularly crucial that you make it as easy and quick, like Professor Swain Home was saying, for them to engage in your research project. For instance, consider recruiting the touch points that your target cohort already has with government or other services. For example, in a recent evaluation project that we ran at BETA for a pulse initiative that was targeted at a digitally excluded cohort, we ran a phone survey immediately after they engaged in the service. And we also booked them in right then and there for a follow up phone survey where we called them at a time and date that the participant had asked us to call them. Also consider asking a minimal number of questions. This is often referred to as a pulse survey. But just a short note. Designing a short survey that captures the breadth of valid information required for your project to add significant value can be far more time consuming the designing lengthy questionnaires. If you can only ask a few questions of your target cohort, then you want to ensure that they are essential ones. But sorting out the essential questions from a range of otherwise very valuable questions can be very challenging, particularly when emotions can get high when you're working with vulnerable cohorts. So our suggestion is to allow a lot of extra time upfront to identify a clear research gap. Make sure that the questions you're asking haven't already been answered from previous research. Also, you need time to identify ways to find the best way to reduce the friction and impost and make it as easy as possible for your participants to engage. And you also want extra time for stakeholder consultation and agreement, as well as for sensitive stakeholder relationship management.
Another reason why researchers can find marginalised cohorts hard to reach is that these cohorts often have a reason to distrust others, particularly by those in authority such as government and officials and researchers, of which many of the practitioners here are both, or at least are working with governments or large scale initiatives. The needs of these cohorts often have been overlooked or dismissed and therefore they can be very attuned and even expect to be treated poorly by authority figures. What this means is that as researchers, you will need to engage in substantial efforts to establish genuine trust. This requires that you behave with integrity, transparency, sensitivity, and respect in all aspects of the project from the very beginning to the very end. Now, this means that if you're in the APS, you should be abiding by the APS values. And also as researchers, we should always abide by the National Statement of Ethical Conduct in human Research in everything you do. And if you're not familiar with the National Statement, you should get familiar. There's also some really specific links to certain populations that is really helpful for you to be familiar with. Now you can begin developing trust by engaging in various activities such as co-design and genuine stakeholder involvement or partnering with a trusted intermediary organisation. It's really important to avoid any tokenistic involvement of stakeholders, especially those with lived experience.
And finally, use trauma informed principles to guide your approach. By incorporating trauma informed principles into your work can be incredibly useful. So trauma informed approach requires you to first develop an understanding of how any likely trauma that your cohort has experienced may typically impact their functioning and their core beliefs about themselves, others and the world around them. Next, this approach requires you to view any interaction that you have with your cohort through the lens in which your target cohort are likely to perceive you, your research activity, and the policy initiative that you're exploring. And by trauma, I'm referring to any frightening or distressing event that may result in psychological harm. This can include a wide range of things such as violence, emotional or psychological abuse from others, especially those in authority, racism, coercive control, witnessing violence and so on. Now it's sadly common that individuals from disenfranchised, disadvantaged and marginalised cohorts have often experienced chronic and systematic traumas and can often experience multiple different types of traumas as well.
Although there is no universally accepted trauma informed approach, there are here six well recognised general principles for working in a trauma informed way that can be adapted to most circumstances. The first principle is to promote both physical and emotional safety. The second is to be transparent, consistent and respectful and to maintain appropriate boundaries. Third it is recognising that you need to recognise the importance of your target cohorts peers. Fourth share power and decision making and reduce power differences. Fifth to empower people, respect their choices and build on their strengths and experiences. Recognise that their experiences may have reduced their voice and choice. And finally, be responsive to the needs of individuals and recognise individual differences. These principles have already been adapted for a range of situations and trauma types, so early in your research, check to see if there are trauma informed principles specifically adapted for your activity and target cohort. But if not, the six general principles are a great starting point.
The methodology for projects involving disadvantaged, disenfranchised and marginalised cohorts will likely require a more flexible and creative approach than the methodologies used in traditional BI projects. And again, there's no single universally effective approach. What works in one project may not work in another, even if the projects are inherently similar. So projects involving these cohorts require BI units to adopt a comprehensive, coordinated, multi-pronged approach involving many strategies across all stages of the research project. And as is always the case, the strategies you adopt needs to be designed and specifically tailored according to your target cohort, context, specific project and the research questions that you're asking. If you want to broaden your ideas for different types of methodologies that are appropriate with work when working with marginalised cohorts, then Bonevski and colleagues’ 2014 systematic review may be of interest to you. They identify and compare the effectiveness of various different strategies to engage socially disadvantaged cohorts, and although they examine the strategies particularly in the health and medical research, many of the strategies they discuss are relevant or can be readily modified for research within the policy context. For example, they discussed the effectiveness of the tailored strategies to improve sampling, recruitment and consent, response rates, data collection and measurement, intervention participation and fidelity, and also the retention of participants. We recommend that when designing your methodology, you think very carefully about your recruitment strategies. For example, participant recruitment panels may only pick up the easier to reach members of your target cohort. If you only include the easier to reach participants, you may end up with a biased representation of your target cohorts needs and perspectives. A great place to start thinking about your approach is to identify similar high quality projects involving your target cohort as conducted by other BI units, government researchers, academics, and even the broader policy review projects that involve consultation with members of your target cohort for similar issues. Identify what worked well and what did not. Reach out to those involved in this previous work and discuss the effectiveness of the approach and the lessons that they learned. Would they do anything differently if they had to do it again? Plan for extended time frames and higher resourcing costs than you normally would. Building a financial and time frame buffers in case you need to pivot your recruitment or retention strategies if they're not working effectively. Ensure that all stakeholders are aware of these contingency plans from the outset and keep everyone updated as soon as contingency plans look like they may need to be activated. This definitely helped us in a recent project where we had to pivot because our initial recruitment strategy wasn't working as effectively as we hoped. And so having a financial contingency fund to draw from was really crucial in enabling this to happen. Build flexibility into your research procedures to allow your participants to have choice and control to ensure their needs are accounted for. For example, if your project involves interviews, allow your participants to choose whether they want face to face or an online interview. Let them choose the location of the interview where they feel safe. Choose an interview moderator from among a selection - allow them to choose an interview moderator from among a selection of different moderators with varying demographic profiles, such as female, male, or from within or outside of their cohort. And choose appropriately skilled moderators who are open to working flexibly, such as those outs who are willing to work outside normal work hours or across different locations. Think creatively about the type of compensation that you provide to your participants. Actually ask your target cohort, community leaders or peak organisations what type of compensation would be most helpful for supporting their engagement. Consider broader compensation types like providing child mining services to allow and to enable participation or transport to and from your research location. As public servants, we also for the public servants, we also need to ensure that any compensation that we provide cannot be used to purchase alcohol or other illicit material. And you can - we can do this by putting restrictions on things like gift cards.
Co-design methodologies, where researchers work with members of their target cohort to design their research approach, materials and output are becoming increasingly popular and when done well, they're a great way to ensure the research projects are run and produce output that is aligned with your target cohorts, needs and perspectives. Increasingly, researchers are asking how do we do co-design well? And as with trauma informed principles and all the other principles, there is no universally accepted way to engage in co-design. However, co-design has been occurring long enough for us to glean some lessons learned. For example, Suomi and colleagues from ANU, in partnership with the Black Dog Institute, came up with a framework for co-design and they first of all recommend to think really broadly about your stakeholders that you choose to involve in co-design. They also encourage you to think about the various stages of research. Each stage of the research process offers opportunities for stakeholder involvement, such as deciding what to do, what research to do, how to do it, running the study, interpreting the data, making recommendations, and letting people know the results. Another thing to consider is what is the appropriate level of involvement in your project? Involvement is often represented along with continuum. Tokenistic involvement often only involves consultation and advice, whereas in contrast, more meaningful participation can involve joint planning and the delegation of certain responsibilities and control that allows participants to feel involved and listened to. Suomi and her colleagues also identified a number of practical tips and this includes supporting engagement success. That means engagement needs to be appropriate. You don't want to set people up to fail. So consider the match between the skills of your researchers offering the engagement opportunity and the skills of the target cohort that you want to engage in. Your co-design engagement should be central to your design, building plenty of time, resources for engagement and ensure that all people involved are reimbursed. Also document your own assumptions about engagement, what you want from the process, boundaries of things that can be and cannot be altered, and the areas of flexibility. Discuss the expectations of those who you are engaging and invest time to ensure that you've reached a shared understanding and document this. Also, be prepared to negotiate to ensure that you use the feedback provided. Essentially, don't ask for input if you're unwilling to use their feedback and recommendations. In addition, we think it's really important that you incorporate as many of your target cohorts voices as possible. You don't want to place a single person with lived experience in the position of having to represent the views of their entire cohort because that would be a lot of pressure after just one person. So consider multiple avenues to increase the number of voices in your project. There are different ways that you can do this. First is to complete a thorough literature review before you begin. Do not put your target cohort through the burden of talking about sensitive topics if this information can be gathered another way or if they've already provided it somewhere else. Include people with lived experience in your research team. And also think about how you can include your cohort’s voices into your governance procedures. And by this we mean include them in the persons or groups who are making key decisions about your project. And this might be things like involving them in steering committees. There are many lived experience panels in Australia that can help to support appropriate engagement and access to your research. And last but not least, test your appropriateness of your research with your members of your target cohort. For example, in a recent survey with victim survivors of family domestic violence, we included a questionnaire to explore their participation in experience. And increasingly, there are various measures that you can add into your research to do this as well. And by running a pilot, it means that you can then quickly pivot and incorporate their views before you launch your full study.
So in summary, we think it's really important that you consider whether your cohort may be why your cohort may be hard to reach and then consider things like base rates, engagement and high levels of distrust. We also think trauma informed principles can be readily adapted to any circumstances and any project you are running and could be useful for guiding your research approach. It's also important to consider a broader range of methodologies than a traditionally used in BI projects and also align your project approach, materials and output with your target cohorts, needs and perspectives by incorporating their voices into the process and as many voices as possible. So research with marginalised cohorts deserves to be done well. It should not be tokenistic and nor should it just skim the easy to reach members even when time frames and budgets are tight. If an intervention we are designing will disproportionately impact particular cohort, we should make every effort to ensure that what we are doing will make a difference for the people who might need it most.
I hope that some of the topics discussed today can serve as a starting point for any BI practitioners wanting to conduct work on more sensitive policy and issues. So thank you and back to you Jacqui.
Dr Jacqui Brewer
Thank you Annalese. There's certainly a lot to consider, and by sharing resources and our experiences, we hope it will assist BI practitioners working in these areas. So that brings us to the end of the talks today. We now have some time to ask our presenters some questions. Thank you for all of the great questions or comments you've sent in the Q&A today. Feel free to keep adding to those. We will have just a few minutes for questions. So unfortunately, we won't be able to get to them all, but we will post contact details if you'd like to follow up with presenters. Perhaps we'll start with you, Lindsey. A question that came through the Q&A was to ask if you could share an example from your work where policy relevant insights have emerged by acknowledging and integrating multiple ways of knowing and also how are reconciliation practices implemented to ensure authentic outcomes from these intellectual interactions? Thanks, Lindsay.
Lindsey Horne
Asking the big questions, I love it. I'll break that. It sounds like there's two questions in there. So, so the first part first, so examples where policy relevant insights have come through from integrating multiple ways of knowing. So just a reminder Sport NZ I would say they're not really a policy shop. So they're more at the interface. And so I guess the first part of the implementation in the first instance, given that this work is pretty fresh, we only completed it a couple of months ago. So I guess first cab off the rank was really around that Active NZ survey and the recommendations around not just how they the questions in the survey that we shared, but also their engagement and actually getting people to answer the survey and particularly Maori. So there was definitely a lot of insights around how you can actually engage Maori to get those insights as well. So that's not quite policy settings, but. The Active NZ survey informs those policy settings. So that was the first kind of like horizon one. And then off the back of it, we're hoping that the policy will come from that. And in the context of Sport New Zealand, their policy settings are who they partner with and who they fund. So off the back of those results and further integration of Maori, we're hoping that that's the policy settings that we will see change as a result. But a different example to answer that is we do some work with ACC, which is our accident and compensation fund. And where we've seen policy settings really change as a result of working with Maori and understanding Maori in greater detail is actually looking at what they fund as healthcare and accident compensation. And we've seen huge changes here in Aotearoa New Zealand as a result of that since they started funding Rongoā which is traditional Maori healthcare. So things like Mirimiri which is like traditional massage and different Maori health practices. So that's an example of where we've seen organisations really take on an indigenous world view and directly affect what they're funding in their policy settings. So it's the first part.
The second one is how were reconciliation practices implemented to ensure authentic outcomes and from these intellectual interactions. And I guess we would see reconciliation practices at two levels. The first is at that kind of systemic level and actually honouring Te Tiriti and our Treaty of Waitangi and the full reconciliation process of colonisation in Aotearoa. And we're really lucky that Sport New Zealand has that built into their strategy. They are there to serve all New Zealanders, including Tangata Whenua and our Maori population. So we're really lucky that that was built into their strategy and they wanted to understand Maori and they wanted to uphold that. And they have that across the organisation, but also specialist functions within Sport New Zealand to make sure they are upholding Te Tiriti. It can always be improved, but the foundations are kind of set there. And then I guess at the more kind of research level around reconciliation for us, especially in the qualitative space, it's making sure that people feel comfortable that they can share their share their experience and share what's going on for them. And that's where Gai and her team really work their magic around what we call Manaakitanga, which is around reciprocity and making sure people feel really safe and comfortable. And we've built a whole lot of practices around that where they can do it in a place where they feel comfortable, like in their home, their Whānau or their family can be there. Gai and her team recognise that Kai or food is really important. So often we'll rock up with tea and biscuits and a big part of it is also a reciprocity. So making sure that we've feedback the results afterwards as well so that it doesn't just feel like they're getting big, providing all this insight and then it's just crickets or tumbleweeds afterwards and they don't hear anything back. We often share the findings with them to kind of close that loop. So hopefully I've answered that. I don't know, Gai, if you want to add anything to that one.
Gai Bishop
Well, thank you very much. Just very, very quickly that it needs to be noted that TRA was part of the COVID plan across the whole 2 1/2 years. And I was leading the research that was taking place for Maori only. And there was a significant shift when the funding moved to Maori exclusively for Maori outcomes in that particular time for the vaccination processes at which they were very, very successful in both catching up and getting ahead of the general populations rates. So yes, we can take a little bit of a pat on the back for that too, I must say, for those same purposes. So if you're finished, Lindsey, do you want me to just be like do a couple of sentences for my question? Is there time for that, Jacqui?
So this was about whether I felt and thought from the outcomes of the Sport New Zealand piece of work that a separate survey would be best. And in a couple of ways not so. It isn't wasn't my first thoughts and still is. Not. Because the power of that longitudinal study in a whole lot of other places is something that Maori have to be part of. And because transformation is a major platform for Maori's way to view the way forward to the future, then staying in there to influence how that happens and what is included within it is vitally, vitally important. But this is not to say that those Maori activators who are working in the in digital data sovereignty arena will not be working extremely hard to ensure that there are Maori only pieces of major policy research being done for Maori. So it's the by with and for. We do that in two ways with the general population, but also for ourselves it's totally different. And thank you for the opportunity to answer those.
Dr Jacqui Brewer
Thanks so much, Gai, and thank you, Lindsey as well for your answers. I saw questions coming through for Swee-Hoon and Annalese as well. Unfortunately, we're a little tight on time, so, but please keep those conversations going offline. And thank you very much for everyone for joining us today and for your engagement. Thank you so much to our presenters. I'd now like to introduce Susan Calvert. She's the Managing Director of BTEA and to reflect on the sessions and what might be coming next. Thank you, Susan.
Susan Calvert
Thanks Jacqui. I'd like to start by thanking all our wonderful and generous presenters from right across the three BI Connect sessions this year. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge, your research methods and behavioural insights with us. It has been so inspiring to hear about your impressive projects and really encouraging to have such strong engagement from our participants. With over 1800 people registering for this year's BETA conference, our Australian BI community certainly is growing. As our Secretary Professor Glyn Davis said when he opened BI Connect this year, it's hard to think of many policy areas where a better understanding of human behaviour is not a good thing. The ability to understand how people interact with policy and programs is important to ensure we deliver sound advice to the government and that we best serve the Australian people. He's a very wise man our Secretary. So a highlight for me from this conference was listening to our speakers in the first session talk about new AI tools, the system mapping approaches and the mega studies. I realise that the future of BI in Australia is already here and BETA is very eager to test these and other innovative approaches. I also really enjoyed the second concession on financial well-being and the ways behavioural science can help make things easier and reduce the burdens for Australians experiencing cost of living pressures right now. And today it was fabulous. Thank you everyone. We've really enjoyed exploring how behavioural scientists are working to better understand hard to reach cohorts and improve the design of policies and government services. Working with these members of our community. A really a common theme that seemed to come across the sessions and particularly today for policymakers, is where you can change the world to suit the people rather than change people to suit the world. That really came out strongly in Bethany Jones's presentation in the second session and also today Swee-Hoon and other presenters as well. So thank you so much for that great common theme and message for government. I hope the sessions have sparked some ideas and inspired you as much as they have us.
So putting on a conference like this takes a lot of work behind the scenes, and I just want to acknowledge the BETA people who've been involved in making this work so seamlessly. Andrei Turenko, Julia Hinsliff, Lindsey Cuthbertson, Loren Willis and Abi Chan thank you so much for your hard work. The team will be uploading the video recording of the conference to our website in December, so you can watch any sessions that you missed and catch the key points again. And finally, I invite you to get in touch with BETA. You can see our e-mail address on the screen. And whether it's to share your work, make connections, provide feedback, or ask for support, we would love to hear from you. And you can also subscribe to our newsletter via the link on our website to stay up to date with our research reports and other BETA events. So thank you once again to all of you for joining us for BI Connect for 2024. BETA wishes you all the best for the holiday season and we really look forward to working with you next year. Thank you so much, Jacqui.
Dr Jacqui Brewer
Thank you, Susan. As Susan mentioned, a recording of today's session will be on our website soon, and we'll also be sending out a survey later today to get your feedback on this session. Thank you all for joining us today. We wish you a lovely holiday break and we'll see you in the new year. Bye.
Lindsey Horne
With a background in neuroscience and applied behavioural science, Lindsey works across complex behaviour change challenges with a passion for transport, energy and climate change. Her approach to behaviour change is holistic, from broader cultural and social change through to behavioural economics and nudges.
Gai Bishop
Gai is a highly experienced researcher, advisor and project manager within the public sector. She has interviewed and advised on vaccination uptake for Māori for the Ministry of Health, financial education for Rangatahi for Te Arahunga Ora, and in ensuring an equity point of view in preventable accidents for ACC. She is an active member of the Māori Women’s Welfare League.
Professor Swee-Hoon Chuah
Swee-Hoon Chuah is a Professor of Behavioural Economics at the University of Tasmania (UTAS), where she is the founding Director of the Tasmanian Behavioural Lab. She holds a PhD in behavioural and experimental economics from the University of Nottingham, U.K. Her research expertise lies in cross-cultural behavioural economics, in particular the impact of cultural factors such as ethnicity, religion and social identity on socio-economic behaviour.
Dr Annalese Bolton
Annalese is currently a project lead and ethics champion within BETA. For the last 20 years, she has worked as a researcher and practitioner supporting better decision-making within forensic psychology areas, and has a Masters degree and PhD in this space. She has worked primarily with those interacting with legal systems, such as those involved in the child welfare system, victims, perpetrators, and those who provide services to them.