Intervention for Anxiety

Assignment 1 overview
Assignment 1 includes a 10 minute pre-recorded Video presentation with 2 accompanying PowerPoint slides.
You are asked to choose one paper that has a focus on prevention/intervention for anxiety in childhood and/or adolescence. The paper you choose will form your core argument, and you can draw on other research to support its development. You will need to decide what your key message is for your assignment, and this focus will be captured in your PowerPoint slide.
Choosing your paper
Overview:
Across the module we have started to look at the evidence base to support children and adolescents who were at risk for or diagnosed with anxiety disorders. The essential and recommended readings for each week reflect this. You can choose a paper already on the resource list or one that you have found from your own wider reading. The paper must focus on an intervention for anxiety. In addition, please make sure that your assignment has some reference to the implications for the school environment (e.g., this may already be talked about in the paper or you make the case for this supported by additional research). This recognition could, for example, propose that schools play a critical role in the delivery of prevention and/or intervention for anxiety, or will lead to positive outcomes for indices of school engagement which we know are negatively impacted by anxiety.
When we get to week 6, we will list some examples from the resource list that you may want to use (however, you should be coming across these yourselves already in weeks 1-5 if you are regularly doing the essential reading and doing recommended reading on the lecture topics that have particularly interested you).
You will use your presentation to tell the audience why the paper is significant for the promotion of prevention/intervention in anxiety. Papers can focus on one anxiety disorder, or on prevention/intervention methods.
You will need to outline as part of your context setting (1) the school context as part of the prevention/intervention profile and/or (2) the implications of understanding effective prevention/intervention measures for social and/or academic outcomes in school.
Thinking about your presentation
Structuring your verbal presentation:
In order to support your powerpoint slides/ thesis statement, you are asked to generate a 10 minute verbal presentation. This audio, will be pre-recorded and submitted alongside your powerpoint slides. This presentation will be an academic piece of work that includes a summary of the paper chosen, alongside additional sources, and where you can use these collectively to support the development of argument in your presentation. It should include a third powerpoint slide which will act as a reference section (similarly to any other typical piece of submitted work).
Below is a table with an indicative template that you may find useful to help structure your presentation. We will populate the template based on your seminar reading as part of your assignment preparation in Week 6.
Content examples are also indicated in the template below:
Slide
Focus
Indicative time in minutes
Indicative content
1
Background/ Context setting
2-2.5
This section will capture the rationale for the implementation of the intervention you have chosen.
You should be able to make a clear link to a recognised risk factor that led to the development of the intervention you have chosen to focus on.
As part of this narrative, you may want to draw on one of the theoretical frameworks we have considered and associated evidence, and as a way of proving a clear context to introduce your intervention paper.
1
Thesis statement (and poster)
1
This essay will argue that ........
Your thesis statement will form the core of your argument. You should be able to articulate this statement before you start preparing your presentation.
1
Methods
2-2.5
Capture the main elements of the intervention method.
Typically this section would include:
Participant demographics (including how they were selected)
Key features of the intervention, including the design
The primary and any secondary outcome measures
1 or 2
Results
2-2.5
This section should capture the key findings in the paper.
There should be some level of continuity as you move through the sections. For example, if you introduce the focus of the intervention in the introduction and/or an outcome measure in the method, then the viewer will expect to see detail relating to this variable in the results.
2
Implications for further intervention research
2.5-3.5
This section will summarise the key results and link them for the viewer to your thesis statement. You may want to reflect back on key theoretical points you raised in your introduction.
In this section you can outline any limitations of the study.
You can use this critical analysis to suggest how further studies will enable researchers and clinicans to extend or develop the intervention method further to inform prevention or intervention methods that benefit children and adolescents who have developed an anxiety disorder, or who are at increased risk (i.e., have been exposed to a risk factor), or who you want to protect from being exposed to a risk factor. Remember this should be discussed in the context of education.