The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) invites you to participate in a short survey about your
interaction with the ARDC and use of our national research infrastructure and services. The survey will take
approximately 5 minutes and is anonymous. It’s open to anyone who uses our digital research infrastructure
services including Reasearch Link Australia.
We will use the information you provide to improve the national research infrastructure and services we
deliver and to report on user satisfaction to the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research
Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) program.
Please take a few minutes to provide your input. The survey closes COB Friday 29 May 2026.
Complete the 5 min survey now by clicking on the link below.
Investigating the health benefits of volunteering by seniors. For humanitarian and economic reasons, it is important to promote health-enhancing behaviours among older people to optimise their well-being. Volunteering constitutes one such behaviour. While there is some evidence that older people benefit from volunteering, there is inadequate data for policy development purposes. This project will quantify the physical and mental outcomes of seniors’ engagement in volunteering activities to asses ....Investigating the health benefits of volunteering by seniors. For humanitarian and economic reasons, it is important to promote health-enhancing behaviours among older people to optimise their well-being. Volunteering constitutes one such behaviour. While there is some evidence that older people benefit from volunteering, there is inadequate data for policy development purposes. This project will quantify the physical and mental outcomes of seniors’ engagement in volunteering activities to assess the potential to enhance their health while providing much-needed labour inputs to the Australian economy. The results will also suggest ways to encourage older people to engage in volunteering by identifying effective ways to communicate the benefits to this audience.Read moreRead less
A mental health "thermometer" to monitor and prevent adverse treatment outcomes and self-harm among psychiatric inpatients. Our project stands to prevent adverse outcomes in psychiatric patients. An estimated 660 000 people are admitted to psychiatric hospitals each year; 99 000 of these people are worse off following treatment (assuming a deterioration rate of 15 per cent). Since monitoring can halve that rate, if this project can halve the deterioration rate again, then 24 750 inpatients acr ....A mental health "thermometer" to monitor and prevent adverse treatment outcomes and self-harm among psychiatric inpatients. Our project stands to prevent adverse outcomes in psychiatric patients. An estimated 660 000 people are admitted to psychiatric hospitals each year; 99 000 of these people are worse off following treatment (assuming a deterioration rate of 15 per cent). Since monitoring can halve that rate, if this project can halve the deterioration rate again, then 24 750 inpatients across the nation would not be worse off after treatment representing an annual saving of nearly $19.2 million per annum and reduce the number of patients who fall into a cycle of admission and readmission. Further, although suicide occurs in less than one per cent of admissions, if this research is able to predict and then reduce the suicide rate by as little as 10 per cent, then 660 lives can be saved each year.Read moreRead less
Public health approach to child abuse and neglect: antecedents, outcomes and international comparisons of trends. Child maltreatment is a significant public health issue. Findings will identify characteristics of at-risk children, families and communities; mental health and juvenile justice outcomes. Findings will be used to develop policy recommendations for intervention and prevention strategies to reduce vulnerability and improve monitoring of maltreatment.
The NSW child development study. Research shows that a child's development predicts health and social outcomes later in life. This Australian project will be the first to identify risk and protective factors associated with these outcomes in 87,000 children from birth to 10 years. The results will help inform governments to improve our children's health and educational achievements.
Enhancing adolescent mental health through positive education. Positive education is a preventative, strengths-based approach to address the mental health needs of young people in schools. This project will use innovative methods to examine the contribution of positive education to adolescent mental health, and to social and learning outcomes; and will also guide effective and widespread dissemination of positive education, more generally.
The cognitive basis of resilience. This project aims to test whether resilience to bad events can be influenced by modifying information processing factors. High resilience reflects the ability to sustain adaptive psychological functioning in the wake of bad events, and affects physical, emotional, social, and economic wellbeing. The project will test the hypothesis that biases in attention and implicational inferencing at differing stages of event processing affect wellbeing. It will use cognit ....The cognitive basis of resilience. This project aims to test whether resilience to bad events can be influenced by modifying information processing factors. High resilience reflects the ability to sustain adaptive psychological functioning in the wake of bad events, and affects physical, emotional, social, and economic wellbeing. The project will test the hypothesis that biases in attention and implicational inferencing at differing stages of event processing affect wellbeing. It will use cognitive methodologies that sensitively assess and manipulate biases, thereby revealing their causal role in the determination of resilience. The findings are expected to directly contribute to national efforts to build healthy and resilient communities.Read moreRead less
Attentional bias, attentional control, and anxiety vulnerability: A test of alternative hypotheses concerning their functional relationship. Elevated anxiety vulnerability (AV) is characterised by two attentional anomalies; an attentional bias to threat (ABT), and impaired attentional control (IAC). These have been the foci of separate lines of investigation. The proposed research will synthesise these disparate lines of inquiry, to significantly progress both in important ways. Innovative parad ....Attentional bias, attentional control, and anxiety vulnerability: A test of alternative hypotheses concerning their functional relationship. Elevated anxiety vulnerability (AV) is characterised by two attentional anomalies; an attentional bias to threat (ABT), and impaired attentional control (IAC). These have been the foci of separate lines of investigation. The proposed research will synthesise these disparate lines of inquiry, to significantly progress both in important ways. Innovative paradigms will be developed to determine the functional relationship between ABT and IAC, and illuminate the nature of their associations with AV. In addition to advancing theoretical understanding of the attentional underpinnings of AV, this research will evaluate the capacity of new cognitive technologies to ameliorate anxiety vulnerability through modification of its attentional substrate. Read moreRead less
Cognitive mechanisms underlying readiness to acquire elevated anxious temperament. This research project seeks to identify the cognitive mechanisms that are causally implicated in individual differences in the tendency to elevate anxious temperament in response to stressful environments. It will also seek to establish the extent to which these cognitive mechanisms represent the phenotypic expression of genes associated with greater susceptibility to elevate anxious temperament. Research outcomes ....Cognitive mechanisms underlying readiness to acquire elevated anxious temperament. This research project seeks to identify the cognitive mechanisms that are causally implicated in individual differences in the tendency to elevate anxious temperament in response to stressful environments. It will also seek to establish the extent to which these cognitive mechanisms represent the phenotypic expression of genes associated with greater susceptibility to elevate anxious temperament. Research outcomes will serve to inform the question as to why the same types of environmental stressors can serve to produce vastly different effects on emotional vulnerability for different individuals. The procedures developed during this research will also have the potential to reduce the negative emotional consequences of sustained stress.Read moreRead less
The extinction of human fear. Excessive fear negatively impacts the lives of many Australians - so how can we increase the effectiveness of exposure based treatments to reduce human fear? The present basic research will investigate the process thought to underlie exposure-based treatments, extinction of human fear learning, in order to answer this applied question.
A legally-informed intervention for schools to prevent and intervene in cases of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is a growing problem for young people as well as amongst adults in the workplace. This project will develop and trial a legally-informed intervention which will be delivered by young people in order to increase student, parent and teacher knowledge of the law to prevent and manage cyberbullying incidents.