Staff Member Biography

Alice MacLean

position: Investigator Scientistprogramme: Gender and Health

Contact Details

email:
phone: 0141 357 3949 (switchboard)

Address

MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit
4 Lilybank Gardens
Glasgow G12 8RZ

Biography and Interests

Alice graduated from the University of Glasgow in 2001 with MA (Hons) Geography and Scottish Literature. In 2002, she took up a PhD studentship at the Unit which involved using qualitative methods to investigate gender differences in symptom reporting during childhood and adolescence. On completion of her PhD, Alice joined the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, University of Edinburgh, to work on a qualitative longitudinal project which explored the ways in which employed parents and their primary school-aged children negotiate the demands of work and family over time. This study was part of the ESRC-funded ‘Timescapes’ qualitative longitudinal research initiative involving a consortium of 5 universities based across the UK. Alice started a 12-month secondment at the unit in March 2010, during which she conducted a systematic review of quantitative research on changing gender differences in physical morbidity across childhood and adolescence. In May 2011, Alice returned to the Gender and Health programme as an investigator scientist working on a range of qualitative projects. Alice’s research interests centre on the ways in which help-seeking for illness, lay understandings of illness, and experiences of illness vary and interact with gender over the life course. Most of Alice’s work so far has focussed on conducting qualitative research with children and adolescents.

Publications

Maclean A, Hunt K, Sweeting H. Symptoms of mental health problems: children’s and adolescents’ understanding and implications for gender differences in help-seeking [Epub ahead of print]. Children & Society 2012.

MacLean A, Egan M, Sweeting H, Adamson J, Hunt K. Systematic Review Protocol: How robust is the evidence of an emerging or increasing female excess in morbidity rates between childhood and adolescence? Glasgow: MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, 2011.

open access

MacLean A. Unfamiliar places and other people’s spaces: reflections on the practical challenges of researching families in their homes. In: Jamieson L, Simpson R, Lewis R, eds. Researching families and relationships: reflections on process. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011:56-8.

Harden J, Backett-Millburn K, Hill M, MacLean A. Oh! what a tangled web we weave: Experiences of doing ‘multiple perspectives’ research in families. International Journal for Social Research Methodology 2010; 13:441-52.

MacLean A, Harden J, Backett-Millburn K. Financial trajectories: how parents and children talked about the recession. Twenty-First Century Society 2010; 5:159-70.

MacLean A, Sweeting H, Hunt K. ‘Rules’ for boys, ‘guidelines’ for girls: gender differences in symptom reporting during childhood and adolescence. Social Science & Medicine 2010; 70:597-604.

pubmed

Hilton S, Cameron J, Maclean A, Petticrew M. Observations from behind the bar: changing patrons' behaviours in response to smoke-free legislation in Scotland. BMC Public Health 2008; 8:238.
pubmed open access

MacLean AF. "Rules" for the boys. "Guidelines" for the girls: a qualitative study of the factors influencing gender differences in symptom reporting during childhood and adolescence [PhD]. MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit. Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 2006.