Other research
I have been involved in loads of different research that is useful for understanding health behaviour change.
This includes developing tools to measure changes in behaviour, developing theory based interventions, talking to healthcare professionals about their use of behaviour change interventions and talking to patients about their experience of changing their behaviour.
Measures
December 6th, 2018
It’s important to be able to measure behaviour and outcomes accurately.
I’ve looked at the effectiveness of existing measures and tried to develop new measures.
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I've tested the sensitivity of measures (i.e., can they detect change where change is expected) and their accuracy (i.e., do they accurately measure what they are supposed to measure). I've also helped develop new measures for socially sensitive behaviours.
Developing interventions
December 6th, 2018
Designing interventions is an important part of changing behaviour.
It’s also important for research as we need control tasks that are equivalent to the intervention tasks.
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I have designed self-affirmation interventions that help people deal with threats (e.g., relevant health risk information), that help people make plans to turn their good intentions into actual behaviour change and complex behaviour change interventions that help people change lots of different behaviours using lots of different techniques.
Health care professionals
November 13, 2018
This area of research looks at interventions delivered by healthcare professionals.
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Healthcare professionals are well placed to deliver health interventions as they are regarded as a respected source of health information and they have regular contact with a lot of their patients.
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I look at the delivery of brief opportunistic healthcare professional delivered interventions (i.e., the UK's Making Every Contact Count initiative) and complex interventions.
People and patients
November 13, 2018
This strand of research looks at the experience of people and patients and their thoughts and feelings regarding health.
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I have looked at the experience of the weight management of bariatric surgery patients, the type of words cancer patients use to describe their illness, how people with psychosis understand inactivity, and how children understand health.