Facilitator competencies for the effective facilitation of patient groups in weight management settings

Director of Studies: Professor Mark Tarrant
2nd Supervisor: Professor Jonathan Pinkney 

Applications are invited for a three-year PhD studentship. The studentship will start on 01 October 2024.
 

Healthcare providers increasingly utilise group formats to deliver behaviour change interventions but there is little guidance on how such interventions should be designed or delivered in order to produce change in the recipients. Recent research, drawing on the social identity approach to health (SIAH) and the social identity model of behaviour change (SIM:BC), has started to document the key group processes that emerge when patients come together in group settings, and which relate to behavioural outcomes of intervention. This work suggests a critical role for group facilitators in creating group environments conducive to the development of shared social identity amongst members of patient groups, and signals a need for a systematic focus on developing facilitation skills for effective group management. This multimethod PhD will explore the complex relationships between facilitator actions and group functioning in order to generate evidence-based facilitation strategies that healthcare professionals can employ in their practice to optimise the outcomes of group-based behaviour change interventions and develop tools to support the evaluation of these.

The PhD will involve evidence synthesis, qualitative methods (e.g., interviews) and analysis of primary and secondary data and the ideal candidate will therefore have some training in these methods. The successful student will benefit from engagement with an ongoing programme of NIHR-funded research on severe obesity (https://theprogroupstudy.co.uk), and other programmes as appropriate, including for data linkage and secondary analysis, stakeholder input, and potentially access to (previous) trial participants for purposes of new data generation. 

 

Applicants should have a first or upper second class honours degree in an appropriate subject or a relevant masters qualification.

If your first language is not English, you will need to meet the minimum English requirements for the programme, IELTS Academic score of 6.5 (with no less than 5.5 in each component test area) or equivalent. 

The studentship is supported for three years and includes full tuition fees plus a stipend of £18,655 (2024/25 rate) per annum.

NB: The studentship is supported for three years and it is expected that the thesis will be completed within this period. The registration period will be four years to allow for additional writing up time, as needed; however, the fourth year will be unfunded.

If you wish to discuss this project further informally, please contact Professor Mark Tarrant.

Please see a list of supporting documents to upload with your application. Note that a research proposal is not required as this is a project-based studentship.

For more information on the admissions process generally, please visit our apply for a postgraduate research programme webpage or contact the Doctoral College at research.degree.admissions@plymouth.ac.uk. Applications will not be considered if information is missing.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for interview which is expected to take place in week commencing 19 August 2024. We regret that we may not be able to respond to all applications. Applicants who have not received a response within six weeks of the closing date should consider their application has been unsuccessful on this occasion.