Two Full-time PhD (via MPhil) studentships are available at Liverpool John Moores University, via the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration North West Coast (ARC NWC). NIHR ARC NWC is one of 15 regional ARCS funded by the NIHR to bring together those needed to support research to improve health and care. Our vision is to address the considerable health inequalities across our region through the collaborative production and implementation of high-quality applied health research in our five themes. Research supported by the ARC NWC must be relevant to the needs of the diverse communities served by the NIHR ARC NWC and its local health and care system, and be generalisable across health and care nationally, as well as within the local health and care system where it is conducted. Our Doctoral Fellows are distributed across the themes and universities and are a crucial part of our Academic Career Development Strategy.
The supervisory teams have a broad range of expertise, and experience in successful supervision to PhD completion. Two from the 11 projects currently advertised will be funded, reference ARC1-11.
1. Development of an industry-specific, evidence-informed toolkit to improve working conditions and lifestyle factors of call agents.
Call agents who operate communication services for contact centres typically live on low incomes and are from deprived areas. In addition to financial stress/insecurity, these workers experience high stress from poor working conditions. These upstream social determinants of health and unique working condition stressors contribute to high attrition and sickness absence. These upstream inequalities also increase call agents’ risk of experiencing disease and dying prematurely, due to socio-economic gradients in physical inactivity, diet, smoking and alcohol consumption, and, excessive sitting being a contributor to risk of chronic diseases. Contact centres are therefore a priority health promotion setting.
Contact centres can improve call agent health by improving their working conditions and lifestyle factors. No-to-little evidence exists however on what policies and interventions contact centres implement to improve working conditions and lifestyle factors, what influences the adoption and implementation of such policies and interventions, and which are effective for improving call agent health and why.
This PhD will use established industry and academic partnerships and public involvement to address these knowledge gaps. The PhD will generate and use evidence relevant to the contact centre context to inform the first industry-specific toolkit to support contact centres to adopt and implement workplace health policies and interventions to improve working conditions and lifestyle factors of call agents. The PhD will use mixed-methods, including online surveys, interviews, focus groups, and the Delphi method. The candidate will require a strong undergraduate degree and preferably have a relevant postgraduate qualification. The candidate will require an interest in workplace health research, understanding of health inequalities, organisational and behaviour change theory, and excellent academic writing and interpersonal skills. Experience in relevant applied research/practice is desirable.
The candidate will be based at RISES in LJMU under the supervision of Dr Graves, Dr Porcellato, and, Dr Morris and Dr Holland (Lancaster University).
Contact details: For informal enquiries or for any further information please contact Dr Lee Graves ([Email Address Removed])
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