Temporal trends and determinants of sedentary behaviour: An international perspective (ATKINU19FMH)

How long do you spend sitting each day? For most adults, sitting is the predominant posture of work, travel, or leisure time, so emerging evidence that sitting may be detrimental to health is of great interest to researchers, policy-makers and the general public. To strengthen the evidence and inform policy and practice on this important public health topic, we are offering a fully funded PhD studentship to conduct research on the prevalence, temporal trends and determinants of sedentary behaviour.

Public health guidelines recommend that we limit the amount of time we spend sitting each day, but it’s unclear just how long we currently spend sitting or whether this has changed over time. To reduce sitting, we need to know which groups of people are at highest risk and which parts of the social or physical environment we can modify to enable these people to change. By exploring how behaviour patterns have changed over time and comparing different countries, we can develop new hypotheses on how to change sedentary behaviour and inform policy to reduce the burden on public health.

This PhD project will use existing data from a number of large-scale epidemiological studies, including pan-European data describing sitting time over a 15-year period. Appropriate training will be provided depending on the needs and interests of the successful candidate. Please contact Dr Andrew Atkin ([Email Address Removed]) for further details and to discuss your application.

For more information on the supervisor for this project, please go here: Dr Andrew Atkin: https://people.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/a-atkin
Dr Karen Milton https://people.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/k-milton Professor Andy Jones: https://people.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/a-p-jones
The type of programme: PhD
The start date of the project: 01/10/2019
Mode of Study: Full time
Entry requirements: This project is suitable for someone with a good first degree (at least 2:1) and preferably a Masters in a related topic area, such as epidemiology, public health, physical activity/exercise science, psychology or health science.
The standard minimum entry requirement for the studentship competition is 2:1 (or equivalent)