Health Behaviours and the Impact of Oriam: Scotland’s Sports Performance Centre

Project Ref: PHDSS1716. This PhD project aims to investigate the impact of Scotland’s National Performance Centre for Sport (Oriam) on the health and wellbeing of Heriot-Watt students, staff, and the wider community. In particular, the project will aim to understand more fully the impact of Oriam’s services and the demographic(s) from which their user groups are drawn. Oriam opened in September 2016, on Heriot-Watt campus in Edinburgh. As well as providing world class facilities for Scottish athletes the centre also houses facilities designed to enhance the health and physical activity of students, staff, and local community. A key priority of Oriam is that it provides world class sports performance training facilities and also has a positive impact on the community. The PhD project will involve analysis of the first year of Oriam user data to provide routes for the subsequent project development by outlining areas for further in-depth data collection, such as qualitative interviews with current user-groups, and surveys of those demographics which have not engaged with the centre. Appropriate sport development interventions will also be conducted to outline suitable pathways towards sustainability for Oriam and ways to reach a wider range of demographics. The key aim is to establish the current impact of Oriam on community health, and determine how to enhance this to encompass long-term impact on as wide a range of demographics as possible. Thus, this exciting project has great scope for impact on community health, society, and sustainability of Oriam as a central feature of the wellbeing of the local community. It will be supervised by UWS staff, Dr Eilidh Macrae, Dr Chris Easton and Dr Julie Clark. The candidate should have experience of mixed methods research and have (or be about to obtain) a Masters or first/upper second class honours degree in a cognate field.