Research project options

Host department

Institute for Sport and Physical Activity Research (ISPAR), Centre for Health, Wellbeing and Behaviour Change & Institute of Applied Social Research

University of Bedfordshire

Supervisors 

Lead supervisor: Prof Angel Chater, Professor of Health Psychology and Behaviour Change 

Supervisory team: 

• Dr Jane Williams, Lecturer in Psychology 
• Seana Friel, Research Fellow 
• Prof Emily Munro, Professor of Social Work Research 
• Associate Prof Erica Cook, Associate Professor in Health Psychology 

Project overview

The Care Leavers, COVID-19 and Transitions from Care study aimed to improve understanding of the impact that the pandemic had upon young peoples’ transitions from care, transition pathways, the support received and overall how the young people fared.  

Every year around 13,000 sixteen to eighteen-year olds in England leave their foster homes or residential care and negotiate the transition to adulthood. They are expected to navigate a number of changes in their lives (setting up home, managing day to day living and their finances and maintaining education, employment or training and their health and wellbeing) at a much younger age than their peers in the general population and without the levels of practical, emotional and financial support that families typically offer their children.  

As an intern on this study, you will have the chance to experience collaborating with the research team on applied study with policy and practice relevance as well as developing skills for your future including analytical, communication and presentation skills.  

Local authority management information system data on the characteristics, reasons for entry to care and in-care histories of over 1300 young people from 10 local authorities were obtained and 60 interviews with young people and professionals were undertaken. The internship will provide an excellent opportunity to analyse quantitative and qualitative data on young people following a specific transition pathway (e.g. young people who return to birth family or young people remaining with foster carers into adulthood ‘extended care’ placements). 

Entry requirements  

Knowledge of SPSS and or NVIVO would be advantageous but not required as training and support will be given to the intern(s). An interest in research would also be most desirable. 

Overview of typical tasks and activities 

• Review key project literature. 

• Review data from information systems to present statistics. 

• Use software to analyse and search for themes among the dataset. 

• Help the team to prepare presentations and report research results. 

The benefits of this project for the student interns include:  

• Experience of collaborating with the research team on an applied study with policy and practice relevance. 

• Developing technical and analytical skills.  

• Communication and presentation skills.

Host department

MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge

Supervisors

Lead supervisor: Dr Petar Raykov

Supervisory team:

• Prof. Richard Henson 

Project overview  

Healthy aging is typically accompanied by cognitive decline in various cognitive functions, with declines being most pronounced on tests of episodic memory. Furthermore, increasing age is associated with increased risk of developing of various neurodegenerative disorders such as dementia. Previous research has shown that older adults have reduced grey and white matter volumes and show differential functional connectivity. Although aging on average is associated with declining cognitive function some individuals seem to be more resilient to this decline.  

Indeed, some individuals have been shown to be able to maintain relatively good cognitive abilities despite experiencing similar deterioration of their brain structure as a consequence of aging. Such individuals are said to have “cognitive reserve”, and multiple lines of research are currently trying to understand what factors may be associated with healthier aging.  

In the current project you will utilise a large (~ 700 people) longitudinal neuroimaging cohort from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) to test whether motherhood is associated with increased cognitive performance and cognitive reserve in old age.  

You will use measures of structural brain integrity (e.g., grey and white matter volume) as well as measures of functional connectivity we have previously related to cognition and examine whether motherhood modulates the relationship between brain health measures and late-life cognition.  

Furthermore, as an intern on this project you will have an opportunity to examining how different life-style factors relate to motherhood, and test whether maternity slows down grey matter deterioration.

Entry requirements  

A background within a field of statistical analysis and human behaviour such as Psychology, Neuroscience, Biology or Sociology would be well suited to this project. Training will be provided to the intern(s) but a knowledge of R would be beneficial. Whilst the internship could be undertaken on a part time basis, full time is desirable. 

Overview of typical tasks and activities   

• Reviewing the relevant literature and analysing already derived measures from the behavioural and neuroimaging data. 
• Running linear regressions on already extracted brain and behavioural measures. 
• Learning how to analyse structural and functional magnetic resonance (MRI) data and run advanced regression models in R.  
• Learn about basics of structural equation modelling, which would be useful for examining longitudinal change.  
• If the student is keen they would be involved in the write up of the project. 
• Attend interdepartmental talks. 
• Attend lab meetings that discuss strengths of both experimental and observational studies.