4M lead Dr Gemma Sharp has put forward a funded GW4 BioMed2 MRC Doctoral Training Partnership based at Exeter University in the School of Psychology, within the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, to start in October 2024. This PhD is funded for 4 years full-time, it can also be undertaken part-time (50-80%) over 6-7 years.
“You must be on your period”: using smartphones and wearables to study changes in mental wellbeing throughout the menstrual cycle.
The menstrual cycle can influence mental wellbeing for a variety of biological and psychosocial reasons, but high-quality data are lacking. This is an exciting opportunity to co-produce and trial a cutting-edge smart technology method to collect real-time data on menstrual experiences. You will advance our understanding of the important intersection of the menstrual cycle and mental health and develop skills highly valued in academia and the FemTech industry.
Aims & Objectives
- Co-produce a research protocol to collect ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data on mental wellbeing throughout the menstrual cycle using an existing smartphone app and wearable devices. Co-production will help keep participant burden low and improve engagement to minimize missing data;
- Develop and evaluate an approach to integrate, analyse and visualise EMA data collected using the EMA protocol. Such an approach will involve mixed effects models: a flexible and appropriate method of modelling longitudinal data, with repeated observations over time nested within individuals.
- Recruit a main study sample and use the developed methods to collect EMA data over at least three menstrual cycles, and analyse within and between- individual and cycle variability in mental wellbeing.
The student will be able to choose which aim and objective to focus in on and expand. There will also be the option to select a specific population of interest (e.g. perimenopause, mental health disorder etc.).
Costs associated with the research will be covered by funding available to the supervisory team. The student will in addition have access to a Research Training Support Grant (RTSG) of £2,000 to go towards training and conference attendance. As this PhD is part of the GW4, the student will also have access to training courses at the University of Bristol and Cardiff at no additional cost. As the project is closely aligned with the 4M Consortium’s mission and research area, the student will be involved with 4M’s activities and have access to the network.
The lead supervisor is Dr Gemma Sharp, 4M lead and associate Professor in Reproductive and Mental Health Epidemiology at the University of Exeter. The supervision team also includes Dr Jon Heron, Associate Professor in Medical Statistics based in the Centre for Academic Mental Health within Population Health Sciences at the University of Bristol; Professor Jacky Boivin, Professor in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University, she is a global leader in research at the intersection of reproduction and psychology, and; Dr Jennifer Lay, a Lecturer in the School of Psychology in Exeter, who has extensive experience in using EMA.
Click here for more detail and to apply.
For informal enquiries please contact: g.c.sharp@exeter.ac.uk
Apply by 5:00pm GMT on Wednesday, November 1st 2023.
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