Supervisor(s)
Jessica Barrett (MRC Biostatistics Unit), Eleanor Winpenny (MRC Epidemiology Unit)
Programme(s)
Behavioural Epidemiology and Interventions in Young People
Summary
It is well-known that lifestyle factors can impact health, and that health and unhealthy behaviours tend to cluster together within individuals, but more research is needed to understand patterns and interplay of health-related behaviours such as diet quality, sleep, screen use and activity through the lifecourse. This project will use data from the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study which has followed around 2,000 Australian participants through childhood, adolescence and adulthood, collecting information about lifestyle behaviours and health-related outcomes.
Questions which could be addressed in this PhD project include:
- What is the relationship between diet quality and sleep through the lifecourse? This would extend Dr Winpenny’s research on the short-term impact of sleep on diet.
- Are there clusters of people with similar trajectories of diet quality, sleep, screen use and activity?
- Are there time-points during the lifecourse when changes in health-related behaviours tend to occur? Do these changes differ between different groups of individuals? What can these tell us about the influence of the environment on health behaviours and health outcomes?
These methods will be addressed by applying and extending statistical methods for modelling longitudinal trajectories such as multivariate mixed effects models, latent class mixed models and change-point models.
For more information or informal discussion about this project or similar projects, please contact Dr Eleanor Winpenny – Eleanor.Winpenny@mrc-epid.cam.ac.uk