Counselling and Health Psychology Research Group

The Counselling and Health Psychology Research Group generally conduct research with an applied focus.

Members of counselling team are particularly interested in methodological issues and provide support and input to one another regarding the research process as well as dissemination.

The health psychology team focus their research on health service evaluation and improvement, the understanding the effectiveness of health psychology interventions and the experience of illness and well-being.

The team has a strength and applied expertise in evaluating innovative approaches and policies designed to improve health and well-being in community, work and hospital settings.

Together the health psychology team has combined experience of using a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods including action research, interpretative phenomenological analysis, grounded theory, discourse analysis, randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews.

The Counselling and Health Psychology Research Group is particularly focused on making sure that its research has impact. For example, in the case of Pires-Yfantoudas's work on how to support patients with musculoskeletal conditions through motivational interviewing techniques, her results were disseminated through blogs to widen access to the research findings.

Sykes's research on pregnancy sickness (experienced in approximately 80% of singleton pregnancies) has led her to become a trustee of the Pregnancy Sickness Support Charity, with remits in deciding the charity's research strategy and managing the data that the charity collects.

Willig contributed to the prestigious American Psychological Association (APA) Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology which represents the latest authoritative guide to research methods in counseling psychology.