A research position funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Diet and health research industry club will be available in the School of Medicine from late January 2016.  The position is part of a collaboration with colleagues in Psychology and Public Health at the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield. The funding relates to a project investigating environmental cues to acquire healthy portion control in children adolescents and their families. Consumption of large portion sizes of energy dense food is known to facilitate over-consumption, and large portion sizes of energy dense food may contribute to the increased prevalence of overweight and obesity. The overall aim of the project is to better understand the portion size effect in infants, pre-schoolers, adolescents and households. This knowledge will be used to develop and test simple interventions to promote healthy portion control by age and stage of development.

You will work closely with Dr Jo Cecil (Population and Behavioural Health Sciences) re planning and conducting quantitative research in work package 2: Downsizing meal items in the pre-school using variety, repeated exposure and learning to acquire portion control.  This part of the project will develop and implement stepwise interventions to investigate the effect of reducing portion size of high energy dense foods on self-served amounts of high energy dense and low energy dense foods, and how increasing variety and palatability can facilitate downsizing effects.  You will be jointly responsible for the recruitment of pre-school children, collecting and inputting data and assisting with the analysis and preparation of the findings for publication.  The successful candidate is expected to have a background in an area of relevance to ingestive behaviour or obesity research (psychology, human nutrition) and relevant experience in human intervention studies involving children or adolescents is desirable. 

You will be able to demonstrate excellent communication, negotiation, organisation skills and the ability to work as part of a team. 

The post is available for 18 months, starting as soon as possible.  The hours of work will be 36.25 per week.

Informal enquiries about this post can be made to Dr Jo Cecil, email: jc100@st-and.ac.uk. 

The University of St Andrews is committed to promoting equality of opportunity for all, which is further demonstrated through its working on the Gender and Race Equality Charters and being awarded the Athena SWAN award for women in science, HR Excellence in Research Award and the LGBT Charter;  http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/hr/edi/diversityawards/. 

Please quote ref:  AR1724SB

Closing Date:  5 January 2016
 
Further Particulars:  AR1724SB FPs.pdf

School of Medicine
Salary: £25,769 per annum
Start: As soon as possible
Fixed term for 18 months