Health Psychology MSc

You will develop your understanding of academic conventions in UK higher education aligned to your level of study, including expectations around critical analysis, structure, argumentation, evidencing, and referencing. The module focuses on developing communication strategies that will help you express your ideas clearly and coherently in written assignments and spoken activities. You will also reflect on your current academic and language skills and develop strategies for development ahead of your assessments.

In this module you will learn that the impact of behaviour on health is one of the key areas of health policy concern in the 21st Century, and that health psychology is at the heart of how the state is trying to get us to live longer, healthier and happier lives. Understanding the theory and practice of health psychology will give you the knowledge and skills to understand and design behaviour change interventions. You will learn that a range of factors contribute to how we behave, and you will look in detail at how health psychology theories have attempted to systematically develop and apply this understanding. In tandem with developing a sound theoretical understanding of health psychology, each week we will couple the theory content with an insight into its practical, real world application. These in-practice sessions will be delivered by health researchers from a broad range of current practice. From them and from our Health Psychology team, you will learn about the practicalities of conducting health research. We will bring to the classroom some recent and on-going intervention studies in areas as diverse as altered eating in head and neck cancer survivorship to how to deal with the health impacts of misinformation. By the end of the module you will have learned how to use health psychology, in theory and in practice, to improve people’s lives.

Some specific topics covered include:

Economic, cultural, social and psychological determinants of behaviour
Key health psychology theories such as the theory of planned behaviour
Theoretical frameworks for developing, describing and evaluating psychosocial interventions
How to put together a grant proposal for funding.
Individual lectures from researchers describing their intervention development work.

You will gain an insight into the inter-individual (e.g. personality, intelligence, illness perceptions) and cultural influences on physical health and wellbeing from a lifespan perspective. Topics will be introduced and discussed in context of psychological and physiological disorders that manifest at different stages of the lifespan (e.g. obesity, dementia, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, sexually transmitted infection etc.).
Theories such as ‘Developmental Origins of Health and Disease’, which implicate early life psychosocial factors as predictors of later life health and wellbeing, will be critically discussed. You will also learn that the pathways from individual and cultural factors to health and illness are complex, and involve a number of mediating and moderating factors.

You will learn about the psychobiological mechanisms that act as pathways between psychological and behavioural factors and physical and psychological health outcomes. Starting with key biological systems, and using examples including stress, sleep and pain, you will explore how these systems interact, and how they can be measured to provide indices for research and clinical indicators of health and disease.
Topics will include:

Biological mechanisms (e.g., nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular and immune) and their interaction
Biopsychosocial models of health and disease
Biological and clinical indicators of health and disease (practical measurement and analytical techniques)
Individual differences in biological activation and disease vulnerability
Interventions and opportunities for modifying mechanisms

This module meets criteria set by the British Psychological Society (BPS) for the core areas of physiological and psychosomatic disease processes and measurement issues. The assessment for this module requires the application of knowledge into real-world practice and will developing your professional skills with regard to communicating with a range of audiences, and thus enhance your graduate attributes for further qualifications and employability.

You will learn how a full systems approach (i.e. from macro influencers such as governments and organisations such as the World Health Organisation through to micro influencers such as individuals’ attitudes and beliefs about their health) can help us understand, and evaluate why differences exist in healthcare practice and policy. You will explore how the concepts of health, illness, sickness and disease are constructed, measured and managed across a range of real world contexts and how decisions made at differing system levels can shape the health and wellbeing of the individual. Topics include:

How diseases, disorders and conditions are defined and prioritised
The descriptive and statistical analysis of health behaviours and disease trends
How health promotion campaigns are created, managed and evaluated under the framework of public health
The impact of family and peers on health behaviours and disease management
The role of individual differences in healthcare encounters and the impact of those encounters on health outcomes

The module is designed to give you a theoretical and practical knowledge of common and more advanced quantitative and qualitative methods of collecting and analysing data in psychology. A range of methods will be studied, and relevant hardware and software will be used in exercises. The communication of findings according to the most recent conventions and with due regard to the audience will be addressed. The approach is to provide a theoretical background for each technique, so that you are not simply capable of carrying out and reporting analyses, but also capable of reflecting critically on their appropriateness in psychological research and practice.

This module is designed to provide you with a range of professional skills important for your academic and professional development in Health, and Sport & Exercise Psychology. It will assist with preparation for your thesis as you learn about advanced bibliographic skills, project proposals, and research management, ethical and legal issues. You will learn employment-related skills, media skills, and personal and career development skills such as communication as well as C.V. enhancement. You will also make practical applications of skills using online resources and employ self-reflective approaches to recording and enhancing awareness of your professional development in Health, and Sport & Exercise Psychology.

In this module, you will be able to independently conceptualise, plan and undertake a novel piece of research that contributes to psychological knowledge and understanding. You will critically evaluate current theories and evidence to generate your own research question. You will use the relevant ethical guidelines to design a feasible project plan. You will develop your independent research skills during this module and identify points of collaboration with supervisors, research staff and other potential stakeholders. You will use a variety of relevant skills, techniques, and research methods to implement your study and finally, you will have the opportunity to disseminate your findings in written form.