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    • Ian Parker
      https://www.ecu.edu.au/__data/assets/image/0006/59424/ian-parker.jpg
    • Ian Parker

      Ian Parker

Ian Parker

Ian Parker

PhD candidate
Faculty of Computing, Health & Science

I work to help keep people healthy and safe

My initial studies in health science focused on health promotion and psychology. After sitting on a Bachelor with First Class Honours degree for several years, my wish to further develop as a person and to seek a new challenge and achievement as we move through the 21st century sparked my interest in further education. I intend to use my PhD studies to gain work as a researcher in public health or a related field. The job prospects will be awesome!

My interests lie in social and market research including public health communication, psychological and behavioural motivations for self-empowerment, primary prevention formulation, and planned and autonomic behavioural intentions. In my Honours thesis, I used a cognitive psychology framework exploring the influence of message framing on death anxiety to investigate aspects of tobacco smoking.

My PhD research project investigates the influence of facial physiognomy on the composition and promotion of an occupational health and safety message. I am excited with the results from my pilot study. Social-cognitive motivations, such as endorser facial physiognomy, are key factors for public health messages and influence behaviours.

I now also work as one of Graduate Research School‘s HDR SOAR Ambassadors. In that role, I can offer other HDR students the benefits of my experience of managing projects, managing large datasets, writing reports and using packages such as SPSS, SAS and NVivo to analyse data, as well as my experience of both working within and managing social and marketing research projects with large databases.

While most of my time is absorbed with university studies and friends, I do enjoy going to ECU’s Sports Centre for a workout and also enjoy mountain biking, hitting the beach, and long-distance running. Who said PhD students don’t have a social life?

Although University is pretty cool, I am networking and looking forward to whatever else comes up along the way. I look forward to many challenges and opportunities in my future, as I work to help to keep people healthy and safe. Given the opportunities that will be presented and the doors that will open to me as a PhD graduate, my ambitions for the remaining of my working life and future career are endless, so watch out!

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