PhD Studentship: Why Do People Support Or Oppose Government Policies? Advancing The Theory Of Policy Acceptability

Closing Date: 1st April 2024(23.59 GMT)

Supervisor: Dr James Reynolds

College: Health and Life Sciences  

Programme Length: Three years

Prospective Start Date: July 2024

Academic year: 2023/4

Applications are invited for a three-year Postgraduate studentship, supported by the College of Health and Life Sciences at Aston University. 

This application is not available to Overseas students.

Financial Support

This studentship includes a fee bursary to cover the home fees rate, plus a maintenance allowance of £18,622 in 2023/4.

Background to the Project 

The current PhD studentship aims to advance the theory of policy acceptability (also known as policy support) which is defined as the public’s attitudes towards the implementation of a particular policy. Many effective government policies that could make meaningful progress towards tackling public health crises or climate change are held back by strong public opposition. The current project is focussed on evaluating and developing theoretical models that aim to provide explanations for why the public support or oppose a specific policy. 

Existing theories in this field (e.g., Grelle & Hofmann, 2023; Stern et al., 1999) make contradictory predictions and offer different explanations for why support or opposition occurs. These explanations include that people hold difference values (Stern et al., 1999), have different degrees of problem awareness (van der Linden et al., 2015), or have different beliefs about policy effectiveness (Reynolds et al., 2018) which affect their policy support. Furthermore, much of the research in this domain is spread across different literatures and testing and updating theoretical models offers a promising way to unify these disparate studies and summarise the current state of the field.

There is an existing plan for this research to be conducted in this PhD however there is also space for the successful candidate to shape the direction in a way which most suits their interests and expertise.

The successful candidate will join an exciting research team consisting of post-doctoral researchers, PhD students, national and international collaborators, and with links to public health practitioners and policy makers. This is a rare and unique opportunity for an ambitious candidate with interests in social psychology, public health and/or climate change to learn from others, develop new and existing skills, and work within an intellectually challenging environment.

Person Specification

Essential skill requirements include:

• The successful applicant should have been awarded, or expect to achieve, a Masters degree in a relevant subject (eg Psychology research methods; Social/political Psychology; Health psychology) with a 60% or higher weighted average
• a First or Upper Second Class Honours degree (or an equivalent qualification from an overseas institution) in Psychology.
• Knowledge/experience of statistics and data analysis packages (e.g., R, SPSS etc)

Desirable skill requirements include:

• Knowledge/experience of the belief and attitude change literature
• Training/experience with systematic reviews
• Knowledge/experience of designing online surveys

Contact information

Enquiries about this project contact Dr James Reynolds by email at [email protected] and are recommended if you are considering an application.

Submitting an application

For full details of the project and how to apply, please click the above “Apply” button.