Winter research projects

Applications for the 2024 Winter Research Program are now closed

General information on the program, including how to apply, is available from the UQ Student Employability Centre’s program website.

Explore 2024 winter research projects:

An investigation into the provision of allied health support for people living with endometriosis

Supervisor Dr Chloe Bryant

This research project aims to understand what support people with endometriosis have received from allied health professionals, as well as what people with endometriosis suggest to improve support provision.The student may be involved in reviewing literature, some writing tasks, article screening processes, and contributing to data analysis.

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Assessing the sexual health and wellbeing of children and adolescents with disability

Supervisor Dr Chloe Byrant

To be able to provide comprehensive sexual health and wellbeing support, health professionals often require valid, reliable and clinically useful assessment tools. These tools enable health professionals to gather important information and help to guide their intervention planning. However there appears to be a major gap in research and practice as it is not well understood what assessment tools are utilised in practice to support the sexual health and wellbeing of children and adolescents living with disability. This research therefore aims to identify existing assessment tools, and to understand how clinically useful, valid and reliable those tools are.

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Beyond Professional Practice: Understanding how students become reflective speech pathologists and lifelong learners

Supervisor Dr Felipe Retamal Walter and Dr Adriana Penman

In this project, you will work closely with the research team to better understand how speech pathology students develop reflective practice and lifelong learning skills. You will help with data analysis and writing of a scholarly paper that includes key themes and findings relevant to speech pathology students and the profession of speech pathology.

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Early language facilitation: What strategies do parents/carers implement when interacting with their children

Supervisor Dr Felipe Retamal Walter

In this project, you will work closely with the research team to identify the range of language facilitation techniques used by parents of young children with language difficulties. Based on your interests, you may be involved in conducting a review of the literature, database searching, study screening, data extraction and analysis, and part of the writing of a scholarly paper. As a result, you will gain unique insight into the area of early speech pathology intervention for families of young children with language difficulty and learn key research skills.

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Evaluation of Interprofessional Practice Simulation within health professional training

Supervisor Dr Freyr Patterson

In this project, you will work closely with the research team to better understand the perceived needs, preferences and experiences of students' who undertook the IPS.You will help with data analysis and writing of a scholarly paper that includes key themes and findings relevant to health professional students. The research will provide insight into students’ experiences and perceptions of the course which may be used to inform future iterations of the curriculum.

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2024 Children’s Motor Control Research Collaboration research scholar position

Supervisor Dr Georgina Clutterbuck

Scholars will work with expert paediatric researchers and industry clinicians to create and evaluate digital resources, service delivery and educational content. Scholars will spend time on up to 4 projects, depending on their interest:
-   Project 1 involves the Evaluation of a physiotherapy-led normal variance clinic at QCH
-   Project 2 involves investigating swimming focused interventions for children with disabilities through a systematic review (online)
-   Project 3 involves the development and evaluation of an education program relating to sports participation for clinicians working with children with disabilities (online)
-   Project 4 involves the evaluation of the implementation of digital teaching materials in paediatric physiotherapy (PHTY3130/7813) (UQ)

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Codesign of an interdisciplinary intervention to support text-messaging for adults with post-stroke aphasia: The SMS study

Development of a needs assessment tool for people with disability wanting to participate in physical activity

Investigating factors that influence the effects of exercise for knee OA: a review of trial design

Supervisor Dr Jonathan Quicke

The research project involves reviewing published randomised controlled trials of exercise for people with knee osteoarthritis to investigate the association between trial design (according to how explanatory or pragmatic they are) and the magnitude of clinical effect (on outcomes of pain and physical function). Narrative synthesis and data visualisation techniques will be used to describe the findings.

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How Runners Stay Injury-Free: A Study Comparing Self-Regulation Strategies to Prevent Running Injuries

Supervisor Dr Manuela Besomi

This project aims to compare the self-regulation processes and factors influencing injury management and prevention in injury prone and injury resilient runners. This study can contribute to the advancement of knowledge of how and why some runners are able to self-manage, self-regulate, and prevent injuries. It involves a mixed-methods design with a quantitative (online survey) and qualitative (interviews) component.

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Outcomes and outcome measures used to assess the efficacy of interventions for male individuals with chronic pelvic pain

Supervisor Dr Marie-Pierre Cyr

This research project will involve the production of a systematic review of randomised trials assessing the efficacy of interventions to treat male individuals with chronic pelvic pain. The study will follow a predefined protocol and involve the screening, data extraction, analysis and manuscript preparation. Results are critical to inform the development of a core outcome set which will be used to improve the meaningfulness of trials to recommend specific interventions.

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CARE-SCI - Co-designing Actionable Recommendations to Enhance support for older adults with Spinal Cord Injury navigating age-specific policy

Supervisor Dr Melanie Hoyle

This project investigates how age-specific policies affect older adults with spinal cord injuries (SCI), comparing government-funded services to insurance-based schemes. Utilizing experience-based co-design and interpretive description, the research aims to design solutions, advocate for change, and improve outcomes for older individuals with SCI.

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Exploring the careers of physiotherapists in Australia

Supervisor Dr Roma Forbes

Physiotherapists in Australia predict relatively short careers, with over half of all new graduates from one Australian university predicting a career of less than ten years. Several reasons have been proposed for such short career intentions from remuneration through to concerns regarding recognition of skills. Much of this research is over ten years old and may not reflect the contemporary practices and experiences of those within the workforce.
In this project you will work closely with the research team who include academics from UQ, Queensland Health and the University of Adelaide to explore the reasons previous physiotherapists in Australia have left the profession. You will help with data, writing and discussing findings with the research team. You will gain interesting insight into the areas that physiotherapists work in and the way they work.

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Transforming person-centred care through meaningful consumer and community involvement in health research

Supervisor Dr Lisa Anemaat

Effective Consumer and Community Involvement (CCI) in research can improve the design, delivery and governance of healthcare services. CCI is increasingly becoming a requirement of national health standards, boards, and research funders. This research seeks to explore new ways to meaningfully embed the involvement of consumers in research. We are co-designing processes to support the inclusion of consumers in critically appraising current best clinical practice within health service settigns (Surgical, Treatment, and Rehabilitation Service - STARS, hospital).

Further details to be added