Background: Psychology, Public Health, or Closely Related Discipline
Location: Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Group: Sexuality and Interpersonal Relationships Research Group (Lead by Gert Martin Hald) Duration of position: 2 years (with possible extension) Salary & benefits: Approx. 38,000 dkk per month + 17.1% pension, salary commensurate with experience.
Non-Danish and Danish applicants may be eligible for tax reductions, if they hold a PhD degree and have not lived in Denmark the last 10 years.
Social benefits (i.e., social security, health coverage, parental leave). Up to six weeks annual leave.
Start Date: Negotiable – Spring/Summer 2019
Description:
We are looking for a highly motivated and dynamic researcher with experience in the area of disability/illness and social relations to run an online intervention project entitled: Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Treat Distress Among Older Adults with Sensory Loss and their Spouses.
The successful candidate will join a team of researchers specialising in the areas of sensory loss (hearing, vision, and dual-sensory loss) and relationship science, and will be involved in a number of other related projects.
As the postdoc, your task will be to set up and maintain partnerships with patient and public organisations, to design and test the intervention along with colleagues, to recruit participants for the study, conduct interviews and survey the respondents, to present at national and international conferences and meetings, to analyse the data and write up the results for publication in scientific journals.
Your Profile
Essential:
A PhD in a health-related discipline (e.g., psychology, public health, social medicine, gerontology) defended no later than August 2018 A good publication record An excellent command of English (spoken and written) You are independent and able to envision, plan and execute a research project.
Ability to conduct both quantitative and qualitative analyses.
Desired but not essential:
Experience with research on sensory loss (hard-of-hearing, low vision, or deafblind populations) Experience with research on dyads, including recruitment of dyads and dyadic data analysis
Project Summary:
Impairments in hearing and/or vision are common in older age. Having lived one’s life as a fully sighted and hearing individual, older adults with sensory loss must come to terms with their declining capacity to interact with others and waning independence. There is ample research evidence showing that sensory loss (i.e., loss of hearing, vision or
both) can be a distressful experience for older adults and their spouses, yet little has been done to understand what works in alleviating this distress or develop scalable cost-effective interventions to counter this distress or associated outcomes like depression, anxiety, poor quality of life, and lower relationship quality.
In this project, we will design and test an easy-to-administer, online intervention aimed at reducing emotional and marital distress in older adults with sensory loss and their spouses. The goal of our intervention will be to develop acceptance of the sensory loss through a series of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy inspired educational, self-compassion, and therapeutic activities. In prior research, acceptance has been flagged as a promising factor on which to intervene to assist older couples’ emotional and marital recovery in the context of sensory loss.
Thus, we expect that our intervention should show encouraging results regarding the alleviation of distress in this group and contribute significantly to the psychosocial rehabilitation of older adults with sensory loss and their spouses.
Contact:
Interested candidates can request further information from Christine M. Lehane, PhD: Christine Lehane
Application:
Applicants should send their CV (including publication record) and evidence of their PhD (or defence date) to Christine Lehane
Project Members:
Christine M Lehane, Affiliate Researcher, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen Gert Martin Hald, Associate Professor, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen Jesper Dammeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen Walter Wittich, Assistant Professor, School of Optometry, University of Montreal Theis Lange, Associate Professor, Section of Biostatistics, University of Copenhagen
Walter Wittich, PhD FAAO CLVT
Assistant Professor, School of Optometry – Professeur adjoint
École d’optométrie Université de Montréal
Tel. 514 343 7962
Fax. 514 343 2382
Twitter: @WalterWittich