Dr Gozde Ozakinci

Dr Gozde Ozakinci

Honorary Senior Lecturer

Researcher profile

Email
go10@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Research areas

I am a health psychologist and in my research, I focus on two areas: 1) Health behaviours and 2) Living with long-term conditions.

I investigate health behaviours, both its antecedents and its implications, in different contexts.  The questions that I seek to answer are: What are the individual and social influences on our behaviours? What impact do they have on health outcomes? What is the role of context (e.g., workplace, policies) in how these behaviours are shaped and their impact?  How do we use this information to design the most acceptable and effective programme for behaviour change?

I study the psychological outcomes relating to living with a long-term condition in the context of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and stroke.  My work is led by theoretical underpinnings of human experience when faced with a health threat. I aim to answer: What makes up the experience of living with a long-term condition? What are the effective methods that will help individuals manage their condition both emotionally and behaviourally? In the cancer domain, for instance, my efforts focused on fear of cancer recurrence which is an emotional experience reported as an unmet need by people living with and beyond the diagnosis of cancer.

Selected publications

 

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