EPSRC PhD Studentship


    Multi-Criteria Approaches To Public Health Decision Making


      School of Health and Related Research

/(3 years)
/
*13,260k per annum*, /plus fees at the Home/EU student rate/

*Supervisors:* Dr Alejandra Duenas & Professor Peter Fleming

*Project
*The aim of this research is to investigate the potential for 
multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques to support the 
production of National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence's 
(NICE) public health guidance as well as to develop MCDM methods to 
underpin NICE's public health decision making. MCDM can be modelled 
using operational research (OR) approaches that can handle a range of 
stakeholders' preferences and optimise problem-solving approaches.

The objectives of this research are: a) to map the multitude of 
components involved which need to be addressed in complex, priority 
setting, problems (i.e. decision-maker (DM), stakeholders, objectives, 
environment, and alternative courses of action) in order to develop 
public health decision support systems based on MCDM approaches, b) to 
support the articulation of the DM's preferences through interactive 
MCDM methods that consider goals, aspiration levels, and mechanisms for 
overcoming barriers and constraints, c) to identify and analyse sources 
of uncertainty which are inherent in real-world decision making in 
public health. These uncertainties will be specified and modelled using 
fuzzy set theory and d) to aggregate the DMs' viewpoints through fuzzy 
sets to achieve a method to represent the decision-making process and to 
investigate the effect that variations between different stakeholders' 
preferences have on the overall alternative rankings. Fuzzy sets are 
sets that have degrees of membership, they will allow the PhD student to 
model the DMs' preferences in terms of degrees of satisfaction.

*Training
*The PhD student will attend methodological workshops and relevant 
external courses in decision analysis methods and the use of specialist 
software. The student will develop his/her research skills through 
working alongside ScHARR's health economics and decision science section 
as well as the public health section. The PhD student will be able to 
present and discuss his/her work in progress and gain feedback in the 
internal seminar series organised by ScHARR. The student will also have 
access to information resources and library services, IT support and 
training for standard software packages.

*How to apply:*

Please complete a University Postgraduate Research Application form and 
provide at least two references.

To download the application form please visit: 
www.shef.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/apply/pgrform.html 
<http://www.shef.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/apply/pgrform.html>.

When completing the application please select ‘Medical School' as the 
main department and for administrative purposes please state ‘Sara 
Watkinson' as the supervisor. Please also state the full title of the 
scope of research. If you have any queries when completing the 
application form please do not hesitate to contact Sara Watkinson at 
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>

www.shef.ac.uk/medicine/prospectivepg/vacancies 
<http://www.shef.ac.uk/medicine/prospectivepg/vacancies>

*Closing date: 1st June 2009
*

*Best wishes
*

*Alejandra
*

-- 
Alejandra Duenas, PhD
Research Fellow
Health Economics and Decision Science
ScHARR
University of Sheffield
Regent Court, 30 Regent Street
Sheffield, S1 4DA
Tel: 0114-2220696

Email: [log in to unmask]