Behaviour and Well-Being in Socio-Spatial Settings

[Convenors: Owen U Qld, Beard Southern Cross U].

The focus here is on disaggregated, micro and individual level collection of information through tools such as sample surveys and using quasi-experimental designs to generate information on human attitudes, perceptions, cognitions and overt behaviours, and with decision choices. It includes testing hypotheses about potential pathways between environmental and social factors, behaviours and health and other outcomes. Objectively-assessed behavioural outcomes (such as physical activity or smoking), risk factors (such as blood pressure or cholesterol), data on indices of social well-being (such as quality of community engagement) and health and other outcomes (including local hospital or population-based mortality or morbidity data) may be used as dependent variables. How these are influenced by objective socio-spatial phenomenon as independent and intervening variables can be examined, allowing unique hypotheses to be tested.

Emphasis for project development will be on investigating issues such as:

1. the inter-linkages between labour market outcomes, health, housing, family breakdown and crime;
2. cognitive mapping and spatial behaviour in urban environmental structures;
3. the interaction between behaviour, well-being and social networks;
4. impacts of population change on well-being and health;
5. the influence of community level environments on health-related behavioural choices and on the incidence and nature of crime and criminal behaviour.