Research and evaluation unit
Dr Darren Walton, Director - BSc (Hons), PhD (Canterbury)
Dr Darren Walton is an Applied Psychologist who specialises in research design and methodology. In 2010 he joined HSC after 10 years in a major consultancy developing a behavioural sciences research team. He is Senior Adjunct Fellow at the University of Canterbury and has current international collaborations researching working with Engineers and Medical Researchers.
Darren’s interest is the design of social research, which he has exercised across a range of disciplines, including road safety, building performance, transportation, applied economics and emergency management.
Dr Jessica Berentson-Shaw, Senior Research Fellow, BSc (Hons), PhD (Victoria University of Wellington)
Jess is a health psychology and public health researcher with a focus on health inequalities and the use of evidence in health and social care. Jess joined HSC in 2012 following four years as the Manager of research at the New Zealand Guidelines Group, and time in the UK spent at the confidential enquiry into maternal and child health and as a postdoctoral fellow at University College London.
Miranda Devlin, Senior Data Analyst, BSc (Hons)
Miranda is an applied survey statistician and researcher who has been working at the HSC since late 2009. Miranda worked at the Ministry of Health for three years, after completing her studies in psychology and statistics at Victoria University of Wellington. While at the Ministry, Miranda gained experience working on the New Zealand Tobacco Use Survey and the New Zealand Health Survey.
Miranda likes to be able to bring meaning to data, and help people understand the story that ‘numbers on the screen’ might be telling in order to contribute to informed decisions.
Rebecca Gray, Researcher, BA (Otago) MA Applied (Victoria University of Wellington)
Rebecca has degrees in social anthropology and social science research. Her previous research interests include migration and settlement and the volunteer sector in New Zealand and abroad. Prior to joining the HSC she worked in immigration policy and in public information.
Rebecca currently works on research for the SunSmart and problem gambling programmes at HSC. She is more qualitatively-inclined than some of the psychologists and statisticians on the team, which is another way of saying that although she appreciates numbers, she is particularly interested in words and ideas.
Kerri Kruse, Visiting Fellow/Researcher, MPH (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Kerri has a Master's in Public Health, which has trained her to be a generalist in health behaviour promotion and education at the community level. She joined the HSC in 2012 after working on data collection for various research studies in New Zealand, the United States and Honduras. While most of her work has focused on nutrition and pregnancy health, particularly among underserved populations, she is keen to explore other areas such as sun safety.
Judy Li, Researcher, MSc
Judy has a Master’s degree in Psychology and has been working in the tobacco control sector since 2005. Prior to her role as an intermediate researcher in HSC’s Tobacco Control Research Unit, Judy worked at The Quit Group as a researcher for 4½ years.
Judy is currently doing a PhD at the University of Otago Department of Public Health. Her thesis is to evaluate the effectiveness of pictorial warning labels on cigarette packets.
Steve Murray, Senior Researcher, PhD (University of Canterbury)
Dr Stephen Murray is an experienced applied psychology researcher and statistical analyst. His work, both at university and in subsequent employment, has focused on road safety and travel behaviours. He also has a keen interest in health psychology.
Stephen follows the Gibsonian Ecological Approach to psychology, which emphasises studying the interaction between a person and their environment rather than either in isolation. This approach fits well within the HSC as studying people and the environment separately is unlikely to provide the information needed to promote positive behaviour change.
Rhiannon Newcombe, Senior Researcher, BA, PGDipClinPsych, PhD (Otago)
(On maternity leave in 2012)
Dr Rhiannon Newcombe is a Clinical Psychologist with a PhD in developmental psychology. She joined HSC in 2007 and has since worked predominately in tobacco control research.
Prior to working at HSC, Rhiannon worked at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London in mental health research. Her research interests include both individual and population-level approaches to improving people’s health and well-being.
Rose Patterson, Researcher, BCom (Marketing Management), MSc (Psychology - distinction) (University of Otago)
Rose came to HSC in mid-2008 after undertaking qualitative research for her Masters degree, interviewing parents about their use of time-out as a discipline technique with children.
Rose’s interest is in social marketing, particularly in gathering insight from our audiences to inform and increase the effectiveness of HSC’s social marketing work. She is interested in researching upstream factors that influence health behaviours, such as parenting and social connection, and is particularly interested in children and young people. She spends half her time as Project Manager for the New Zealand Youth Tobacco Monitor (NZYTM) and the other half as a Researcher within the Tobacco Control Research Unit.
Rose is involved in designing quantitative and qualitative social research to inform and evaluate HSC’s tobacco control programme and the wider tobacco control sector.
Danny Tu, Data Analyst, BCom (University of Otago)
Danny joined HSC as a Data Analyst in the Research and Evaluation team in October 2007. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce (Finance and Economics) and has recently completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Science majoring in Statistics and Operations Research at Victoria University of Wellington.
Danny is particularly interested in quantitative research, survey sampling techniques and biostatistics. Danny is enthusiastic about applying a range of statistical techniques and methodologies in public health research. His interests also include statistical programming, data management and generalising programs and systems, especially using STATA.
