Dr Jeremy Dawson
Reader in Health Management
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Jeremy Dawson joined the Institute of Work Psychology (IWP) and the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) as a Senior Lecturer in Health Management in October 2011. He is a statistician by background, and teaches a wide variety of subjects in the fields of statistics and research methods. Some of this has the aim of preparing students for using statistics in the wider world (e.g. statistics for human resource management; critical numbers for medical students), whilst other areas are focussed on enabling students (particularly postgraduates) to do quantitative research. This includes everything from basic principles of research through to detailed workshops about topics such as questionnaire design and psychometrics, multilevel analysis and structural equation modelling. He has also supervised students at all levels, including undergraduates, MSc, MBA, and PhD.
He was previously a Senior Research Fellow at Aston Business School, Aston University, where he was also director of the Institute for Health Services Effectiveness (IHSE). In his role there he led several large-scale projects relating to management of staff in the NHS, particularly focussing on team working, staff engagement and well-being and their links with patient outcomes. He also ran the NHS national staff survey for its first five years between 2003 and 2007, and held or co-held research grants worth over £3 million. The NHS staff survey in particular has enabled a clear wider impact; each NHS trust in England receives an annual feedback report leading to changes in local staff management, and it also had effects at a national level, with the Department of Health using the survey to inform policy, and the Care Quality Commission using it significantly in its performance management and regulatory processes. In 2009 Jeremy played a key role in the Boorman Review of NHS staff health and well-being, using survey data to demonstrate a clear link between staff well-being and organisational performance (quality, safety and financial), which led to changes being made to the NHS Operating Framework.
Jeremy returned to the University of Sheffield after a gap of 12 years, having previously worked at IWP as a statistician on the Corporate Performance Project in 1998/9, and having gained his MSc in Statistics from Sheffield prior to that. In addition to his core teaching and research roles, he aims to strengthen research links between IWP (and the Management School more widely) and ScHARR.
Areas of Expertise
- Human resources management in the NHS
- Work group diversity and faultlines
- Team working
- Quantitative methods in management research
- Interpreting interaction effects (see www.jeremydawson.com/slopes.htm)
- Scale development and psychometrics
- Analysis of multilevel data
Research
My research falls broadly into three areas, with plenty of crossover between them – management of health care organisations, team working, and statistics. Current projects in health care include a study of the effects of NHS staff engagement and experience on patient outcomes; various studies of team working in health care, particularly in mental health services; an examination of the effects of organisational restructuring in the NHS; and a project looking at the diversity of hospital staff and their representativeness of the local community. As well as teams in health care, I have a more general interest in team diversity, and in particular how it should be measured. Other current statistical research areas include analysis of incomplete data from small groups, and methods of dealing with counter-intuitive regression results.His other research interests include team and organisational climate, and work group diversity. As a statistician he has also undertaken a wide range of methodological research, particularly regarding interpretation of interaction effects, measurement of diversity, analysis of incomplete team data, and the effects of aggregation on relationships. He has published over 30 papers in refereed academic journals in the fields of psychology, management, health care and research methods, as well as numerous project reports and articles in practitioner publications. He is an editorial board member of four journals.
Qualifications
BSc (Hons) Mathematics, University of Durham, 1997
MSc Statistics, University of Sheffield, 1998
PhD Management: Aston University, 2011 ("Measurement of Work Group Diversity")
Professional Affiliations
Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (FRSS)
Member, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)
Member, Academy of Management (AoM)
Publications
Recent publications include: