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The ‘Get Ready’ project aims to integrate service-learning methodology into Physical Therapy and Sport Sciences University degrees by offering students individual service opportunities (placements) with Residential Care Homes, in order to co-create the best suited physical activity (PA)/ sedentary behaviour (SB) intervention with researchers, older adults (end-users) in care homes, health professionals and policy makers. The project will use a Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology and will follow the objectives of workforce development to support users to demand more responsive and integrated care programmes for chronic diseases, and to involve end-users in their health management and decision-making relevant to their own health (Action Area 6). We will use mixed methods to assess the intervention feasibility and acceptability (including process evaluation) and we will conduct a pilot study of a two armed pragmatic randomized controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of a 12-week complex intervention on reducing SB and increasing PA, infused with behaviour change technologies, in an institutionalized older population. This complex intervention co-designed with care home residents and conducted by university students will be compared to existing PA interventions (usual care), conducted by health professionals working in the Residential Care Homes. The experienced researcher will significantly expand her scientific knowledge by combining it with the new themes of SB as a risk factor for health and its assessment in institutionalized older adults, shorten the gap between students and real life conditions, and the process of PAR methodology to co-create a robust intervention through workforce development with end-users, providing a logical progression and extension of her knowledge, enhancing the experienced researcher’s academic skills and offering a distinct progression on wider academic (as opposed to purely research) skills.

Public sector resource allocation is an important area for research, especially now, when spending cuts are inevitable. In the health sector this frequently attracts media attention, especially with respect to the recommendations of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the denial of drugs to patients. However decisions to provide one treatment from a limited pot of resources will always mean that something else cannot be funded. Effective policies should incorporate the opinions of the general public and so policy makers need information about the views held by people in society. Firstly, information is needed about the nature of public opinion. What values and arguments exist around the topic in question? Usually there are a number of opinions about a particular issue and these can be described in terms of the features that set them apart as well as issues of consensus. Secondly, information is needed on how those views are distributed in a population - is there a dominant view? and what kinds of people subscribe to different opinions? This is often important for decision makers but requires a different kind of data based on larger samples of people. Research methods exist which can provide information of both types, using different approaches. In this project, we develop methods using an approach called Q methodology, which can link these two types of information within a consistent methodological approach. The issue we address here is the value to society of ?end-of-life? technologies. Decisions about the denial of expensive drugs for terminally ill patients, which extend life by only a short time, are controversial. We will explore the views of the general public regarding the provision of end-of-life technologies which will inform NICE and local organisations who make decisions about resources in health care. Our research will be conducted in two phases: the first will involve 250 people sampled from the general population and 50 from specific interest groups. They will sort cards, printed with statements of opinion, onto a grid, according to agreement. Based on an analysis of common patterns between respondents? sorts we will identify and describe shared views. In a second phase we will use these findings to design a survey which will allow us to analyse how common these views are in a large, representative sample of the population.