Students shine at the Doctoral College conference

School of Sport and Service Management PhD students, Jennifer Holland and Hanno Martens, received awards at the recent Doctoral College conference.

Jennifer was awarded best College of Social Sciences oral presentation for ‘Navigating Uncertainty: the influence of risk on consumer decision-making in Ocean cruising’ and Hanno awarded runner up for ‘The tourism destination image effects of sport events: a longitudinal study of Germans visiting the Middle East’.

Jennifer said: “I am thrilled to have won the award for Best Oral Presentation for the Social Sciences. This was my second time presenting at the Doctoral College Conference and I love the opportunity to share my own research and listen to all the exciting and diverse research being done in the university.

“My presentation introduced my research area including my aim, which is to understand how the perception of risk influences consumer decision-making for a cruise holiday. I  discussed my methodology including my research strategy which is a qualitative design using focus groups and interviews for data collection.

“I also discussed my evolving epistemology / ontology and how I see my research situated in the social constructionist paradigm, and introduced the innovative methods I want to use in data collection which are photo elicitation and possibly the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique.

“Overall I was really interested to get feedback and questions from the audience, and I found the whole experience to be positive and helped build confidence in speaking about my research.”