Marie Kotzur

Biography

Marie Kotzur joined General Practice and Primary Care in May 2015 to work on a NAEDI-funded project which investigates decision-making in bowel cancer screening participation compared to breast and cervical screening attendance, under Katie Robb. The aim is to better understand why women take part in all three screening programmes, none, or in breast and cervical, but not bowel screening. Knowledge of how the breast and cervical screening programmes achieve higher participation rates than the bowel screening can help develop interventions to increase bowel screening participation. Marie received a BA (Psychology) from University College Cork in 2010. Her interest in health psychology developed during her undergraduate years and she completed her PhD on the predictors of cervical screening participation among Irish women in 2016. This project aimed to better understand what influences decision-making and attendance for smear tests. A wealth of theories of health behaviour and behaviour change have been used to explain intention formation and attendance, however newer dual-process theories may be better able to incorporate evidence of intuitive, rather than rational, decisions to take part in cervical screening.

Research Interest

Behavioural science, Health psychology, Preventive health care, Social psychology, Motivation, Mixed methodology research.