The Applied Research on Communication in Health Group (ARCH) studies all aspects of communication in health care and related topics, with a special focus on analysing how people interact in and perceive real-life health care interactions.
ARCH is a multidisciplinary group of researchers based in the Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice, University of Otago Wellington | Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka Pōneke. Members of the group and its research associates have a range of clinical and social science backgrounds in the fields of primary health care, public health, sociolinguistics, sociology, psychology and conversation analysis.
The core ARCH team currently comprises Maria Stubbe (Director), Rachel Tester and Jo Hilder (Senior researchers/data managers). We work on a diverse range of projects with departmental colleagues, part-time researchers, and New Zealand and international research and clinical associates.
Members of the ARCH group have been collecting and analysing video recordings of naturally occurring interactions between health practitioners and patients since 2003, when a small team began working on a single project (the Interaction Study).
Further research grants since 2006 through to the present have allowed the group to continue to consolidate and expand its work programme. The resulting data have been archived in the ARCH Corpus of Health Interactions, a searchable digitised collection of health communication data which provides an ongoing resource for research and education on clinical communication. Access to the ARCH Corpus is managed by a data governance group.
ARCH Group members also study patient, service user and whānau experiences of health and illness/health service delivery. The core team are trained in the validated narrative interview methodology followed by 14 other countries as part of DIPEX International, a consortium led by Oxford University's Medical Sociology and Health Experiences Research Group.
During 2025–26 the ARCH Group will co-lead development of a NZ Health Experiences Research Network with researchers at the University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka, and with community and provider partners (supported by a Royal Society of NZ Catalyst Fund Seeding Grant).
Learn more about overseas Health Experiences online research and resources:
