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Associate Professor Taren Sanders

Acting Program Leader & Senior Research Fellow
Motivation and Behaviour Program

Associate Professor Taren Sanders is the Acting Program Leader in the Motivation and Behaviour Program at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education. His research interests focus on the health of children and young people, including perspectives from public health and education. He has particular expertise in the determinants of physical activity and screen time, understanding how movement behaviours influence health, and how measurement of movement behaviour can be improved.

A/Prof Sanders' work has been published in leading journals such as JAMA Pediatrics, Sleep Medicine Reviews, Review of Educational Research, Learning & Instruction, and International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. He has received more than $1m in competitive research funding, including grants from the ARC, NSW Department of Health, and Sport Australia.

A/Prof Sanders has substantial expertise in the management of large, complex projects. He oversaw the research and delivery components of the 180-school and 2,600 teacher iPLAY project, which include both a randomised controlled trial and a dissemination study. He has also worked on other large projects, such as the NHMRC-funded Transform-Us! project, and the Movember-funded Ahead of the Game.

Select publications

• Lonsdale, C., Sanders, T., Parker, P., Noetel, M., Hartwig, T., Vasconcellos, D., … & Lubans, D., Effect of a Scalable School-Based Intervention on Cardiorespiratory Fitness in Children: A Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Pediatrics (Accepted December 2020)
• Antczak, D., Lonsdale, C., Lee, J., Hilland, T., Duncan, M. J., del Pozo Cruz, B.,... & Sanders, T. (2020). Physical activity and sleep are inconsistently related in healthy children: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep medicine reviews, 51, 101278
• Sanders, T., Feng, X., Fahey, P. P., Lonsdale, C., & Astell-Burt, T. (2015). The influence of neighbourhood green space on children's physical activity and screen time: findings from the longitudinal study of Australian children. International journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity, 12(1), 1-9.
• Hartwig, T. B., Sanders, T., Vasconcellos, D., Noetel, M., Parker, P. D., Lubans, D. R.,... & del Pozo Cruz, B. (2021). School-based interventions modestly increase physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness but are least effective for youth who need them most: an individual participant pooled analysis of 20 controlled trials. British journal of sports medicine.