Reproducibility in health intervention research and beyond: addressing the challenges and developing innovative solutions

Research within the social sciences can have a profound positive impact on public health challenges, such as the rise in overweight and obesity in the UK. Addressing the health and socioeconomical costs of these challenges requires a joint effort from academic, industry and government sectors.

In my doctoral work I tested the efficacy of behavioural interventions that can potentially help people make healthier food choices. I found that training individuals to stop their behavioural responses towards energy-dense foods in a computer-based task can reduce their choices, cravings and liking for these foods. I investigated the mechanisms of action behind these training effects (how does it work?) and the parameters that should be considered for designing such interventions (what should training involve?).

In order to establish myself as a leading researcher in food-related health intervention research, I will publish my work in top-ranking journals that can reach a wide range of readers and communicate all findings to a multidisciplinary audience by attending a health psychology conference. I will continue the development of a novel intervention that can promote healthy eating and undertake this research as part of a teaching programme for undergraduate students run in collaboration with other universities. During the fellowship I will also strengthen my skills on advanced statistical analyses for behavioural data in psychology.

The disseminated research findings can be used to generate accessible and cost-efficient technologies (e.g. smart- phone apps) for healthy eating. These mobile health technologies can be developed by UK companies and distributed to the general public through our healthcare system. For this exchange of knowledge and ideas between sectors to be successful, academic research needs to be trusted.

During my PhD I came across the 'open science' movement in the social sciences - a scientific community that was calling for greater transparency, integrity and reproducibility in research through the adoption of open science practices. They advocated making the research data and findings accessible to all to advance scientific knowledge. The more I learned about this movement the more I discovered about my own research field.

Reproducibility and openness are very important for health interventions as our work can reach the healthcare and industry sectors. However, I discovered that food-related research faces a reproducibility challenge with the most notable example being an allegation of academic misconduct which led to a 'world-renowned' scientist retracting many of his papers due to unreliable findings.

The Center for Open Science (COS) is a technological organisation that leads global developments for reproducible science, as for example creating solutions for making research plans, data and materials publicly available. I have used these tools to increase the transparency of my work and ensure that my research on behavioural interventions for eating behaviours can be reproduced by other researchers.

In this fellowship I will work in close consultation with COS to develop an accessible web-based application that can help researchers design robust and reproducible studies. For this industry partnership, I will use my skills and experience in psychological research and open science to create an innovative solution that can be beneficial for researchers and stakeholders (e.g. academic publishers). The work product and implications of this industry partnership will be communicated to multidisciplinary audiences in local and international meetings.

Overall, this fellowship will prepare me for the next stage in my career where I continue my research on health interventions for eating behaviours and expand my network and skills to form fruitful collaborations with UK organisations to promote technological innovations for greater reproducibility in the social sciences.