'We have a duty to carry out socially relevant research'

Ella Rhodes reports on the impact for British Psychological Society journals.

16 June 2025



Studies published in British Psychological Society journals are having an impact on global education, health, and pandemic preparedness policy. A recent BPS analysis of data from Altmetric, which monitors mentions of journal articles in government guidelines, white papers and other publications, found articles in our journals were cited by bodies including the World Health Organisation and the World Bank.

Three studies published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology featured in the top 10 BPS journal articles with the greatest policy impact in 2024. One of these was an open-access paper by University of Sussex researchers Dr Lewis Doyle, Dr Matthew Easterbrook, and Professor Peter Harris. They explored teachers' perceptions of an identical piece of work written by students who appeared to be from varying ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Teachers judged lower-socioeconomic-status (SES) students' work to be of lower quality than higher SES students and rated their ability and potential as inferior. The researchers suggested these unconscious biases among teachers could be part of the reason students from lower SES backgrounds tend to perform worse at school.

Their work was cited by the European Commission's Joint Research Service in its paper on the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on learning loss and education policy in Europe. The Pandemic, Socioeconomic Disadvantage, and Learning Outcomes also drew on case studies from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and England to explore the learning challenges created by COVID-19, particularly for students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Doyle said his and colleagues' research, including the British Journal of Educational Psychology article, sought to use social psychology to better understand and combat educational inequalities. 'As a scientific community, I think we have a duty to carry out socially relevant research that can have a positive impact on society.

'Finding that teachers may be biased in their judgements is an important discovery to share with other academics, but in terms of real-world impact, it is far more important to communicate these learnings to teachers and policymakers themselves. This article gained a large amount of media attention and enabled us to reach a broader audience than may otherwise have been possible. We have subsequently shared these findings in workshops and meetings with teachers and school leaders and hope that this will lead to impactful change.'

In 2020, the British Journal of Educational Psychology also published a study by Canisius University researchers Professor Kristin Finn, Dr Clancy Seymour, and Anna Phillips, which again explored bias among teachers. They asked middle school and high school teachers to assess a fake essay which also included a photograph of students of varying weights – they found overweight students were more likely to be given lower grades, and were assumed to have lower grades overall.

The European Parliament's Policy Department for Economic, Scientific and Quality of Life Policies included these findings in its document Current challenges and opportunities for addressing obesity. The report, produced for the parliament's Subcommittee on Public Health, explored obesity prevention and management in the EU, healthcare for people with obesity, and environments which promote health.

The Covid-19 pandemic also featured extensively in the top 10 BPS journal articles with most policy impact, including a longitudinal study in the British Journal of Educational Psychology on teachers' mental health during the first year of the pandemic. University of York researchers – Dr Lisa Kim, Dr Laura Oxley, and Professor Kathryn Asbury – looked at 24 primary and secondary school teachers' job demands and resources in April, July and November of 2020.

They found that teachers' mental health and wellbeing, particularly among primary school leaders, generally declined across that period. The uncertainty in their roles, workloads, negative perceptions of their profession, concern for the wellbeing of others, health struggles and having multiple roles had a particularly negative impact on teachers' mental health and wellbeing, while having social support, autonomy at work and coping strategies impacted positively on them.

A 2024 report commissioned by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work cited these findings. This report looked at artificial intelligence in education and advocated for a teacher-centred perspective in discussions about the use of digital technology in education.

Several pandemic-related papers published in the British Journal of Health Psychology were also included in the top 10. One of these was a study by Frederik Jørgensen, Dr Alexander Bor and Professor Michael Bang Petersen, which explored the protective behaviours people had taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, and attitudes towards the pandemic and society more broadly.

This research, published in 2021, included surveys of more than 26,500 people living in Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, the UK, and the USA. The findings showed that one of the major reasons people followed protective advice was a feeling of self-efficacy, and the impact of fear on those behaviours was small among those who felt higher self-efficacy. The authors suggested governments could foster compliance without resorting to heightening feelings of fear among the public.

This study was cited in a paper on incorporating trust into planning for future health crises, including pandemics, in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation by Thomas Bollyky from the US Council for Foreign Relations and Michael Bang Petersen. In that paper, they proposed that policies should ensure the trust which already existed in communities should be sustained during health crises, in part by using honest and transparent communication, and that strategies should be introduced which promote cooperation in communities where trust in government is low.

Another top 10 study in the British Journal of Health Psychology looked at people's intentions to take the COVID-19 vaccine in the face of information about its efficacy. Professor Colin Davis (University of Bristol), Matt Golding, the founder and creative director of Rubber Republic, and Professor Ryan McKay (Royal Holloway, University of London), asked more than 480 people in four different conditions about their intentions to take the Covid-19 vaccine.

Giving people information on the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine increased their intentions to have the vaccine. The researchers also found a stronger increase in Covid vaccine intentions in a condition where participants were shown safety and efficacy information about the Covid vaccine alongside information that the flu vaccine's efficacy was much lower than the Covid vaccine.

The World Bank cited this research in its policy research working paper Behaviorally Informed Messages Increase COVID-19 Vaccination Intentions: Insights from a Global Meta-Analysis. This paper analysed 28 online experiments, which involved more than 120,000 people, and found behaviourally-informed messages significantly increased vaccination intentions among unvaccinated people.

Chair of the BPS Research Board, Dr Richard Stephens, told us: 'It's no secret amongst the community of psychology researchers that the evidence-base can be so impactful. We understand how to design and run robust studies that provide meaningful insights into psychological processes that affect people's decisions and, consequently, their lives. But it's so wonderful to see my peers (and forebears) spreading influence, worldwide.'

SOURCE:

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/we-have-duty-carry-out-socially-relevant-research(accessed 18.06.25)