Webinar Recordings

In this webinar speakers Dr Janna Hastings, Professor Susan Michie and Professor Robert West reviewed and discussed ethical challenges in applying AI, including generative AI, to behavioural research and how these can best be addressed. AI is increasingly being used in behavioural research, e.g., supporting research processes such as topic selection, evidence analysis and synthesis, experiment design, participant recruitment, reviewing, data capture and standardisation, data analytics, building models and theories, writing papers and presentations, and even simulating human participants in studies. It is already increasing productivity and we can expect rapid advancement going forward. But there are many limitations to AI itself and the way it is used that present ethical challenges. Responsible use of AI must involve being vigilant in detecting and anticipating ethical challenges and putting systems in place to address them. The ethical challenges presented by use of AI include: increasing inequality through monopolisation of access to advanced research tools, opportunities for unethical manipulation of people, exacerbating biases in topic selection and creation of models, promoting false consensus, narrowing of conceptual horizons, and loss or devaluing of crucial research skills. This webinar examined these and other ethical challenges, discussed potential ways of mitigating the problems while maximising the potential benefits of AI in behavioural research. It provided an opportunity to consider what role BR-UK can play in addressing the challenges. This webinar took place on May 12th, 2025.

In this webinar Dr Carrie Heitmeyer and Dr Kitty Saunders explored i) the role of behavioural and social science advice in government, with a particular focus on the Government Office for Science, ii), how external behavioural and social science expertise is brought into and used in government, and iii) how Areas of Research Interest (ARIs) can be of use to behavioural and social science researchers. Following their presentations there was a Q&A session. This webinar took place on April 28th, 2025.

Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Intersectionality in Behavioural Research

In this webinar Dr Julze Alejandre, Dr Sharon Cox, Dr Niamh Hart, Sancha Martin, Professor Ann Phoenix and Dr Lesley Uttley discussed the critical role of Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Intersectionality (EDII) in behavioural research. The speakers acknowledged the current tension that exists politically when it comes to EDII programmes and outlined why they believe that EDII is a positive influence on research. They delved into the key issues, including the underrepresentation of marginalised groups, the need for recognition of differences, and the ethical implications of research practices. Participants were encouraged to consider approaches to foster more equitable and inclusive research, contributing to better understanding and addressing the diverse needs of society. The team presented preliminary findings from a recent rapid scoping review assessing how successfully EDII principles are represented in the current behavioural research landscape. This webinar took place on March 24th, 2025.

The case study presented in this webinar was: Braybrook D, Bristowe K, Timmins L, et al. Communication about sexual orientation and gender between clinicians, LGBT+ people facing serious illness and their significant others: a qualitative interview study of experiences, preferences and recommendations. BMJ Quality & Safety 2023;32:109-120.

In this webinar Dr Janna Hastings, Professor Susan Michie and Professor Robert West discussed what analytical AI is and focuses on its use in classifying knowledge, and reasoning and making predictions from data.

Our speakers covered the use of ontologies and machine learning to build tools to identify studies relevant to a research question and capture key information in reports intervention evaluations, and to use those data to make predictions of outcomes in novel intervention scenarios. They presented the Human Behaviour-Change project, a collaboration between computer and behavioural scientists. It included a demonstration of a prototype tool, trained using information extracted from approximately 500 reports of randomised trials evaluating smoking cessation interventions, that can make predictions of smoking cessation outcomes based on user-inputted specifications of intervention content, mode of delivery, setting and study population. There was consideration on how this technology can be developed in different behavioural science domains. This webinar took place on March 12th, 2025.

In this webinar Professor Rebecca Campbell, Dr Sharon Cox, Dr Sebastian Karcher and Professor Alex Stevens discussed real-world dilemmas and innovative frameworks to address issues arising in qualitative research. 

Our speakers highlighted a methodological approach for handling sensitive narrative data, developed through work with interviews involving vulnerable populations. They explored broader issues in research, such as publication decisions, prioritising editorial work, and navigating the 'prestige game' associated with non-open-access journals. Viewers will gain insights into balancing ethical considerations with open science goals, along with practical strategies for researchers, institutions, and funders to support responsible data sharing and equitable publishing. This webinar took place on February 25th, 2025.

In this webinar Dr Janna Hastings, Professor Susan Michie and Professor Robert West briefly outlined stages in the history of AI and explained the main differences between ‘Analytical AI’ (typically for reasoning and classification) and ‘Generative AI’ (typically for generating text and images). The webinar focused on the use of Generative AI in the area of behavioural science. It introduced a selection of AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Elicit and Scite), illustrated their usefulness when answering questions on behavioural science topics, and reviewed their strengths and limitations. Finally, the speakers demonstrated the use of these AI tools to generate evidence-based ideas for behaviour change interventions before taking questions from the audience. 

In this webinar, Dr Julze Alejandre, Madeleine Baxter, Professor Oliver Escobar, Dr Niamh Hart, Dr Carrie Heitmeyer and Professor Ann Phoenix explored the critical role of Public Engagement and Stakeholder Involvement (PESI) in behavioural research. The speakers shared results of a scoping review exploring how PESI approaches are applied in behavioural research on health, environmental sustainability, community resilience, and economic development (BR-UK research themes).  The discussion focused on approaches that help ensure that behavioural research is conducted in a way that is robust, accessible, meaningful, embedded, and relevant to diverse groups. There was also signposting to forthcoming BR-UK training and support opportunities to help build capacity on PESI. This webinar took place on November 22nd, 2024.

Policy Dynamics and 'Real World' Decision Making in Policy Informed by Behavioural Research

The purpose of the session was to understand the processes and dynamics of decision making in government and where behavioural science has been used, at various stages, to improve policy design and implementation of interventions.  Professor Richard Amlot, Professor Linda Bauld , Ben Cavanagh and Ashley Gould explained how information about policy making is conceptualized, and evidence from research about how policy processes play out in real situations. The webinar included reference to case studies from policy areas, with reference to contextual factors including ministerial and political dynamics, budgets and finances, government structure and professions, government processes for options appraisal, evaluation and ethics.

Most problems faced by policy makers involve causal questions: How do we promote healthier eating? How do we reduce energy consumption? How do we improve online safety? But various challenges arise in identifying causal relations and applying them to policy-relevant issues, especially those that involve human behaviour. For example, RCTs are seen as ‘gold standard’ evidence but are contextually fragile, Theories of Change are the hallmark for policy development but are often too weakly tied to evidence, and policy evaluation is often designed and conducted post-hoc. Can a richer understanding of causal mechanisms offer a route to integrate theory, evidence and evaluation in the policy process, making it agile and able to deliver better outcomes? In this webinar Professor Nancy Cartwright, Professor David Lagnado, Dr Julia Rohrer and David Shipworth explored these questions. They introduced the causal modelling framework as a reasoning tool for drawing robust conclusions from empirical data on human behaviour and illustrated how middle level theory can help in making better theories of change that underwrite more thorough bodies of evidence for causal claims that should in turn make these claims more reliable. There was a panel discussion where we further explored these questions and asked how BR-UK can support better use of causal approaches to inform policy decision making. This webinar took place in September 2024.

The past decade has seen a revolution in the volume and complexity of data created in the behavioural sciences. Ontologies facilitate the accumulation of knowledge by providing a standardised method for specifying concepts within a topic, using a shared language. They precisely specify the properties of these concepts and the relationships between them. By doing this, ontologies can enhance the organisation and retrieval of research evidence and provide a framework for aggregating data both within and across disciplines and topic domains. Because every defined concept and relationship has a unique ID, computer-based technologies and tools in artificial intelligence can be more easily harnessed for behavioural and social research.  Thus, ontologies enable efficient and effective data integration and analysis, evidence synthesis and outcome prediction to provide robust answers to complex societal challenges. In this webinar our speakers described what ontologies are and provided examples of how ontologies are being developed and used to accelerate research in the behavioural sciences. They also demonstrated tools and ways in which we can all leverage the benefits of ontologies in our own work. Speakers included: Dr Harriet Baird, Professor Thomas Webb, Professor Susan Michie, Professor Robert West , Dr Janna Hastings and Dr Suvodeep Mazumdar. 

Using Behavioural Theory to Inform Quantitative Models for Policy Decision Making

Policy makers need to make decisions about how best to prevent people initiating smoking and facilitate quitting. Quantitative models can be used to help inform such policy decisions, by estimating the impacts of different policy options. Several quantitative models for smoking policy appraisal have been developed, using a variety of modelling approaches. The advent of more advanced modelling techniques, improved theoretical models of behaviour, and extensive data series from detailed monthly surveys in England offer the prospect of achieving higher quality prediction of estimated outcomes than has thus far been possible.

In this webinar, Professor Jamie Brown, Professor Robin Purshouse, Dr Hazel Squires and Professor Robert West presented the methods and preliminary results of a collaboration between health psychologists, decision-analytic modellers and systems engineers using these advanced methods.

Open research is the practice of making not only the final output of a research process (e.g., the journal article) openly available, but as much of the research process and intermediate research objects (e.g., data and code) as possible available too. In this webinar, Dr Sharon Cox outlined BR-UK early approaches to Open Science and longer-term commitments. Professor Marcus Munafo described the different aspects of open research, the difference between making our research open vs FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) and the benefits that can flow from a more transparent approach to how we conduct and report our research. Dr Harry Tattan-Birch acknowledged and addressed potential fears around pre-registration and discussed why changes from the pre-registered plan are commonplace and should be recommended not discouraged. This webinar took place in April 2024.

BR-UK launched publicly on the 4th March 2024. Our launch event included an opening address from Dame Angela McLean, Chief Scientific Officer (UK Government)  and was chaired by Professor Nick Pidgeon of Cardiff University. During the event, speakers  including BR-UK Directors Professor Linda Bauld and Professor Susan Michie, explained how BR-UK is funded and what it's overarching vision and goals are.   Joy Todd from the Economic and Social Research Council also provided context around the investment in the landscape of ESRC's National Capability in Behavioural Research plans. The webinar also addressed a range of questions including:

• What is behavioural research and why does it matter?
• Who & what is BR-UK?
• How do I connect with BR-UK?