Previous Webinar Recordings

Find out how to catch up on our previous webinars.

With speakers: Professor Linda Bauld , Ben Cavanagh, Ashley Gould  and Professor Richard Amlot. 

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. 

It presented information about how 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.

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Speakers: Professor Nancy Cartwright, Professor David Lagnado, Dr Julia Rohrer and David Shipworth.

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 these questions were explored with two invited speakers and a panel discussion. Julia Rohrer introduced the causal modelling framework as a reasoning tool for drawing robust conclusions from empirical data on human behaviour. Nancy Cartwright 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. As well as Q&A after each talk, 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

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Speakers: Dr Harriet Baird, Professor Thomas Webb, Professor Susan Michie, Professor Robert West , Dr Janna Hastings and Dr Suvodeep Mazumdar 

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. 

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Speakers: Professor Jamie Brown, Professor Robin Purshouse, Dr Hazel Squires and Professor Robert West 

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.

Speakers Professor Jamie Brown, Professor Robin Purshouse, Dr Hazel Squires, Professor Robert West presented the methods and preliminary results from a collaboration between health psychologists, decision-analytic modellers and systems engineers using these advanced methods. In this first stage, causal systems mapping has been used to identify and estimate causal influences of individual level capability (e.g. knowledge of smoking harms, level of cigarette addiction), opportunity (e.g. cues to smoking from smoking peers, housing circumstances) and motivational (e.g. desire to quit) factors on: 1) onset of regular cigarette smoking, 2) initiation of a quit attempt, and 3) maintenance of abstinence for at least 4 weeks. Also modelled were causal influences of macro-level factors such as mass media spending, provision of smoking cessation support, and e-cigarette availability on the capability, opportunity and motivation factors. All variables were linked with unique identifiers of ontology classes in the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology or Addiction Ontology.

They then showed how the systems maps can be incorporated into a simulation model that represents the dynamics of initiating smoking, making a quit attempt, and maintaining smoking abstinence. They  concluded with an overview of the remaining activities needed to develop a fully-fledged decision-analytic model for smoking policy appraisal

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Speakers: Dr Sharon Cox, Professor Marcus Munafo and Dr Harry Tattan-Birch.

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 outlines BR-UK early approaches to Open Science and longer-term commitments. Professor Marcus Munafo describes 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 acknowledges and addresses potential fears around pre-registration and discussed why changes from the pre-registered plan are commonplace and,should be recommended not discouraged. 

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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?

Watch the Behavioural Research UK Launch on YouTube.


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