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

社会科学领域的研究可以对公共卫生挑战产生深远的积极影响，例如英国超重和肥胖症的增加。应对这些挑战的健康和社会经济成本需要学术界、工业界和政府部门的共同努力。在我的博士工作中，我测试了行为干预的有效性，这种干预可能会帮助人们做出更健康的食物选择。我发现，在基于计算机的任务中，训练个人停止对高能量食物的行为反应，可以减少他们对这些食物的选择、渴望和喜好。我调查了这些训练效果背后的作用机制(它是如何工作的？)以及设计这种干预措施时应该考虑的参数(培训应该包括什么？)。为了将自己确立为与食品相关的健康干预研究的领先研究员，我将在能够接触到广泛读者的顶级期刊上发表我的工作，并通过参加健康心理学会议将所有发现传达给多学科的受众。我将继续开发一种可以促进健康饮食的新干预措施，并将这项研究作为与其他大学合作的本科生教学计划的一部分。在奖学金期间，我还将加强我对心理学行为数据的高级统计分析的技能。传播的研究成果可以用来产生可获得的、具有成本效益的健康饮食技术(例如智能手机应用程序)。这些移动医疗技术可以由英国公司开发，并通过我们的医疗系统分发给普通公众。为了让不同部门之间的知识和思想交流取得成功，学术研究需要得到信任。在我攻读博士学位期间，我遇到了社会科学中的一场‘开放科学’运动--这个科学界呼吁通过采用开放的科学实践来提高研究的透明度、完整性和重复性。他们主张让所有人都能获得研究数据和结果，以促进科学知识的发展。我对这一运动了解得越多，我对自己的研究领域就发现得越多。重复性和开放性对于健康干预非常重要，因为我们的工作可以接触到医疗保健和工业部门。然而，我发现与食品相关的研究面临着可重复性的挑战，最著名的例子是学术不端行为的指控，这导致一位世界知名的科学家因为不可靠的发现而撤回了他的许多论文。开放科学中心(COS)是一个技术组织，领导全球可再生科学的发展，例如为公开研究计划、数据和材料创造解决方案。我使用这些工具来增加我工作的透明度，并确保我对饮食行为的行为干预的研究可以被其他研究人员复制。在这个奖学金中，我将与COS密切协商，开发一个可访问的基于网络的应用程序，可以帮助研究人员设计健壮和可重复的研究。对于这一行业合作伙伴关系，我将利用我在心理学研究和开放科学方面的技能和经验来创建一个创新的解决方案，使研究人员和利益相关者(例如学术出版商)受益。这一行业合作伙伴关系的工作成果和影响将在当地和国际会议上传达给多学科的观众。总体而言，这一奖学金将为我职业生涯的下一阶段做好准备，在那里我将继续研究饮食行为的健康干预，并扩大我的网络和技能，与英国组织形成富有成效的合作，以促进社会科学领域更具重现性的技术创新。

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.