Contextual Background:
Traditional academic practices have focused solely on the academic merits of dissertation research. However, in many ways, the dissemination of research is as important as the work itself – visibility is a crucial factor in having societal impact. Understandably, the scientific community (of which the MSc Applied Psychology in Fashion is part) is encouraging alternative methods of research dissemination aimed at the public. Ethically, the publicization of one’s research is also a promotion of the democratisation of science.
Evaluation:
The current requirement and assessment for the master’s project for the course expect the student to produce a work of academic merit written to meet professional standards, as per traditional academic expectations. The dissemination of the research, however, is entirely left to the student. Herein lie two issues. On the one hand, given the lack of requirements and assessment of research dissemination, students do not receive formal briefings or training in methods of research dissemination aimed at the public. In cases where students do disseminate their dissertations to the public, students often resort to publishing the abstract of their dissertation, which, due to its academic and technical language, may not be easily received by the public. On the other hand, where students have the opportunity to promote their research through UAL (e.g., the LCF Graduate Showcase), students often find themselves demotivated to generate a new piece of artefact for public display (the showcase happens around six months after the initial dissertation submission) – this explains the historically low involvement of psychology students in these showcases. For those who produce something, they are, once again, blighted by the reality of not having received any formal training or feedback on their artefact.
Moving forwards
I promote the view that research dissemination should be a requirement in addition to the dissertation project, given the benefits outlined above. By formalising this process as part of the assessment feedback procedure, students will be officially trained to produce suitable methods of research dissemination. On a motivational level, the assessed and produced method of research dissemination will be already available to them to utilise immediately.
What are the research dissemination methods encouraged by the scientific community, and is there empirical evidence to support these claims? The empirical literature outlines predominantly three methods of dissemination in science aimed at the public: plain language research summaries, visual/graphical abstracts, and 2-5 minute video abstracts. For example, in a randomised control trials study, video abstracts and plain language summaries outperformed traditional abstracts in terms of information retention (Bredbenner & Simon, 2019; see Ferreira et al., 2023 for a more comprehensive summary of the benefits of video abstracts). Visual/graphical abstracts also proved to be more effective than traditional research abstracts (Hoffberg et al., 2020).
In practice, I propose that students submit, alongside their dissertation’s traditional abstract, either 1) a plain language research summary alongside a visual/graphical abstract or 2) a 2-5 minutes video abstract. This small addition will not amount to a larger work burden yet the benefits will be immense for everyone: the student, the university, and science. The submission will be assessed as part of the dissertation’s abstract.
I am in the process of requesting a modification to the dissertation unit and successfully consulted the programme director and the psychology team members last week. Next week, I will be consulting the current students.
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References
Bredbenner, K. and Simon, S.M., 2019. Video abstracts and plain language summaries are more effective than graphical abstracts and published abstracts. PloS one, 14(11), p.e0224697.
Ferreira, M., Lopes, B., Granado, A., Siopa, C., Gaspar, H., Castro, H., Castro, S. and Loureiro, J., 2023. Video abstract production guide. Frontiers in Communication, 8, p.1060567.
Hoffberg, A.S., Huggins, J., Cobb, A., Forster, J.E. and Bahraini, N., 2020. Beyond journals—visual abstracts promote wider suicide prevention research dissemination and engagement: a randomized crossover trial. Frontiers in research metrics and analytics, 5, p.564193.