Diversity and Scientific Integrity
Diversity Statement
In promoting the excellence of European social psychology research, the EASP aims to ensure that the association and its resources are accessible to qualified scholars and students from a range of backgrounds and approaches, and across all regions of Europe. Hence, the EASP is committed to promoting and supporting all types of diversity within the association—for example, gender, sexual orientation, geographic, thematic, and methodological—and to facilitate a supportive and inclusive environment for members from a diverse membership.
This includes initiatives aimed at:
- Achieving and maintaining a diverse membership, with regard to aspects such as sexual orientation, geographical region, research topic or approach and so forth;
- Promoting the involvement of members from currently underrepresented groups and from disadvantaged regions in the association’s activities; and
- Providing opportunities for financial support to members across Europe.
See below for the report of the Diversity Officer during the Members’ Meeting in Krakow, 2023, on measures to increase diversity in research and an inclusive climate during 2021-2023.
Existing activities
Achieving and promoting diversity is core to the association’s activities. Some specific activities serve these aims most directly, for example:
The Executive Committee considers diversity, in its various aspects, as a core criterion besides academic excellence in all the selections it makes (for awards, grants, etc.) and, where possible, engages in active efforts to attract a diverse pool of candidates. The Executive Committee communicates the importance of doing this to the organizers of all the meetings, conferences, and summer schools it funds, and to the editors of its journals.
All EASP awards, made every three years, are now either open to (self-)nominations or open to suggestions from members, to broaden the pool to be considered.
- The EASP grant system aims to help members during the different stages of their scientific career, and explicitly encourages applications from members from regions that have only limited access to travel funds and whose infrastructure or training facilities are less well developed than elsewhere. Any topic within social psychology is considered eligible and there is no restriction on the research methods proposed, as long as these are justified and of excellent quality.
- The Social Psychology Ambassadors program aims to promote social psychological research either in European regions (broadly defined) that have a less developed academic infrastructure or representation of social psychology, and/or on regional topics that have received less interest in mainstream social psychology. The goal of the ambassadorships is to come up with innovative ways to connect researchers, reach out to policy makers or communities and/or to conduct (initial) research on topics that are so far overlooked.
- The Research Knowledge Transfer Scheme (RKTS) is specifically intended to fund any initiative that benefits the professional development of EASP members from regions where access to scientific information, facilities, and/or funding is scarce compared to other European regions, or to foster underrepresented research themes and approaches. Examples of activities (that can be or have been) funded through these schemes are workshops on specific research topics, methods, data analysis, or writing for publication.
- The Collaborative Research Grant was developed to assist researchers in developing new projects which will be pursued through the collaboration with one or more researchers from different countries. In particular, collaborative research grants are intended to support preliminary research, which may assist the holders to subsequently obtain larger-scale funding from other sources. This grant scheme also aims to increase diversity within EASP, in that at least one of the partners needs to either work in a region facing economic hardship or in which the EASP is not well represented.
- The EASP funds research meetings with a minimum of 20 participants, irrespective of the topic (as long as it falls within social psychology). Moreover, the EASP is particularly keen to encourage applications from topics and regions that have received less funding in previous years.
- A yearly workshop on scientific writing and publishing is delivered by two senior EASP members, who volunteer to provide early career researchers with training in scientific writing in English (identified by the EASP as an obstacle to achieving greater regional diversity). Priority is given to PhD students and postdocs from underrepresented regions, who do not have access to an academic writing workshop in a PhD programme. Reports about the workshops can be found in the winter issues of the European Bulletin of Social Psychology.
- In 2016-2017, the EASP funded and supported a Diversity Working Party (WP), to analyze diversity at the EASP. The WP authored a report that was discussed with the Executive Committee and was presented to members in a roundtable session during the 2017 General Meeting in Granada.
Scientific Integrity Statement
The European Association of Social Psychology (EASP) subscribes to the importance of ethical research and publication practices. We subscribe to the meta-code of ethics set out by the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations (EFPA) and to the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. The EASP also subscribes to the more discipline-specific codes of human research ethics set out by various national societies, such as (in English) the Code for Human Research Ethics of the British Psychological Society and the Ethical Principles of Psychologists of the American Psychological Association (APA).
These principles cover essential issues such as beneficence and non-maleficence, fidelity and responsibility, integrity, justice, respect for people's rights and dignity, informed consent, use of deception in research, debriefing, the reporting of research results (fabrication and error correction), plagiarism, publication credit, duplicate publication, and sharing research data.
EASP members are expected to subscribe to these ethical principles both when joining and throughout their membership of the association.
Diversity Training Resources
As part of our commitment to diversity, we (Kai Jonas, Ola (Oladipupo) Shobowale, and Nurit Shnabel) also prepared a short presentation (and a video to walk you through it) about demographic diversity in hiring and promotion in psychology. We hope that these materials will be useful for those of you who want to learn about this topic or who are interested in delivering a presentation about it (e.g., to inform hiring or promotion committees in your institution). You are welcome to watch, use and adjust these materials to your purposes.
Link to presentation: https://tau-ac-il.zoom.us/rec/share/Ic3mdxcAA5FitrcnB7Veky0meAn_DwblNztbgnSbsSSVvFG50P3iti614MqzgBXf.0Djl04MkZNELQVsr
You are welcome to download the presentation. The references to the papers that are mentioned in each slide appear in the notes sections underneath the slides.