UWTSD BSc Psychology students’ live experience of a global research project

Second-year UWTSD BSc Psychology students are helping with a major research project as part of their studies.

The students are designing, creating, and running research studies examining issues of gender equality, how men and women are expected to behave, and people’s perceptions of what it means to be a ‘real’ man or woman in today’s world.

The programme module, Research in Action, is designed to allow students to participate in live psychological research projects and with the module leads, Dr Katie Sullivan and Dr Paul Hutchings, leading the Welsh arm of the Towards Gender Harmony Research Project and being authors on several of the resulting research papers, this provided a unique opportunity for students on the course to get involved.

Towards Gender Harmony is a global project that has measured attitudes towards issues of gender equality and attitudes from over 30,000 participants in over 60 countries and has provided some of the most comprehensive findings about gender equality in recent times.

Dr Hutchings said: “One of the big benefits of having smaller cohorts of students than many other universities, combined with our dedicated psychology research facilities, is that we can offer opportunities such as this which would be almost impossible anywhere else. The students get to collaborate with us as researchers rather than as lecturers as part of their course of study, and this means we can directly train them to develop many of the skills that are vital in our area of work. Other students can say that they have learnt something, but these students can say they have done it as well, and that is a powerful addition to their CVs.”

As well as providing training for the students the psychology team are hoping the research will also produce something meaningful for the Welsh community.

“The Gender Harmony project answered a lot of questions but also posed many more, about attitudes in individual countries and how they compare across the world,” said Dr Sullivan. “For example, we have found that there are differences in the ways that males and females view further moves towards equality; long-held views about the jobs that are suitable for males and females still exist; and the pressure that society places on men and women to behave in ways that conform to being a ‘real’ man or woman are immense.

“The students will be conducting research to explore these issues further and we will hopefully produce something that we can present in a conference or research paper at the end of the module. It would be fantastic for the students to be able to showcase their hard work at the end of it.”

Further Information

Rebecca Davies

Swyddog Gweithredol Cysylltiadau â’r Wasg a’r Cyfryngau

Executive Press and Media Relations Officer

Cyfathrebu Corfforaethol a Chysylltiadau Cyhoeddus

Corporate Communications and PR

Mobile: 07384 467071

Email: Rebecca.Davies@uwtsd.ac.uk