About the Research Programme

The EFPSA Research Programme (EFPSA RP) is an EFPSA Service, consisting of a twelve month research programme that involves  students, PhD and postdoctoral researchers and established academics. This programme offers a unique opportunity to develop research abilities, academic, teamwork, leadership and interpersonal skills. All Research Summer School participants completing the training programme and committing to the research project are invited to join the EPFSA RP. The EFPSA Research Programme was formerly known as EFPSA Junior Research Programme. The EFPSA Service received a new name in 2019.

The EFPSA RP was developed to meet the needs of RSS research projects by supplying framework, guidance and academic support to students and supervisors throughout the duration of each project. The primary purpose of the EFPSA RP is to provide a structure by which all research groups are able to complete and submit all EFPSA RP research for dissemination within a twelve month period after the RSS.

Highlights of the programme include publication of methodology papers in the EFPSA Journal of European Psychology Students (JEPS), presentation of work to-date during the annual EFPSA Congress. In the past, presentation were held at the Junior Researcher Programme Conference (JRPC). In order to give the research teams a bigger audience, more opportunities and a better place to present their research project, the Research Teams are now invited to the upcoming annual EFPSA Congress after the RSS. This change was introduced in 2019.

The programme is run by the EFPSA RP Team which consists of the RP Coordinator,  the RP Research Responsible, and RP Team Member. The EFPSA RP is supported by the EFPA Advisory Board.

How it works

The EFPSA (European Federation of Psychology Students’ Associations) Research Programme (RP) is a twelve month research programme that involves students, PhD and postdoctoral researchers and established academics. This programme offers a unique opportunity to develop research abilities, academic, teamwork, leadership and interpersonal skills. Each year there are at least six teams that each consist of six undergraduate or master students led by a PhD or a postdoctoral researcher.

The Researcher Programme (RP) aims to meet needs of the Research Summer School (RSS) research projects by supplying framework, guidance and academic support to students and supervisors throughout the duration the project.

In all, there are four stages of RP involvement:

1. Attendance at the Research Summer School (RSS)
2. Completion of methodology papers (short literature reviews + methods/ethics/issues section) in the six months post-RSS
3. Presentation of work completed at annual EFPSA Congress
4. Submission of methodology papers to JEPS’ Work-in-Progress Reports

Current Projects – RP 2025/2026

Soon!

Ethics

The EFPSA RP approach to safety, integrity and transparency in research

As the EFPSA RP has continuously improved standards for scientific work across many disciplines in psychology, we have also redoubled our efforts to ensure that any work supported through the programme expresses a clear commitment to ethical guidelines even while carried out through a variety of institutions, countries and languages. While we are neither a university nor a programme with a fixed location, we still approach ethics as the first and most important element of each project. During the RSS training, there are several explicit discussions surrounding ethics where the below elements are presented. For each of these, it is made abundantly clear that, even with ambiguity and variance between many locations/institutions on how to approach ethics for international projects, we demand transparency and clear records on how ethical approval was obtained for each study and testing location. Beginning in 2013, we have decided to make those steps public as a means to reference and better understand our approach and ultimately our research. This section is thus a description of how we advise our groups to gain ethical approval but we underline that such endorsement does not come from the RP itself.

1. Research Supervisor Institution

Before being offered a position to lead one of the six RP research groups each year, prospective Supervisors are required to guarantee that they have access to a standing ethics committee in their institution. As part of this process, Supervisors must also ensure that they have guidance on how to remain ethical if/when testing in a location beyond the scope of their own institution.

2. Junior Researcher Institution

For our researchers still studying or otherwise engaged in universities who wish to claim affiliation with an institution, we require that they notify their respective faculties/departments of the work as soon as the RSS is complete and the Supervisor has received ethical approval. As each university varies in terms of student project ethical guidelines, we do not have a standing approach to the next steps but explicitly request all participants ensure they have received written approval of this project from an authorised source locally or their own full ethical review, if required. We then advise our groups to have these documents translated into the appropriate languages for immediate production if requested.

3. Testing Location

Many of our projects move on to test in non-university environments, such as schools, community centres and other established organisations. Much like with universities, not all institutions have the same (or even standing) guidelines on how permission is granted to test among their membership. For this reason, we advise our groups to contact the organisation as soon as they are certain of their data collection plans to get details on how permission to collect data should be gained. Sometimes this is as simple as a short email where others require higher authorities (e.g. education ministries, local councils) to provide authorisation.

4. Affiliation

The above steps must be followed before the RP will assign affiliation for any team member to project outputs. This is done to protect universities and institutions of our members to ensure they are not linked to work without their direct knowledge. This may not always equate to ethical review in each location, but at least an acknowledgement from an authorised source from a recognised institution which may be listed as a participant in the project must confirm awareness without reservation about the research. All outputs from the work should then be reported back to both the affiliated institutions and, as established in other commitment documents, to the RP.

In some circumstances where team members are unable to list an affiliation (e.g. recent graduation, not possible receive affiliation in current institution, etc; NOTE: not in the case of ethical approval being denied), we offer RP as an official option. The same protocols must be followed for this as all other affiliation requested described above, though we explicitly note that in these instances, RP may not be the sole affiliation for any individual or group collecting data, nor does this affiliation represent ethical approval.

Find more here:

Research Pulse Blog: https://more.efpsa.org/rpblog/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/efpsa_research/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EFPSAResearch/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/efpsa-academic-affairs/?viewAsMember=true