Research is very highly valued at the University of East Anglia and we aim to provide a research environment which is encouraging and testing.  Therefore accepting a place at the University of East Anglia means that you must be willing to commit yourself to undertake research at a high standard and expect to publish the research that you complete.

We value research for its own sake and also because it is a core component of clinical psychology training and practice.  Practising clinical psychologists are consumers of research and producers of research.  Adopting the "scientist-practitioner" model involves a continuous process of integrating research findings into clinical practice, adopting a hypothesis testing approach to therapy and engaging in clinically relevant research.  Our aim amongst the clinical psychology group (staff and trainees) is to conduct research which complements clinical work, which informs and enhances clinical skills, which is theoretically based, and which contributes to the development of health service practice and/or policy.  In addition, we aim to train clinical psychologists in critical evaluation of research, in summarising and integrating research findings, and in drawing out the clinical implications of research.  We particularly welcome applicants with a strong interest in research and those who want to develop a clinical research career.

Research Programmes within Psychological Sciences

There are four main research programmes within the Department of Psychological Sciences, and clinical psychology staff are members of these programmes, along with other members of the Department of Psychological Sciences:

  1. Mental health problems in adults.  Including severe mental illness, early interventions in psychosis, treatment for bipolar disorder, PTSD, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, (David Fowler, Malcolm Adams, Sian Coker, Margo Ononaiye, Laura Jobson, Bundy Mackintosh, Lina Gega, Gillian Todd, Sirous Mobini)
  2. Child and adolescent mental health.  Adapting CBT for use with young children.  Anxiety disorders and obsessive compulsive disorders in young people.  Acquired brain injury and its emotional sequelae, feeding difficulties (Shirley Reynolds, Siân Coker, Anna Adlam, Eleanor Sutton)
  3. Health psychology.  The psychological impact of chronic physical disease (e.g. asthma, diabetes, arthritis), pain, paediatric psychology (Malcolm Adams, Imogen Hobbis, Kiki Mastroyannopoulou, Jane Smith)
  4. Vulnerable populations.  Challenging behaviour and intellectual disabilities, autism, carers of those with chronic and deteriorating disease, dementia, culture and PTSD, forensic populations, Cognitive, emotional, behavioural, and social consequences of brain injury in adults and children (Peter Langdon, Malcolm Adams, Laura Jobson and Anna Adlam)

Our research programmes are funded from a number of sources including the MRC, the ESRC, the Wellcome Trust, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, Action Medical Research, NIHR-RfPB, NIHR-TCC, and the NIHR HTA programme.  The research programmes described above are based in clinical practice and are usually multi-disciplinary in orientation.  The research training at the University of East Anglia is therefore aimed at teaching ways and means of conducting ecologically valid, high quality and generalisable research of direct clinical relevance to the NHS.  Trainees benefit from being part of an active research community and are encouraged to contribute to the programmes of research described above.

The Research Training Programme

Trainees arrive at the University of East Anglia with a range of research experience in different settings, and research training within the Doctorate Programme in Clinical Psychology begins at the start of the course.  Trainees are required to develop and submit a thesis proposal in November of Year 2.  The thesis is submitted in February of Year 3.  Trainees also develop and complete a service research project with is submitted in June of Year 3.  Trainees will start work on their service research project in Year 2, and this overlaps with work on the thesis. The thesis is generally based on individual research, but collaboration between trainees is encouraged.  Two days each week are available for research/study from May of the second year (3 days from July to September) to January in the third year.

The Thesis is a substantial piece of work (max 40,000 words) which makes a contribution to the research literature and is of publishable quality.  All projects will require ethical approval and the majority require NHS approval so planning early is essential.  Research supervisors will expect to see drafts of the thesis and to comment on these.  It is therefore essential that trainees plan their time carefully, allowing sufficient time for data collection, data analysis, drafting and redrafting, printing and binding.  In the thesis trainees are expected to demonstrate a number of skills.  These include; reviewing and integrating the relevant literature, presenting a rationale for the study, developing research questions and an appropriate research design, conducting the research ethically and competently, handling the data and analysing it appropriately, presenting the results clearly (using graphics to illustrate the more salient parts), summarising the results and relating them back to the original research questions, discussing the results and their clinical implications and critically appraising the project.  The thesis is marked by an internal examiner (not the research supervisor) and an external examiner and is the main focus of the discussion in the viva voce examination.