Just two weeks after our conference in Cascais (see our latest news post), our Health Psychology group got another opportunity for research exchange with colleagues – this time at home! From 15 to 19 September 2024, the biannual conference of the German Psychological Society (DGPs) took place in Vienna. Within this conference, Prof. Laura M. König also gave her official talk as a new Austrian professor. In this talk, she presented the opportunities and challenges of using digital technology for health behaviour measurement and change. Beyond that, the team contributed to several research discussions throughout the conference:
Prof. Laura M. König contributed to the conference by sharing insights and guidelines on publishing both in academic journals and in regards of communicating research to the public. Specifically, she organized a workshop on comprehensible writing together with colleagues from the In-Mind magazine and presented the magazine in a session on publishing in psychology. The magazine is designed to translate research findings in a way that the public can understand. Prof. Laura M. König furthermore represented In-Mind in an interactive forum on science communication. She also shared recommendations for effective written communication based on a systematic review as part of a symposium: “Communicating scientific evidence to the public – an applied psychology perspective”. The systematic review was recently published in the Zeitschrift für Psychologie.
Dr. Alea Ruf gave a flashlight talk on health behaviours in relation to resilience. The corresponding paper is currently in press in the American Psychologist. In addition, she presented the results of a recent study on measurement reactivity of snacking in everyday life, which she conducted together with our external lab member Anila Allmeta and Master students in Vienna. This talk was part of the symposium “Methodological and measurement issues in ambulatory assessment”.
Dr. Theresa J. S. Koch shared insights on the relation between healthy eating and psychological well-being over long-term periods, which was implemented in a research talk session named “Health Psychology: The Influence of Nutrition”. The study was recently published in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being.
We really enjoyed the conference, got many new insights thanks to inspiring discussions, and are especially grateful for spending time with our colleagues onsite. However, it was frightening to observe the extreme weather conditions in our region in the meantime. Our thoughts are with everyone living in the affected areas, and we thank the emergency services for their efforts. Flooding in Vienna and around – and resulting train cancellations – prevented many of our colleagues from joining us onsite. It was of course great that they were immediately able to participate digitally (thanks to the organizing committee!), but many research talks around the topic of planetary health seemed almost too timely. We very much hope that everyone got back home safely. Let’s hope for a similarly insightful conference but under less severe conditions when meeting again at DGPs in Luxemburg 2026.
