A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Translation – Ideas for Fostering and Disseminating (Clinical) Translational Psychology

Allgemeines

Art der Publikation: Journal Article

Veröffentlicht auf / in: European Psychologist

Jahr: 2025

Seiten: 1-23

Verlag (Publisher): Hogrefe

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000555

Autoren

Max Berg

Kristina Suchotzki

Johannes Zimmermann

Christian J. Merz

Katharina Szota

Holger Brandt

Gesa Hartwigsen

Tania M. Lincoln

Andreas Mokros

Miriam Gade

Cornelia Niessen

John Rauthmann

Stefanie Hoehl

Thomas Kubiak

Thomas Franke

Lena Frischlich

Juliane Degner

Ellen Matthies

Jörn R. Sparfeldt

Winfried Rief

Anke Haberkamp

Zusammenfassung

Although evidence-based psychological treatments have received wide recognition as established interventions
for numerous conditions, challenges concerning their availability, efficacy, and dissemination remain. During the last
decades, numerous fields in medicine have improved their treatments by adopting a translational perspective that
integrates research from different basic and applied fields. Systematic meta-research does, however, show that only a
minority of evidence-based treatments in clinical psychology are grounded in (or derived from) basic psychological research.
To facilitate communication between clinical scientists and other psychologists, researchers from the University of Marburg
conducted semi-structured interviews with spokespersons of different subfields of the German Psychological Society. From
these interviews, recommendations, and ideas for improving translational psychology were collected. This integrative article
is the result of an iterative consensus-building process with the interviewed experts. It summarizes insights and derives
useful guidance for novel translational research projects. We discuss the opportunities and challenges of translational
psychology and provide explicit instruction on how to transfer basic psychological research into applied research and vice
versa. We provide recommendations regarding the incorporation of translational psychology into higher education curricula.
Additionally, we explore ways to enhance scientific integrity and keep pace with rapid digital transformation in our field.
Finally, we present a concise overview of science dissemination and explore how translational psychology contributes to the
resolution of pressing (societal) issues.

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