Behavioural Insights Exchange

• Industry partners submit an initial idea via the online or  downloadable form.
• Proposals are accepted until the end of August; students are allocated to projects by November.
• Students apply for projects and are matched based on relevant interests and skill sets.
• Industry partners assign an internal mentor to oversee the project.
• The BIX team assigns a UCL academic for additional supervision.
• Project timelines and working arrangements are flexible and agreed upon by the industry mentor, student, and academic.
• At project completion around August / September, partners receive a short presentation or 2–3 page executive summary.

Note: It can be hard for industry partners to judge how big a project is appropriate for a masters student project. The process of refining your proposal will involve some feedback from academic supervisors, who have a lot of experience of judging this, and they might suggest that you either need to reduce the size of your project, use different methods to achieve the same aim, or split it into multiple student projects (with a £1000 fee per project, but still only one admin fee). 

Novel data collection 

The most common type of project. A new study is designed, conducted and analysed to address a specific research question relevant to the organisation. This can be internal e.g. on the organisation's staff, or external on the general public e.g. consumer behaviour.

Analysis of existing data

An independent analysis of existing data provided by the research partner that addresses a novel question and leverages the analytic skills of the UCL student.

• Example: a market research company wants to know how memorable television adverts are, and has data on consumers’ emotional engagement with these ads. The student might apply existing psychological theories and models, combined with modern analytic techniques, to determine whether emotional engagement predicts memory for adverts and to what extent.

Systematic reviews/insight reports 

A qualitative and quantitative literature review with the aim of answering a particular question.

• Example: an organisation may wish to determine whether early intervention maths programmes improve attainment in at-risk pupils. The student would compile a systematic literature review of the existing evidence and apply relevant meta-analytic methods to answer this question.

BIX projects are cost effective with minimal financial obligations relative to the return values.  This is split into 2 parts:

1. Research Fee – £1000 (per project)

Students use this fee to cover the cost of conducting the research, such as paying participants for testing. It is paid by all industry partners for each project.

2. Project Administration Fee

This fee is based on your organisation type and number of projects:

• Public or third sector: £500 for ONE project (£1000 for TWO or more projects)
• All other industry partners: £1500 (reduced fee to £1000 for returning partners)

If you submit more than one project in the same academic year, you only pay the admin fee once. If you submit projects in a different academic year, the fee applies again.

The costs are significantly less than hiring a new employee or a project-based consultant, enabling organisations to explore partnership opportunities and/or get answers to specific questions without advanced budget planning.  Access to cutting-edge scientific knowledge and highly skilled data analysis at these rates is not typically available to the private, public or third sectors. 

Where appropriate, BIX projects can involve more than one student. In cases such as this, our industry partner will be presented with a single report at the end of the project.

We cannot offer BIX projects with the NHS that require clinical research. However, other NHS projects may be suitable and we have worked fruitfully with the NHS many times.

Finally, these projects provide a bridge to accessing UCL expertise and resources in the form of more extensive research partnerships such as funded PhD studentships (e.g. CASE, Impact, and others), consulting opportunities for academics (UCLC), clinical trials, and via research projects.