Sarah Bowen (PhD Student, Nottingham) is working with Chris Starmer, Abigail Barr (NIBS1) and collaborators in the Schools of Psychology and Pharmacy, together with business partners, on projects regarding nudge and medical adherence. 

One investigation took the form of a randomised controlled trial, at the pharmacy level, to test the efficacy of commitment nudges, combined with a mixed methods investigation into the mechanisms leading to the nudge effects. Sarah presented her 'work in progress' at a BRIDGES seminar at the University of Warwick on 30 October 2018 .  The project received NIBS funding for the pilot.

Sarah presented updates on her research at the CCC event (May 2019) and the NIBS Autumn Workshops in September 2019 and 2021.

In latest presentation at the September 2021 workshop, Sarah explains; "In the absence of a gold-standard measurement tool, self-reports are often used to measure and evaluate medication adherence. In this paper, we use online experiments to investigate the reliability of standardised self-reported medication adherence questionnaires in the presence of behavioural nudge messages. We find evidence that when a nudge is present at the point of self-report, participants report to be more adherent to their medication than individuals shown a neutral control message. We find this result even though medication adherence could not have changed in the time between seeing the nudge and completing a self-report. We also find that the effect of the nudge on self-reports is detected when participants are instructed to only think about the last 2 weeks (time-bound self-report)".