Interview with Ella Howes
- Merle van den Akker
- Oct 12
- 6 min read
Behavioural Science is a rapidly expanding field and everyday new research is being developed in academia, tested and implemented by practitioners in financial organisations, development agencies, government ‘nudge’ units and more. This interview is part of a series interviewing prominent people in the field. And in today's interview the answers are provided by Ella Howes.
Ella is a PhD student funded by the Trials Methodology Research Partnership (TMRP) Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP), based at the University of Leeds. Her PhD is looking at what needs to be considered when adapting a complex intervention for remote delivery within a trial. Previously, Ella worked as a translational behavioural scientist on the Human Behaviour Change Project, led by Professor Susan Michie. Ella has also delivered a number of training courses on the Behaviour Change Wheel and its application as part of her work with the behavioural science consultancy, Applied Behaviour Change. Ella recently launched a podcast on the What, Why, When, Who and How of Trials Methodology which you can listen to here. Ella also writes and talks about grief (with an occasional behavioural science twist!).
Who or what got you into behavioural science?
It started with being really nosy. As a child, I’d ask anyone and everyone wildly inappropriate questions. I’d spend piano lessons asking my teacher whether she had ever taken drugs and then interrogate babysitters about how many people they had kissed…. Initially, I thought this obsession with people meant I should be a doctor. It wasn’t until I took a Behaviour Change module in my third year at university that I discovered there was a whole discipline dedicated to understanding behaviour! Not only could this discipline legitimise my nosiness (!), but it could also help me understand my own behaviour and beliefs better.
For example, for two years I had determinedly believed my Mum would be ok (after a very not-ok diagnosis). The tools and insights I learned about helped me see that this wasn’t silly naivety –just a severe (and understandable) case of confirmation bias.
After my undergraduate degree in Human Sciences, I found a masters in Behaviour Change at University College London, which then led to a job as a translational behaviour scientist on the Human Behaviour Change Project.
What is the accomplishment you are proudest of as a behavioural scientist? And what would you still like to achieve?
I’m really proud of having had the opportunity to work on the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology (BCIO), as part of my role on the Human Behaviour Change Project. It was my first job in ‘behavioural science’, and while it wasn’t about directly changing behaviour, it zoomed out to tackle the messiness of the discipline itself. The BCIO is a tool to support more consistent reporting of behaviour change interventions. You can find out more about the project, led by Professor Susan Michie, in this webinar series.
As for what I still want to achieve: I’m currently halfway through a PhD looking at what you need to consider if adapting a complex intervention for remote delivery within a trial. I’d like to not only finish the PhD (!) but also make sure the results of three years of research are understandable and useable.
How do you think behavioural science will develop (in the next 10 years)?
‘Behavioural science’ is a very broad discipline, with wide-ranging applications. The behavioural insights needed to effectively implement an intervention within a hospital environment, are very different from those used to increase user engagement with an app. However, we often group all of this work under a similar umbrella. Perhaps over the next 10 years we will develop clearer and more universally established sub-disciplines of behavioural science, like those that exist elsewhere (e.g. in the discipline of ‘Biology’ there is ecology/botany/microbiology etc.). This granularity might help us better organise and communicate our tools and findings.
With all your experience, what skills would you say are needed to be a behavioural scientist? Are there any recommendations you would make?
Applying behavioural science often involves convincing other people of its value! For that – we need good communication skills. I’d also say it’s also important to remain critical. There is no such thing as a magic bullet for behaviour change. No model can help us understand absolutely everything. We can only ‘effectively’ apply the tools we have, if we are aware of their limitations! Finally, we need to appreciate the messiness of the field. Human behaviour is inherently complex and context dependent. We need to work with the messiness, not against it.
What advice would you give to young behavioural scientists or those looking to progress into the field?
You can be a behavioural scientist, without having a job title that calls you that! When I finished my master’s, I really wanted to find a job where I’d be called a "behavioural scientist." I thought that title would legitimise my ability to ‘do’ behavioural science. But I’ve come to see that behavioural science is about application, not labels. You can use behavioural science in any role—as a product manager, trial manager, teacher, policymaker or parent. The key is recognising how to apply behavioural insights within your context. You might not be "called" a behavioural scientist, but that doesn’t make your work less behaviourally informed.
I wrote about applying behavioural science to finding a job in behavioural science here – which might also have some helpful advice!
What are the greatest challenges being faced by behavioural science, right now?
Ooooo – if I think about behaviour science as applied to intervention development within a trial (a potential sub-discipline!?) … a key challenge is how we effectively implement the evidence from those trials. There is a tension with maintaining fidelity within the trial (i.e. the extent to which what you plan is what you deliver) while also building in flexibility for its post-trial implementation. This balance between rigour and relevance is very challenging (but hugely interesting!).
Related to this is the difficulty of evaluating whether a behaviour change intervention ‘worked’. There are a number of ways we can evaluate something… and all of those ways might lead to a different understanding of what worked and why…. which then makes me think that it’s not just the evaluation of the intervention that is challenging, but also the evaluation of the evaluation itself!
What is your biggest frustration with the field as it stands?
If I were to draw an analogy and compare the whole of behavioural science to a garden (bear with me!), I’d say a lot of what we share and discuss are the more visible parts of the ‘garden’… the prettier, easier to describe flowers …The trees…How the garden is laid out… The less easily described (and less pretty!) parts are where attention is also needed. The soil, the roots, why plants grow in one area and not in another… (I hope this analogy works!).
Another frustration is the tendency to focus on design, over implementation. It’s all very well having a beautifully designed and theory informed intervention – but that’s just the beginning! We need to know whether (and how!) it can be implemented… the resources involved… how to maintain fidelity… who can engage with it and why…. The real complexity emerges when you try to deliver that intervention in the real world, with all its constraints, contexts, and unpredictability.
If not a behavioural scientist, what else would you be?
Maybe without behavioural science, I would have done graduate medicine (but again – doctors use behavioural science all the time – even if unintentionally!)
How do you apply behavioural science to your own life, if at all?
I apply behavioural science a lot to how I think and write about grief. Grief is messy and nonlinear, like behaviour. Using models like COM-B has helped me make sense of my own experiences and explain them to others. It’s also helped me think about how I can make grief more accessible to read about. For example, when I was thinking about potential barriers to reading about grief, I realised one key barrier might be a belief that what I’m writing about will be intense and serious (not my intention at all!). To try and ‘target’ this barrier, I have created a digestibility rating. I have three ratings (‘feeling griefy on the go’, ‘coffee and croissant’, and ‘sip and digest’) which each give a little indication of what the piece will be about and where it might be best to read it (e.g. if it’s appropriate reading for the bus, or better to wait to read at home).
You can read my writing on grief here (and if you want to help create some more social pressure to keep up my writing habit, you can subscribe to receive monthly griefy insights too!)
Who else would you recommend me to interview?
Dr. Danielle D’Lima. She is the teaching lead on the Behaviour Change Master's at UCL and is one of the most brilliant teachers I’ve ever had. She has really shaped the way I think about behavioural science—from being critical of theory to appreciating the complexity of implementation. Every time I talk to Danielle, I learn something new!
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions Ella!
As I said before, this interview is part of a larger series which can also be found here on the blog. Make sure you don't miss any of those, nor any of the upcoming interviews!
Keep your eye on Money on the Mind!
