Mark R. Beauchamp, PhD

Beauchamp is a professor of exercise and health psychology in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia.

Tell us a bit about your background: What is your area of research? What is your most recent journal-editing experience?

I am a professor of exercise and health psychology in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a former Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research scholar (with a focus on population health). I completed my PhD at the University of Birmingham (of the United Kingdom) in 2002 and was initially a faculty member at the University of Leeds (2002–2005) before coming to UBC in January 2006. At UBC, I progressed from assistant professor to associate professor to full professor (the last transition occurring in 2015). My research focuses on the psychology of group processes within physical activity settings; I am particularly interested in developing effective and scalable physical activity interventions with various populations (e.g., older adults, military veterans). I have published over 150 journal articles, with publications regularly appearing in outlets such as Health Psychology, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, JAMA Psychiatry, Health Psychology Review, as well as Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology (SEPP). I have received funding from agencies such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Veterans Affairs Canada. I am a chartered psychologist and associate fellow of the British Psychological Society.

My journal-editing experiences includes being an associate editor with the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology (2010–2014), an associate editor for Psychology and Health (2011–2018), and a section editor for the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports (2018–2021). I am obviously delighted to be the incoming editor for SEPP.

Briefly, what are your main priorities? For example, how will you grow readership, what type of scholarship would you like to see in the journal, and what kind of content are you hoping to attract?

One of my main priorities is to substantively support open science. As I took on the new position, I worked with Cheryl Johnson and Annie Hill (both at APA) as well as my associate editor team to fully implement the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, and SEPP is now a signatory to the TOP Guidelines.

I plan to build on the stellar work of my predecessor, Professor Maria Kavussanu, and publish high-quality work in sport, exercise, and performance psychology. I think this goal goes hand in hand with the efforts to operationalize the TOP Guidelines, which include encouraging preregistration (of hypotheses and analytic plans) and making code, materials, and data available to other researchers in the field.

The journal encourages high-quality qualitative and quantitative research and will continue to do so. In terms of growing readership, I think this comes by encouraging and publishing high-quality work. I plan to use social media (e.g., Twitter; my Twitter handle is @MarkRBeauchamp) to help get the word out about advance online publications, new initiatives, and other journal-related announcements. I will also continue to work with the associate editor team and editorial board to ensure that reviews are informative, comprehensive, and timely. I think that when readers see high-quality work appear in the journal and the journal is well-known for the quality and expedient turnaround of reviews, this will be a great help in directing more traffic to the journal.

Why is this journal important for the field? What is its relevance to society/public health? What are the hot issues in your area right now?

Exercise and sport pervade many facets of human life. In terms of health promotion, compelling evidence now shows that involvement in regular physical activity (with exercise being one specific form of physical activity) is associated with a number of psychological and physical benefits, and when people are insufficiently active, their health is impaired. Despite the (multiple) benefits of regular activity, the prevalence of inactivity across the globe is high; so, as a field, we need to develop more effective (and scalable) approaches that can support human health. The journal can play an important role in supporting such efforts.

In a similar regard, sport is a global activity that is pursued extensively to achieve both recreational and performance goals. Sport has also been used as an innovative means of breaking down barriers and buffering against social division (e.g., Mousa, 2020opens in new window). With this in mind, the journal is well placed to provide important insights into human behavior, cognition, and emotion in the sport domain. In addition, with the journal’s focus on performance psychology, I will continue to encourage submissions that look to explicate factors that contribute to achievement outcomes in other performance domains as well (e.g., military, performing arts, surgery). In such instances, performance might include operationalizations at the individual (e.g., athlete, employee) level but also at the group (e.g., sport team, military platoon) level. I anticipate that such investigations have the potential to meaningfully inform work in the sport domain and vice versa. Indeed, I think our journal can operate as an important platform to facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas (and knowledge translation) between work happening in the sport domain and other achievement settings.

In terms of what is hot right now, I would say that emphasis on methodological rigor is particularly salient. I would not want to promote one topic or issue to the exclusion of others that might be equally deserving of attention. However, I think that over the past few years (perhaps as a reflection of the broader replication crisis in psychology and other areas) there has been an increased recognition among researchers conducting quantitative research of the value of preregistering hypotheses and analyses, as well as of making code, materials, and data available to other researchers (an overview of the journal’s Open Science initiatives). In a similar regard, notable efforts have been made by researchers undertaking qualitative research in the field to ensure rigor is substantively embraced (e.g., Smith & McGannon, 2018opens in new window).

As a complement to embracing methodological rigor, the journal is also very well positioned to promote theoretical, conceptual, and analytical innovation, and I would welcome submissions that look to make substantive advances in these areas as well. Whether this involves developing, refining, and testing better theories than are currently available or promoted (e.g., Muthukrishna & Henrich, 2019opens in new window) or using analytic methods such as intensive longitudinal modeling that enable researchers to better examine the dynamic nature of psychological processes in physical activity settings (e.g., Ruissen et al, 2021opens in new window), I see considerable potential for the journal to be at the forefront of innovations in the field.

What challenges, if any, lie ahead for the field?

I suspect the COVID-19 pandemic will have disrupted research and outreach activities of many researchers in the field over the past 2 years. Of course, the costs in terms of human life and suffering more broadly are the primary toll. From the perspective of the field of sport, exercise, and performance psychology, many activities, studies, and trials were interrupted or had to close down; as a result, there may well be a downturn in studies being completed and published at the moment. With that said, the field is a highly vibrant one, and I expect a healthy rebound over the next few years.

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