Writing Plain Language Summaries: Can B.Sc. Students Communicate Scientific Evidence as Effectively as Trained Psychologists?

Plain language summaries (PLSs) aim for effective, evidence-based science communication by reporting scientific results in a generally understandable language. Here, we investigated whether students can produce PLSs of high quality, using guidelines of the project KLARpsy, which hosts German-language text PLSs of psychological meta-analyses freely accessible in the web. After a pre-screening of eligible meta-analyses and a pilot rating (e.g., of interest and social relevance), B.Sc. students in psychology ( n = 18) each wrote a PLS about a self-suggested meta-analysis as part of their B.Sc. thesis. In the explorative evaluation study, we tested competing predictions on how author expertise might affect text quality. Independent participants ( n = 232; mostly non-psychologists) rated one randomly drawn student-written PLS and one expert-written PLS (from the existing KLARpsy collection). The perceived understanding and empowerment were both rated lower for the student texts; this is theoretically in line with an expert-superiority effect. Yet, small effect sizes and the high overall text quality suggest that, even before completing their academic degree, with clear guidelines and minimal additional support from lecturers, students’ writing PLSs not only trains the communicative skills of future scientists and practitioners but can also provide direct outcomes of social and practical relevance.