Speaker：Dr. Derwin Chan, Associate Professor, Department of Early Childhood Education (ECE), The Education University of Hong Kong

Time： 14:00 - 15:30，Sep. 18th

Venue：博雅学堂201

Host：Professor Yiqun Gan

Abstract

Social and behavioural scientists are frequently tasked with evaluating community health programs, yet the scientific value of such impact assessments is often debated. In this seminar, Dr. Derwin Chan will share insights from evaluating the largest learn-to-swim programme in Hong Kong, funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. Between 2016 and 2018, this initiative provided 20 swimming lessons to 16,500 primary school students. To assess its impact, Dr. Chan conducted a pre-post-test quasi-experiment with 1,609 participants, followed by a six-year longitudinal study in 2023 involving 346 of these children to examine long-term outcomes. Beyond evaluating programme effectiveness, the study generated novel hypotheses about children’s swimming competence and the psychological factors driving sustained sports participation. The findings highlight the scientific and practical value of the dataset, offering insights into social and psychological factors behind children’s mastery and participation in swimming in Hong Kong. This seminar illustrates how impact assessments can serve as a robust platform for advancing social and behavioural science research.

Bio

Dr. Derwin Chan is a health psychologist with diverse research interests in the areas of applied social psychology, child health, behavioural medicine, and sport and exercise psychology. He is a Chartered Psychologist and a Fellow with the British Psychological Society, and a Chartered Scientist with the British Science Council. Dr. Chan has over 130 publications of peer-reviewed articles related to the psychology of health, sport and exercise, and behavioural medicine. His research primarily focuses on psychosocial, motivational, and social cognitive processes underpinning individuals’ behaviours (e.g., avoidance of unintentional doping, physical activity, healthy diets, safety, and disease prevention). Dr. Chan has been recognised as the leading expert who can provide scientific evaluations on the impact/ effectiveness of large-scale community health programmes. While Dr. Chan's research spans a wide range of health contexts, one particular area—unintentional doping—has garnered increasing attention. His work has been instrumental in elevating the prevention of unintentional doping to a strategic research priority and a key global educational initiative for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). He is a member of the WADA Expert Advisory Group of Social Science Research, and a founding member of WADA taskforce of unintentional doping. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Stress and Health, Advisory Editor of Social Science & Medicine, and editorial board member of six other scholarly journals.

2025-09-03