Research Methods in Psychology

Transparency and Credibility in Research

• Researchers often include multiple dependent variables in experiments, especially exploratory research.
• Sometimes only one variable shows a strong effect, while others do not.
• Reporting only strong effects misleads the reader about the overall strength of the evidence.
• HARKing (Hypothesizing After the Results are Known) occurs when predictions are made after the results are known, making the findings seem stronger than they are.
• P-hacking is a practice where researchers might remove outliers, recalculate scores differently, or change statistical methods to get the desired result.
• Researchers often do not intentionally p-hack, but biases can still creep into research procedures.
• Reporting only the strongest results, without detailing all analyses, can misrepresent the evidence for a theory.
• Transparent research practices help to reduce unintentional bias.
• Transparent methods make scientists accountable to themselves and the scientific community.

Open Science

• Open science practices involve sharing data and materials freely, enabling collaboration.
• Sharing data (Open Data) allows other researchers to verify results and perform additional analyses.
• Researchers can share materials (Manipulations, measures), and protocols for other studies to replicate the work, and thus strengthen the findings.
• Preregistration is when scientists publicly declare their methods, hypotheses, and analyses before data collection.
• Preregistration provides transparency and helps to verify that data analyses occurred prior to results.
• Preregistration gives researchers credit for the quality of their study design, not just the results themselves.