Why Do Some Psychology Researchers Resist Adopting Proposed Reforms to Research Practices? A Description of Researchers’ Rationales

Abstract

In response to the “replication crisis” many psychologists recommended that the field adopt several proposed reforms to research practices (PRRPs), like preregistration, to make research more replicable. However, reception of PRRPs is not well known. We wanted to know the rationales researchers had for not using them. We analyzed data of 1,035 researchers in social and personality psychology from Motyl et al. (2017) who asked them to explain when they thought it was acceptable to not use four specific PRRPs: preregistering hypotheses/methods, making data publicly available online, conducting formal power analyses, and reporting effect sizes. Our results suggest that (a) adoption and use of PRRPs is quite varied and (b) rationales for not using them reflect a need for more discussion and education about the utility and feasibility of the proposed reforms.

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