Much of the national approaches to research integrity are shaped by input from researchers, institutional nominees and bureaucrats. The theory is that the diversity of views, experiences and biases, negates outliers and skewed approaches. Do the current approaches do that? We suggest no. Do the people involved in these processes reflect the racial/cultural, gender identity, education and disabled/non-disabled profile of those countries? Again, we suggest no. Do our current processes reflect what the general population care about? This open access published in April 2022 looks at this interesting question. Is there a role for community reference groups? Perhaps it’s time for a rethink.
What research practices should be considered acceptable? Historically, scientists have set the standards for what constitutes acceptable research practices. However, there is value in considering non-scientists’ perspectives, including research participants’. 1873 participants from MTurk and university subject pools were surveyed after their participation in one of eight minimal-risk studies. We asked participants how they would feel if (mostly) common research practices were applied to their data: p-hacking/cherry-picking results, selective reporting of studies, Hypothesizing After Results are Known (HARKing), committing fraud, conducting direct replications, sharing data, sharing methods, and open access publishing. An overwhelming majority of psychology research participants think questionable research practices (e.g. p-hacking, HARKing) are unacceptable (68.3–81.3%), and were supportive of practices to increase transparency and replicability (71.4–80.1%). A surprising number of participants expressed positive or neutral views toward scientific fraud (18.7%), raising concerns about data quality. We grapple with this concern and interpret our results in light of the limitations of our study. Despite the ambiguity in our results, we argue that there is evidence (from our study and others’) that researchers may be violating participants’ expectations and should be transparent with participants about how their data will be used.
Bottesini JG., Rhemtulla, M. & Vazire, S. (2022) What do participants think of our research practices? An examination of behavioural psychology participants’ preferences. Royal Society: Open Science. 9200048200048
http://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200048
Publisher (Open Access): https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.200048
have set the standards for what constitutes acceptable research practices. However,
there is value in considering non-scientists’ perspectives, including research ...
