Emerging Scientific Research Practices

Abstract

This course aims to introduce students to current controversies and new developments in recommended scientific practices. The course is meant to help students think critically about how to conduct better empirical research and how to draw better-informed statistical inferences. The course will be conducted in a “seminar meets workshop” style, with a focus on discussion, understanding, and accumulating hands-on experience with different research practices supporting inference. The course covers a range of approaches that aim to enhance the transparency and reproducibility of scientific research. Although many examples will stem from social and personality psychology, this course is appropriate for Ph.D. students across social science disciplines and related fields. Topics will include: Understanding the problem: introduction to the “replication crisis,” developments and debate How issues related to the interpretation of p-values vs. effect sizes and confidence intervals have contributed to the reproducibility issues and the accumulation of knowledge Understand how questionable research practices (QRPs) and publication bias distort the scientific record; learn how to interpret evidence from the scientific literature given these biases (e.g., with the use of p-curve analysis) Recommendations for improving conduct and reporting of research: e.g., pre-registration, open science tools (OSF) and methods, power analysis The future of science and publishing in the new era.