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Self-reports from behind the scenes: Questionable research practices and rates of replication in ego depletion research.

ABSTRACT: The strength model of self-control is one of the most influential and well-established models of self-regulation in social psychology. However, recent attempts to replicate the ego depletion effect have sometimes failed. The goal of this study is to investigate self-reported replication rates and the frequency of a set of questionable research practices (QRP) in ego depletion research. A literature search resulted in 1721 researchers who had previously published on ego depletion. They were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey. The respondents (n = 277), on average, had published over three papers on ego depletion, and had completed more than two additional, unpublished studies. Respondents indicated that in more than 40% of their studies, results were similar in magnitude to those reported in the existing literature, and more than 60% reported conducting a priori power analyses. 39.2% of respondents were aware of other researchers who engaged in the surveyed QRP's, while 37.7% affirmed to have employed said QRP's. These results underline the importance of reducing QRP's to reliably test the validity of the ego depletion effect.

SUBMITTER: Wolff W

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6016937 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Self-reports from behind the scenes: Questionable research practices and rates of replication in ego depletion research.

Wolff Wanja W Baumann Lorena L Englert Chris C

PloS one 20180625 6

The strength model of self-control is one of the most influential and well-established models of self-regulation in social psychology. However, recent attempts to replicate the ego depletion effect have sometimes failed. The goal of this study is to investigate self-reported replication rates and the frequency of a set of questionable research practices (QRP) in ego depletion research. A literature search resulted in 1721 researchers who had previously published on ego depletion. They were invit ...[more]

PMID: 29940020

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Project description:INTRODUCTION:Engaging in scientific misconduct and questionable research practices (QRPs) is a noted problem across fields, including health professions education (HPE). To mitigate these practices, other disciplines have enacted strategies based on researcher characteristics and practice factors. Thus, to inform HPE, this study seeks to determine which researcher characteristics and practice factors, if any, might explain the frequency of irresponsible research practices. METHOD:In 2017, a cross-sectional survey of HPE researchers was conducted. The survey included 66 items adapted from three published surveys: two published QRP surveys and a publication pressure scale. The outcome variable was a self-reported misconduct score, which is a weighted mean score for each respondent on all misconduct and QRP items. Statistical analysis included descriptive statistics, reliability and correlation analysis, and multiple linear regression modelling. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION:In total, 590 researchers completed the survey. Results from the final regression model indicated that researcher age had a negative association with the misconduct score (b = -0.01, β = -0.22, t = -2.91, p <0.05), suggesting that older researchers tended to report less misconduct. On the other hand, those with more publications had higher misconduct scores (b = 0.001, β = 0.17, t = 3.27, p < 0.05) and, compared with researchers in the region of North America, researchers in Asia tended to have higher misconduct scores (b = 0.21, β = 0.12, t = 2.84, p < 0.01). In addition, compared with those who defined their work role as clinician, those who defined their role as researcher tended to have higher misconduct scores (b = 0.12, β = 0.13, t = 2.15, p < 0.05). Finally, publication pressure emerged as the strongest individual predictor of misconduct (b = 0.20, β = 0.34, t = 7.82, p < 0.01); the greater the publication pressure, the greater the reported misconduct. Overall, the explanatory variables accounted for 21% of the variance in the misconduct score, with publication pressure accounting for 10% of the variance in the outcome, above and beyond the other explanatory variables. Although correlational, these findings suggest several researcher characteristics and practice factors that could be targeted to address scientific misconduct and QRPs in HPE.

Project description:We describe a method of quantifying the effect of Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) on the results of meta-analyses. As an example we simulated a meta-analysis of a controversial telepathy protocol to assess the extent to which these experimental results could be explained by QRPs. Our simulations used the same numbers of studies and trials as the original meta-analysis and the frequencies with which various QRPs were applied in the simulated experiments were based on surveys of experimental psychologists. Results of both the meta-analysis and simulations were characterized by 4 metrics, two describing the trial and mean experiment hit rates (HR) of around 31%, where 25% is expected by chance, one the correlation between sample-size and hit-rate, and one the complete P-value distribution of the database. A genetic algorithm optimized the parameters describing the QRPs, and the fitness of the simulated meta-analysis was defined as the sum of the squares of Z-scores for the 4 metrics. Assuming no anomalous effect a good fit to the empirical meta-analysis was found only by using QRPs with unrealistic parameter-values. Restricting the parameter space to ranges observed in studies of QRP occurrence, under the untested assumption that parapsychologists use comparable QRPs, the fit to the published Ganzfeld meta-analysis with no anomalous effect was poor. We allowed for a real anomalous effect, be it unidentified QRPs or a paranormal effect, where the HR ranged from 25% (chance) to 31%. With an anomalous HR of 27% the fitness became F = 1.8 (p = 0.47 where F = 0 is a perfect fit). We conclude that the very significant probability cited by the Ganzfeld meta-analysis is likely inflated by QRPs, though results are still significant (p = 0.003) with QRPs. Our study demonstrates that quantitative simulations of QRPs can assess their impact. Since meta-analyses in general might be polluted by QRPs, this method has wide applicability outside the domain of experimental parapsychology.

Dataset Information

Self-reports from behind the scenes: Questionable research practices and rates of replication in ego depletion research.

Publications

Self-reports from behind the scenes: Questionable research practices and rates of replication in ego depletion research.

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