A Case For a Study Quality Appraisal in Survey Studies in Psychology

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Protogerou, Cleo
Hagger, Martin S
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2019
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Abstract

The lack of replication of key effects in psychology has highlighted some fundamental problems with reporting of research findings and methods used (Asendorpf et al., 2013; Open Science Collaboration, 2015). Problems with replication have been attributed to sources of bias such as questionable research practices like HARK-ing (Kerr, 1998) or p-hacking (Simmons et al., 2011). Another potential source of bias is lack of precision in the conduct and methods used in psychological research, which likely introduces systematic error into data collected with the potential to affect results. A related issue is lack of accuracy in reporting study methods and findings. There is, therefore, increased recognition in the importance of transparency when reporting study outcomes to enable the scientific community to make fair, unbiased appraisals of the implications and worthiness of study findings. Lack of transparency hinders scientific progress as it may lead to erroneous conclusions regarding the implications of research findings, and may impede comparison and synthesis of findings across studies. As a result, researchers have become interested in research quality and the need for comprehensive, transparent reporting of findings (Asendorpf et al., 2013). This has resulted in calls for appropriate reporting standards andmeans to assess study quality (Cooper, 2011; Greenhalgh and Brown, 2017). In the present article we review the issue of study quality in psychology, and argue for valid and reliable means to assess study quality in psychology. Specifically, we contend that appropriate assessment checklists be developed for survey studies, given the prominence of surveys as a research method in the field.

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FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY

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9

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Article 2788

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© 2019 Protogerou and Hagger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Cognitive and computational psychology

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