Abstract
A survey in the United States revealed that an alarmingly large percentage of university psychologists admitted having used questionable research practices that can contaminate the research literature with false positive and biased findings. We conducted a replication of this study among Italian research psychologists to investigate whether these findings generalize to other countries. All the original materials were translated into Italian, and members of the Italian Association of Psychology were invited to participate via an online survey. The percentages of Italian psychologists who admitted to having used ten questionable research practices were similar to the results obtained in the United States although there were small but significant differences in self-admission rates for some QRPs. Nearly all researchers (88%) admitted using at least one of the practices, and researchers generally considered a practice possibly defensible if they admitted using it, but Italian researchers were much less likely than US researchers to consider a practice defensible. Participants’ estimates of the percentage of researchers who have used these practices were greater than the self-admission rates, and participants estimated that researchers would be unlikely to admit it. In written responses, participants argued that some of these practices are not questionable and they have used some practices because reviewers and journals demand it. The similarity of results obtained in the United States, this study, and a related study conducted in Germany suggest that adoption of these practices is an international phenomenon and is likely due to systemic features of the international research and publication processes.
Highlights
Questionable research practices (QRPs) are methodological and statistical practices that bias the scientific literature and undermine the credibility and reproducibility of research findings [1]
Data from all 277 respondents were included in the analysis, including those who did not complete the questionnaire, because the QRPs were presented in a random order
The United States (US) self-admission rates were significantly higher than the Italian rates for QRPs 1 and 3
Summary
Questionable research practices (QRPs) are methodological and statistical practices that bias the scientific literature and undermine the credibility and reproducibility of research findings [1]. Ioannidis [2] famously argued that over 50% of published results are false, and one of the reasons is biases, which he defined as “a combination of various design, data, analysis, and presentation factors that tend to produce research findings when they should not be produced.”. A large survey of psychology researchers [7] found that outcome measures and reasons for terminating data collection were often not reported. Psychologists report findings that are consistent with their hypotheses more often than in other fields of science [8], and much more often than would be expected based on the average statistical power in psychological studies [9,10,11,12,13,14]. There is evidence of widespread misreporting of statistical results [20, 21]
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