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A case for a study quality appraisal in survey studies in psychology
Protogerou & Hagger (2018) highlight a fundamental issue that hinders the translation and comparative efforts in psychology research, which is the difficulty faced in attempting to replicate studies and generate published results using their unique disclosed methods. These failures in replication are presumed to be the result of biases such as HARK-ing (hypothesizing after results are known), p-hacking (manipulating data analysis in favor of producing significant p values), negligence in accurately conducting research and introducing confounders in data collected and analyzed as a result, and equal negligence in reporting study methodology and results in a standardized manner. It becomes evidently clear that adopting a standardized, explicit manner in the reporting of study methodology and findings is critical to scientific progress, as it would enable studies to be replicated and verified in a manner that prevents the introduction of bias or incorrect inferences from invalid data. Researchers are now increasingly attentive to the requirement of conducting quality research and reporting findings in a clear and concise fashion that makes it suitable for studies to be evaluated. In this article, the authors highlight the problems faced with the standards of quality in psychology studies, and present validated methods that help evaluate psychology studies. Finally, the authors advocate for developing assessment checklists and utilizing them, particularly in survey studies. This is due to the fact that surveys represent the most commonly used research technique. [NPID: Study quality, appraisal, survey, psychology]
Year: 2020
