Degrees of freedom in planning, running, analyzing, and reporting psychological studies A checklist to avoid p-hacking

Jelte M. Wicherts, Coosje Lisabet Sterre Veldkamp, Hilde Augusteijn, Marjan Bakker, Robbie Cornelis Maria van Aert and Marcel A. L. M. van Assen
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Jelte M. Wicherts: Tilburg University

No umq8d, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: The designing, collecting, analyzing, and reporting of psychological studies entail many choices that are often arbitrary. The opportunistic use of these so-called researcher degrees of freedom aimed at obtaining statistically significant results is problematic because it enhances the chances of false positive results and may inflate effect size estimates. In this review article, we present an extensive list of 34 degrees of freedom that researchers have in formulating hypotheses, and in designing, running, analyzing, and reporting of psychological research. The list can be used in research methods education, and as a checklist to assess the quality of preregistrations and to determine the potential for bias due to (arbitrary) choices in unregistered studies.

Date: 2016-11-03
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:osfxxx:umq8d

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/umq8d

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