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

Author

Listed:
  • Wicherts, Jelte M.

    (Tilburg University)

  • Veldkamp, Coosje Lisabet Sterre
  • Augusteijn, Hilde
  • Bakker, Marjan
  • van Aert, Robbie Cornelis Maria
  • van Assen, Marcel A. L. M.

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Wicherts, Jelte M. & Veldkamp, Coosje Lisabet Sterre & Augusteijn, Hilde & Bakker, Marjan & van Aert, Robbie Cornelis Maria & van Assen, Marcel A. L. M., 2016. "Degrees of freedom in planning, running, analyzing, and reporting psychological studies A checklist to avoid p-hacking," OSF Preprints umq8d, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:umq8d
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/umq8d
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John P A Ioannidis, 2005. "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 2(8), pages 1-1, August.
    2. Jelte M Wicherts & Marjan Bakker & Dylan Molenaar, 2011. "Willingness to Share Research Data Is Related to the Strength of the Evidence and the Quality of Reporting of Statistical Results," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(11), pages 1-7, November.
    3. Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1997. "I Just Ran Two Million Regressions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 178-183, May.
    4. Daniel Wigboldus & Ron Dotsch, 2016. "Encourage Playing with Data and Discourage Questionable Reporting Practices," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 81(1), pages 27-32, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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