TY - JOUR
T1 - Pre-registration of audiology research studies: are actions following good intentions?
AU - Prendergast, Garreth
AU - Sindi, Aala
AU - Munro, Kevin
PY - 2023/2/3
Y1 - 2023/2/3
N2 - It is now widely accepted that much of the body of evidence in a given field of study suffers from a lack of replication (Ioannidis, 2016). Areas of research can be led down unfruitful avenues of research by studies purporting to report novel, interesting, findings but are in fact based on spurious, non-replicable data. This leads to a waste of scientific resource. One contribution to this replication crisis is questionable research practices, or researcher degrees of freedom. It is where, often through non-nefarious intentions, the decisions taken by a researcher post-data-collection result bias the results and inferences. The pre-registration of empirical studies seeks to reduce researcher bias and add transparency to scientific endeavour; ultimately leading to more reliable research (Munro & Prendergast., 2019). The aim of this letter is to provide a snapshot of descriptive statistics regarding the extent to which the auditory research community are pre-registering their research studies. Data indicate that audiology performs at least as well (or perhaps equally poorly) as related fields of opthalmology and neuroscience. The number of pre-registrations in audiology is trending upwards year-on-year, though as this is from a very low starting point there remains much work to be done. Recommendations are suggested.
AB - It is now widely accepted that much of the body of evidence in a given field of study suffers from a lack of replication (Ioannidis, 2016). Areas of research can be led down unfruitful avenues of research by studies purporting to report novel, interesting, findings but are in fact based on spurious, non-replicable data. This leads to a waste of scientific resource. One contribution to this replication crisis is questionable research practices, or researcher degrees of freedom. It is where, often through non-nefarious intentions, the decisions taken by a researcher post-data-collection result bias the results and inferences. The pre-registration of empirical studies seeks to reduce researcher bias and add transparency to scientific endeavour; ultimately leading to more reliable research (Munro & Prendergast., 2019). The aim of this letter is to provide a snapshot of descriptive statistics regarding the extent to which the auditory research community are pre-registering their research studies. Data indicate that audiology performs at least as well (or perhaps equally poorly) as related fields of opthalmology and neuroscience. The number of pre-registrations in audiology is trending upwards year-on-year, though as this is from a very low starting point there remains much work to be done. Recommendations are suggested.
U2 - 10.1080/14992027.2023.2171909
DO - 10.1080/14992027.2023.2171909
M3 - Article
SN - 1499-2027
JO - International Journal of Audiology
JF - International Journal of Audiology
ER -