Assessing the Efficacy of a Training Intervention to Reduce Acceptance of Questionable Research Practices in Psychology Graduate Students

Abstract

We designed and tested the efficacy of a 1-hr training session to mitigate endorsement of questionable research practices (QRPs), research practices that raise ethical concerns and are detrimental to reproducible science, in psychology graduate students. We assessed attitudes toward QRPs 1 week prior to the training, 1 week following the training, and at 2-month follow-up. Participants reported QRPs as less ethically defensible 1 week following the intervention compared with 1 week prior, with attitudes at 2-month follow-up falling in between these time points. Results were maintained even when controlling for socially desirable responding. Participants who rated the training more favorably demonstrated greater attitude change toward detrimental research practices. These results provide evidence that an intervention to educate graduate students about QRPs and their negative impact on science can mitigate consideration of such practices as ethically defensible, although such benefits may not hold over time without additional training sessions.