Ethical Challenges of a False-Positive Communication Science: Three Daring Suggestions

• In Event: Ethical Challenges in Communication Research Practice: International Perspectives

Abstract

Recently, research in the social sciences has struggled with a range of ethical challenges related to data collection, data analysis, and the reporting of findings (Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2011). This presentation summarizes the main issues of this debate as it applies to communication research and provides three bold solutions for addressing these ethical challenges: (1) Avoiding undisclosed flexibilities in study design and analytical design which includes specific guidelines for authors and reviewers; (2) supporting and enforcing the “New Statistics” (Cumming, 2013; Weber & Popova, 2012) in communication research. This includes: a) pre-registration of studies; b) encouraging open data practices and providing rewards for doing so; c) encouragement of replication studies (with no editorial preference for or against null, positive, or contradictory findings).; d) shift from NHST to estimation, effect-equivalence testing, and ultimately to a Bayesian approach; (3) changing the theory-centered culture in communication research to a result-centered, but not a theoretical, culture (Greenwald et al. 1986, Greenwald, 2012). This also includes a new procedure of how research findings should be reported at conferences and perhaps even in research articles.

Bibliography
Cumming, G. (2013). The “new statistics”: Why and how? Psychological Science, 1, 7-29.
Greenwald, A.G. (2012). There is nothing so theoretical as a good method. Psychological Science, 7(2), 99-108.
Greenwald, A.G., Leippe, M.R., Pratkanis, A.R., & Baumgardner, M.H. (1986). Under what conditions does theory obstruct research progress? Psychological Review, 93(2), 216-229.
Simmons, J.P., Nelson, L.D., & Simonsohn, U (2011). False-positive psychology: undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science, 11, 1359-1366.
Weber, R., & Popova, L. (2012). Testing equivalence in communication research: Theory and applications. Communication Methods and Measures, 6(3),190-213.

Author

• Rene Weber, U of California - Santa Barbara