Questionable Research Practices, Preregistration, and More – Exploring Self-Report Opinions of Swedish and Dutch PhD Students

Sammanfattning: For this exploratory study, I reached out to all 302 individuals that were listed as PhD students at the psychology departments of all Swedish and Dutch “Top 100” universities. The final 111 participants (37.9% response rate) were asked to indicate how often they encountered questionable research practices (QRPs) and replied to items asking about the impact of QRPs on themselves and their environment, thoughts of leaving academia, implications of the “replication crisis”, and knowledge and use of preregistrations. The results indicated that QRPs were common, but that the type of QRP mattered. While only 3.7% of participants considered leaving academia because of fear of “replication bullies”, 23.9% considered leaving academia because they were disillusioned by the problems revealed by the replication crisis. Results also indicated that the more QRPs a student encountered, the higher the chance that they had thought of leaving because of being disillusioned. Preregistration was widely known, but the majority had never preregistered a project. The study provides first insights in the situation of PhD students in Sweden and the Netherlands and can serve as a foundation for confirmatory research in the future.