Building a cumulative psychological science.

Abstract

The past decade has sparked much debate and controversy over the replication crisis. This Special Issue brings together researchers and thought leaders to reflect on what has been learned over the past decade and to provide suggestions to the field on how to build a more cumulative science. Contributors to this Special Issue reflect on topics related to different aspects of conducting experimental research as causes for and responses to the crisis, including theory, measurement, preregistration, data analysis, questionable research practices, publication practices, research collaborations, and quantitative literature reviews. Together the articles' authors suggest that although many efforts have been made to address the crisis, greater effort, collaboration, and communication is needed. A special emphasis should be placed on educating current and future researchers on best practices, as well as the cost to the integrity of the field if those efforts are not made.

Exceptional Canadian contributions to research on cognitive vulnerability to depression.

“…Indeed, studies examining associations between a single, putatively etiologically relevant factor (e.g., an index of cognitive vulnerability) measured from a single vantage point (e.g., self-report) and depression are increasingly supplanted in the literature by multidisciplinary studies that integrate biological, cognitive, and environmental/contextual indices of risk. However, the field is still grappling with the evidence that the broader domain of psychological science may be failing to produce robust findings (Open Science Collaboration, 2015; Sharpe & Goghari, 2020). While the failure to attend closely to considerations of measurement is an underappreciated contributing factor to the replication crisis (Pashler & Wagenmakers, 2012; a point addressed later in this section), it is also the case that increasingly complex models may have a lower likelihood of replicability (Sanbonmatsu et al, 2021), both concerns that psychological scientists will need to address in developing increasingly complex models of depression’s etiology.…”

Chasing societal impact, not impact factor: A reflection as outgoing editor.

“…The topics of all of our special issues were chosen to be of broad interest to readers across the different domains of psychological science, as well as to focus on larger issues. In a first for a Canadian journal, we published a special issue, "Building a Cumulative Psychological Science," in which we focused on the replication crisis in psychology and asked Canadian and global scholars to reflect on where we stand as a discipline after more than a decade of debate about the crisis and its solutions (Sharpe & Goghari, 2020). A further two special issues focused on education, training, and teaching in psychology: "Graduate Education, Research, and Professional Training in Psychology" (Goghari, 2019b) and "Teaching Psychology" (Goghari & Landrum, 2021).…”