The impact of statistics anxiety and understanding on undergraduate perception and use of questionable research practices

After the Open Science Collaboration (OSC, 2015) published their report that only 36% of studies replicated with much smaller effect sizes than the original experiments, awareness of the replication crisis grew within the social sciences. Following this result, some researchers worried about the validity of research within psychology and the ensuing problems with replicability (Wiggins & Christophersen, 2019). One driver of replication failures may be related to the use of questionable research practices (QRP), such as p-hacking and HARKing which involve selectively reporting data to be more publishable or give a positive outcome (Baker, 2016). To circumvent these issues, researchers have been encouraging open research (OR) practices like preregistration to make research more transparent and accountable (Gigerenzer, 2018). As of yet, OR practices are not mandatory in BPS accredited curriculum, so not all UK students are taught about OR. However, some researchers suggest that supervisors and lecturers play an important role in student perceptions of QRPS and believe it is important to teach and encourage undergraduates to reduce the use of QRPs during their student dissertations (Krishna & Peter, 2018). Many psychology students reported that they perceive statistics as a complex and difficult subject (Coetzee, & Merwe, 2010) and believe statistics to be their most anxiety producing module (Chew, & Dillon, 2014). Research also suggests that many QRPs may be linked to understandings towards statistics, particularly beliefs in ‘rituals’, such as ‘the illusion of certainty’, and may have a role in the replication crisis (Gigerenzer, 2018). There are many inherent issues in open science (OS), and undergraduates are a group with multiple different views and understandings of OR and statistics. Researchers have previously explored understandings and perceptions of OR and statistics anxiety, but the relationship between these two factors is not yet clear as no studies to date have assessed the relationship between perceptions of OR and perceptions of statistics anxiety in undergraduate students. It is also unclear how individual differences in statistics anxiety may interact with differences in perceptions of OR, and what implications this may have for teaching statistics and OR at the undergraduate level. Therefore, we plan to investigate the relationship between statistics anxiety, attitudes, perceptions, and understandings and OR in a sample of undergraduate psychology students. We intend to conduct a study to examine these relationships using validated scales, and planned hypotheses and analyses. A previous UK-wide project conducted in 2019 collected data on a number similar measures which was not preregistered and remains unpublished. In this project we will use similar scales from that previous study, to see whether the results replicate and confirm the initial findings. We will additionally look at statistics anxiety, attitudes, knowledge, confidence, and interpretation as well as student attitudes of learning OR alongside the data collected with the STORM project about student perceptions and use of OR practices. References Baker, M. (2016). Reproducibility crisis. Nature, 533(26), 353-66. URL: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jack-Damico/post/How-many-stimuli-repetitions-are-needed-in-L2-speech-research/attachment/5aa553c2b53d2f0bba575a50/AS%3A603027308302336%401520784322182/download/Reproducibility+crisis.pdf Chew, P. K., & Dillon, D. B. (2014). Statistics anxiety update: Refining the construct and recommendations for a new research agenda. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(2), 196-208. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1745691613518077 Coetzee, S., & Merwe, P. V. D. (2010). 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