Pre-registration in the undergraduate dissertation: A critical discussion

Abstract

Over recent years, psychology has become increasingly concerned with reproducibility and replicability of research findings (Munafò et al., 2017). One method of ensuring that research is hypothesis driven, as opposed to data driven, is the process of publicly pre-registering a study’s hypotheses, data analysis plan, and procedure prior to data collection (Nosek et al., 2018). This paper discusses the potential benefits of introducing pre-registration to the undergraduate dissertation. The utility of pre-registration as a pedagogic practice within dissertation supervision is also critically appraised, with reference to open science literature. Here, it is proposed that encouraging pre-registration of undergraduate dissertation work may alleviate some pedagogic challenges, such as statistics anxiety, questionable research practices, and research clarity and structure. Perceived barriers, such as time and resource constraints, are also discussed.

Teaching open and reproducible scholarship: a critical review of the evidence base for current pedagogical methods and their outcomes

“…[110], who argued for the promotion of open scholarship in economic postgraduate student supervision, in order to foster critical reflection on scientific literature. However, despite these recommendations (see also [79]), our review also showed that there is little empirical work that directly investigates how incorporation of such an approach can impact student outcomes.…”

“…There was also evidence in our review that implementing study pre-registration may help students develop their scientific literacies in other ways. For example, Pownall [79] recommends that aligning the quantitative analyses more clearly with students’ original research questions through pre-registration may increase the perceived usefulness of statistics.…”

Evaluating the Pedagogical Effectiveness of Study Preregistration in the Undergraduate Dissertation

“…Others have suggested that "most study programmes should offer easy ways of implementing preregistration in empirical research seminars" (Olson et al, 2019) because of the potential for preregistration to promote "critical reflections of research practices" and improve students' statistics literacy (Olson et al, 2019). As Pownall (2020b) also argued, the process of embedding preregistration of undergraduate dissertations largely complements current practices in dissertation supervision. Sacco and Brown (2019) noted that preregistration is thus useful when conducting research with the view to publish the results with undergraduate students (see also Blincoe & Buchert, 2020).…”

“…Likewise, Blincoe and Buchert (2020) proposed that preregistration may be a useful pedagogical tool for undergraduate psychology students. Despite some useful and recent conversations that discuss the need to embed an Open Science approach into undergraduate research training (Button et al, 2020;Creaven et al, 2021;Pownall, 2020b), an empirical exploration into how Open Science practices may benefit both students and the Open Science movement has been notably absent from these conversations. Indeed, although much work has considered how to promote uptake of preregistration practices of early career (Zec ˇevic ´ et al, 2020) and more established researchers (Kidwell et al, 2016;Munafò et al, 2017), little research has explicitly focused on the utility of preregistration for undergraduate students' research practices despite recommendations that preregistration could facilitate engagement with the dissertation process (e.g., Nosek et al, 2018), reduce statistics anxiety, and improve students' experience of their dissertation (Creaven et al, 2021;Pownall, 2020b).…”

“…Here, we propose that preregistration is one entry-level way of establishing a level of rigor and robustness into the undergraduate dissertation process (as per Pownall, 2020b). The potential value of preregistration in this context has been noted by educators.…”