Open science final year projects

The challenge

The reproducibility crisis in Psychology is well-publicised, and open science initiatives such as sharing study data and materials, study pre-registration, and increased researcher collaboration are being implemented to rectify this. Incorporating these principles in our pedagogy will be crucial for teaching the next generation of researchers.

Project background

This project follows the Consortium framework developed by Button and colleagues (2019 ). Psychology students across three institutions collaborate on designing and executing an empirical research study as part of their final year projects. The students gain practical experience in undertaking collaborative research together with students and academics from other institutions, and their project benefits from a large sample size as data is collected and shared across institutions. The students engage with key open science practices (pre-registration the sharing of materials and data) throughout the research process, and incorporate this into the write-up of their final-year project.

Project details

Students on this project use an experimental design to investigate the effect of scientific communication about gender difference on various types of attitudes relating to sexism and violence against women. Each student selects a unique moderator based on their personal interests.

• 21-22 project
• 22-23 project
• 23-24 project

Collaborators

The initiative is led by Dr Sofia Persson, the local URKN lead for Leeds Beckett University, and is affiliated with the network Open Research and Scholarship within the Centre for Psychological Research (PsyCen). It is undertaken collaboratively together with Dr Trish Holch (Director of PsyCen) at Leeds Beckett University, Dr Tim Riley at The University of Sheffield, and Dr Tom Hostler at Manchester Metropolitan University.