16: What makes a good psych study?

What are the defining characteristics of a good psychology study? We received this excellent question from a listener and decided to do a whole episode on this idea.

Some of the topics discussed:

• When’s the last time you saw a psych study that only reported a t-test?
• Dan and James’ new paper on worry and heart rate variability
• Skepticism towards studies with many variables and ‘novel’ statistical approaches (that tend to always provide marvellous results)
• Repeated measures ANOVAs vs. linear mixed models
• Publishing convenient ideas, even if they’re wrong
• Fishing expeditions
• The ‘nocebo’ effect in action
• What are markers of study quality?
• Pre-registering studies - can it be gamed?
• The gradual improvement of psychology studies

Links

Dan and James' new paper on worry and heart rate variability

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27255891

The paper that said "Encouraging experimental psychologists to use LMMs was like giving shotguns to toddlers.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25657634

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