Commitment to Open Science

As a social psychologist, my lab at Haverford College cannot ignore the ongoing paradigm shift towards research transparency, open science, and replication/reproducibility. Beginning in 2017, research generated in the lab has been guided by the following core principles and specific practices.

Core Principles

  • Reproducibility and replicability are a crucial components of the scientific process.
  • Transparency in the stated goals of research, methods employed, data collection and handling, and data analysis promote the generation of more robust knowledge than does a closed approach to science. 
  • Collaboration, cooperation, and communication are critical for advancing the production of scientific knowledge, and scientific knowledge should be made accessible to all scholars and the general public alike, not just those privileged with resources or status. 

Specific Practices

  • Engaging in replications is valued and students are encouraged to include a replication component in their senior thesis research along with testing novel hypotheses.
  • Hypotheses, research designs, and data collection/analysis plans will be preregistered for new research studies conducted in my lab at Haverford College.
  • Preregistrations, study materials, codebooks, inclusion/exclusion criteria, documentation of data processing and transformations, syntax for data analysis, and datasets will be made readily accessible for projects, with appropriate protections in place (e.g., maintaining confidentially of participants). See below to access project preregistrations and archives.
  • A priori predictions (e.g., "hypotheses"), non-directional research questions, and exploratory analyses will be clearly identified when communicating about our research findings (i.e., in presentations, publications), and unless otherwise explicitly noted, published results will be generated via the procedures delineated in our preregistrations.
  • We will enthusiastically assist researchers attempting to replicate our studies, re-analyze our data, and/or include our data in meta-analyses.
  • All published articles, or preprints of those publications, will be posted online and be made freely accessible without restriction. Handbook chapters and other publications will be shared to fullest extent possible; please contact me (ble@haverford.edu) for assistance finding any chapters or other materials that aren't posted online.

Open Science Resources

Links to Current/Past Projects (2017 to present)