Abstract
Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions or replicate prior research in large, diverse samples. The PSA's mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time limited), efficient (in that structures and principles are reused for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in both subjects and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematic examination of its generalizability.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 501-515 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 1 Oct 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2018 |
Funding
Fifth, because the PSA relies on the resources held by participating labs, as is the case with other forms of research and collaboration, the PSA is limited in the studies that it can conduct without external funding. Some types of studies are more difficult for us to support than others (e.g.,studies involving small-group interactions or behavioral observation, protocols that require the use of specialized materials or supplies). Currently, the studies we select are limited to those that do not require expensive or uncommon equipment and are otherwise easy to implement across a wide variety of laboratories. As a result, deserving research questions may not be selected by the PSA for feasibility reasons. We actively seek funding to support the organization and expand the range of feasible studies. For now, researchers can apply for and use grant funding to support project implementation via the PSA. There are currently a handful of labs in the network with specialized resources (e.g., functional MRI), and we hope that the network will eventually grow enough to support projects that require such specialized resources (e.g., developmental research that requires eye tracking and research assistants trained to work with young children). Further, we are in the process of forming a new funding committee devoted solely to the pursuit of financial support for the PSA and its member labs.
Keywords
- crowdsourcing
- generalizability
- large-scale collaboration
- psychological science accelerator
- theory development