Abstract:

In this talk, I will (1) discuss the reasons why selective reporting is a threat to the empirical sciences and why preregistration is a good idea, both for the field of consumer behavior and for individual researchers, (2) respond to arguments against pre-registration, (3) describe how to best write and review a pre-registration, and (4) comment on pre-registration’s rapidly accelerating popularity. Along the way, I describe the (big) problem that pre-registration can solve (i.e., false positives caused by p-hacking), while also offering viable solutions to the problems that pre-registration cannot solve (e.g., hidden confounds or fraud). Finally, I will demonstrate why internal meta-analysis—an alternative method that has been proposed to demonstrate empirical robustness—fails to address the problem of selective reporting. Pre-registration does not guarantee that every published finding will be true, but without it you can safely bet that many more will be false.

General information:

This seminar is organised by the Marketing department at Amsterdam Business School. If you are interested in joining this seminar, please send an email to the secretariat of the Amsterdam Business School at secbs-abs@uva.nl.