Okay so you may be feeling all sorts of ways right now – uncomfortable, indignant, confused, uninterested – what does all of this mean? Why does it matter to you?

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Well, if reading all of that doesn’t make you concerned, it matters because social science is a huge field that affects not only individuals’ and groups’ thoughts and opinions, but also public policy regarding aspects of education, child care, and elder care. People of all ages and identities are affected by the research.

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For example, some research links length and quality of non-relative child care with externalizing behaviors related to aggression. However, this behavior that supposedly signifies aggression was measured by if a child is out of their seat too much or is not following other classroom directions. If that measures aggression, classrooms must be full of tiny assailants.

 

The specifics are often overlooked in favor of the bigger meaning, however, which leads to headlines spouting that child care makes children more aggressive, with tag-lines like, “Does day care breed bullies?” Media interpretations of the research affect perceptions of major aspects of people’s lives, which create assumptions and bias that can span a person’s life. (For the record, there’s plenty of research claiming that child care has either an overall positive effect or no effect on children’s development compared to those who aren’t in child care.)

It’s important as individuals within a larger society for us to evaluate the research that’s both put out in the media as well as what’s published in highly respected science journals. Psychological research deals with issues such as the replication problem because the nature of the science is so complex – but this complexity doesn’t negate credibility.

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On the other hand, the WEIRD population issue is easier to blame on researchers, but, luckily, there are ways that scientists and journals are looking to fix the issue. Journals are including monetary incentives for studies that have more diverse samples, and researchers are seeking funding for projects outside of the U.S. more and more.

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Regarding P-hacking, researchers are calling for their own to be more honest and transparent in their studies, including using a simple statement to proudly declare that their results weren’t p-hacked, so that their paper may be evaluated with more confidence.

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There’s also a website called the Society for Improving Psychological Science (SIPS), which brings together researchers who want to promote better research methods and practices.

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Hopefully you feel like you’ve learned a little, and thought a lot, about what all of this means for you as a consumer of research. If you feel you’ve come away with the skills to pick apart and evaluate research on an academic level, congrats! Try the quiz below to determine how wise a research consumer you are now: