This project is meant to explore the research culture that early-career researchers (ECRs) of psychology face when starting their career in the post-2011 research world. The broad term of research culture may theoretically mean anything that influences how ECRs learn about research practices, think about research practices, and how they conduct research. The so-called replication crisis sparked a mainstream debate of issues that have long been known and criticized. As a result, research practices have started to change, creating uncertainty about how this will impact psychological research. ---------- **Goals**: 1. To provide a first descriptive overview of how PhD candidates from Sweden and the Netherlands see issues of questionable research practices, “methodological bullying”, trust in older research findings, and preregistration. 2. To explore what opinions relate to high reported frequencies of questionable research practices and considering to leave academia, and whether the amount of control over research projects plays a role. 3. To lay a foundation for future research that further explores ways to include early-career researchers in the changes of the field. ---------- **Target Population:** A total of 302 current PhD candidates in psychology will receive email invitations for participating in an online survey. These are all currently listed PhD candidates at all psychology departments from all Swedish and Dutch that were among the top 100 research universities in the Times Higher Education World University Ranking 2018. If the response rate is below 10%, the target population may be extended to include PhD candidates from universities ranked in the top 125. ---------- **Online Survey:** The online survey consists of four parts (see [survey_items.pdf][1]). 1. **General Information** - Participation criterion check; Time since starting PhD position; Type of doctoral research project. 2. **Questionable Research Practices** - General, "neutral" explanation of QRPs is provided. List of 15 QRPs based on John, Loewenstein, and Prelec (2012); Fiedler and Schwarz (2016); and Sacco, Bruton, and Brown (2017). Participants indicate whether they have personally encountered this, additional questions about overall frequency. 3. **Effect on career and person** - Agreement with statements about QRPs affecting published research, own academic life, speaking out against QRPs, fear of "fierce criticism", considering leaving academia. 4. **Other questions** - Item about magnitude of change since replication crisis; Preregistration, frequency of preregistration; Open comment field. No personal data will be recorded, responses will not be connected to country or university. The online survey was created using SurveyMonkey.com and the paid plan "*Standard*". A screenshot of the survey can be found under OSF Storage/Materials/[survey_layout-example.png][2]. ---------- **Data Collection** Collecting of responses will begin by sending out the first batch of emails on the March 8th, 2018 at 09:00 (GMT+1). It is expected to last until April 2nd, 2018, but might be extended if the response rate is below 10% (see above under "Target Population"). Edit: The data collection was closed on April 10th, 2018 at 16:30 (GMT+1). ---------- **Presentation of Results:** The primary focus is to provide a descriptive overview of the frequency of responses of the participants. Percentages and counts of answers to different items will be presented in form of tables, e.g. grouping participants who have indicated being part of collaboration versus being the lead researchers themselves. *To explore the dataset further, a hierarchical regression will be performed to see which factors explain most of the total frequency of questionable research practices, while controlling for demographic factors. The regression coefficients and standardized beta weights for each of the predictors will be given, as well as a descriptive summary of how they compare to each other. The interpretation of the two regressions will be limited to the overall explained variance (R²) and no overall model significance will be interpreted.* We decided to only investigate correlations instead and limited the use of a regression to predicting if respondents had considered leaving academia. Additional analyses might be performed, but are dependent on response rate and frequency of answers. They will be kept strictly exploratory and not overall significances will be interpreted. ---------- **Results:** The master thesis was submitted on May 21st, 2018. After the thesis defense, the results will be made available on this project page. ---------- **References** Fiedler, K., & Schwarz, N. (2016). Questionable Research Practices Revisited. *Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7*(1), 45–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615612150 John, L. K., Loewenstein, G., & Prelec, D. (2012). Measuring the Prevalence of Questionable Research Practices With Incentives for Truth Telling. *Psychological Science, 23*(5), 524–532. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611430953 Sacco, D. F., Bruton, S. V., & Brown, M. (2017). In Defense of the Questionable: Defining the Basis of Research Scientists’ Engagement in Questionable Research Practices. *Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 13*(1), 101–110. https://doi.org/10.1177/1556264617743834 [1]: https://osf.io/e3qgh/ [2]: https://osf.io/4ez6n