Methodological Differences Between Psychological Fields and its Impact on Questionable Research Practices

A recent development in research fields, including psychology, is that several studies have called into question the replicability of findings that were thought to be well-established. This phenomenon, termed the replication crisis in psychology, is gaining acceptance as a legitimate concern. This paper explores the quality of research from three prominent psychology journals: The Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, across the years 1995, 2005 and 2015. The quality of research was determined through creating individual p-distributions, similar to the methods of Masicampo & Lalande (2012). This paper uncovered that there was evidence regarding the use of questionable research practices (QRPs) since 1995. Overall, the quality of each journal's research appeared to be increasing as the years progressed.