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In recent years, there has been a focus in social psychology on efforts to improve the robustness, rigour, transparency and openness of psychological research. This has led to a plethora of new tools, practices and initiatives that each aim to combat questionable research practices and improve the credibility of social psychological scholarship. However, the majority of these efforts derive from quantitative, deductive, hypothesis‐testing methodologies, and there has been a notable lack of in‐depth exploration about what the tools, practices and values may mean for research that uses qualitative methodologies. Here, we introduce a Special Section of BJSP: Open Science, Qualitative Methods and Social Psychology: Possibilities and Tensions. The authors critically discuss a range of issues, including authorship, data sharing and broader research practices. Taken together, these papers urge the discipline to carefully consider the ontological, epistemological and methodological underpinnings of efforts to improve psychological science, and advocate for a critical appreciation of how mainstream open science discourse may (or may not) be compatible with the goals of qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist scholars have long been concerned with claims of hardwired brain sex differences emanating from neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Past criticisms of these claims have rightfully questioned the impact of this research on gender equality, pointing out how findings can be used to vindicate gender stereotypes. In this article, we appraise the brain sex differences literature through the lens of open science, a movement aimed at improving the robustness and reliability of science. In this discussion, we offer a feminist evaluation of the strategies (e.g., pre-registration, data sharing, and accountability) provided by open science, and we question whether these may be the novel and disruptive tools needed to dismantle claims about hardwired brain sex differences. We suggest that open science strategies can be useful in challenging some of these claims, and we note that promising initiatives are already being developed in neuroscience and allied fields. We end by acknowledging the distinct challenges that feminist researchers wishing to engage in open science face, particularly in the context of limited diversity. We conclude that open science presents considerable opportunity for feminist researchers, and that it will be crucial for feminists to be involved in shaping the future of this movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent years, psychology has become increasingly concerned with reproducibility and replicability of research findings (Munafò et al., 2017). One method of ensuring that research is hypothesis driven, as opposed to data driven, is the process of publicly pre-registering a study's hypotheses, data analysis plan, and procedure prior to data collection (Nosek et al., 2018). This paper discusses the potential benefits of introducing pre-registration to the undergraduate dissertation. The utility of pre-registration as a pedagogic practice within dissertation supervision is also critically appraised, with reference to open science literature. Here, it is proposed that encouraging pre-registration of undergraduate dissertation work may alleviate some pedagogic challenges, such as statistics anxiety, questionable research practices, and research clarity and structure. Perceived barriers, such as time and resource constraints, are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]