For this projet, I plan to replicate O’Keefe et. al.’s 2018 study, which explores the connection between a fixed versus growth mindset and how those mindsets impact an individual’s interest in new areas outside of their current interests. Though my research interests align more closely with the field of educational neuroscience, I am intrigued by the impact a growth mindset can have on student’s learning. By replicating this study, I will be able to reflect more on the impact of mindset (growth or fixed) on an individuals openness to explore new areas of interest.
The study being replicated explored the effect of mindset on openness to new interests in a series of five experiments. I plan to replicate the second experiment, which leverages survey data and participant interest levels in two different articles to explore the relationship between mindset and openness to new potential areas of interest.
Participants will be recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Each participant will have to undergo a pre-screening to ensure that they meet two criteria:
Once participants have been screened, they will respond to four statements assessing implicit theories of interest. They will then read a “techy” article and a “fuzzy” article and respond to an eleven item survey assessing their interest in each article. After this, they will complete the personal inventory, the theories-of-interest scale, the implicit-theories-of-intelligence scale, and general demographics
While replicating this study, I foresee the following challenges:
Original effect size, power analysis for samples to achieve 80%, 90%, 95% power to detect that effect size. Considerations of feasibility for selecting planned sample size.
Planned sample size and/or termination rule, sampling frame, known demographics if any, preselection rules if any.
All materials - can quote directly from original article - just put the text in quotations and note that this was followed precisely. Or, quote directly and just point out exceptions to what was described in the original article.
Can quote directly from original article - just put the text in quotations and note that this was followed precisely. Or, quote directly and just point out exceptions to what was described in the original article.
Can also quote directly, though it is less often spelled out effectively for an analysis strategy section. The key is to report an analysis strategy that is as close to the original - data cleaning rules, data exclusion rules, covariates, etc. - as possible.
Clarify key analysis of interest here You can also pre-specify additional analyses you plan to do.
Explicitly describe known differences in sample, setting, procedure, and analysis plan from original study. The goal, of course, is to minimize those differences, but differences will inevitably occur. Also, note whether such differences are anticipated to make a difference based on claims in the original article or subsequent published research on the conditions for obtaining the effect.
You can comment this section out prior to final report with data collection.
Sample size, demographics, data exclusions based on rules spelled out in analysis plan
Any differences from what was described as the original plan, or “none”.
Data preparation following the analysis plan.
The analyses as specified in the analysis plan.
Side-by-side graph with original graph is ideal here
Any follow-up analyses desired (not required).
Open the discussion section with a paragraph summarizing the primary result from the confirmatory analysis and the assessment of whether it replicated, partially replicated, or failed to replicate the original result.
Add open-ended commentary (if any) reflecting (a) insights from follow-up exploratory analysis, (b) assessment of the meaning of the replication (or not) - e.g., for a failure to replicate, are the differences between original and present study ones that definitely, plausibly, or are unlikely to have been moderators of the result, and (c) discussion of any objections or challenges raised by the current and original authors about the replication attempt. None of these need to be long.