10.17605/OSF.IO/H453A
Madison Lanier
Madison
Lanier
https://osf.io/ftwds/
Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech
James D. Ivory
James
Ivory
https://osf.io/5u9sx/
Much Ado About Immersion: Power, Reported Results, and the Validity of Research on the Psychology of Virtual Reality and Immersive Simulations
Open Science Framework
2022
Open Science Framework
https://ror.org/05d5mza29/
https://grid.ac/institutes/grid.466501.0/
2018-02-15
2021-09-10
2022-08-30
Pre-registration
Virtual reality (VR) technology has permeated American consumer culture in recent years, resulting from and leading to a hotbed of academic VR research. Although its original home has belonged in the technical sciences of engineering and computer science, it has become a widespread subject of study in the social sciences as well. The proposed study seeks to evaluate the methods and practices of VR research related to communication and psychology as it transitions into these fields. A meta-scientific content analysis of published VR research will focus on power, p-values, and reporting errors—all of which respectively represent the three stages of research: data collection, analysis, and reporting. These elements will be summarized and evaluated in order to estimate how often VR researchers adhere to scientific methodological standards within social scientific disciplines, and whether there is evidence for research practices that may threaten the replicability and validity of findings in this area of research. The results of the proposed study will help fill the gaps of an ever-growing body of research that seeks to evaluate and improve scientific practices, with a particular emphasis on a growing technology and its real-world impacts on consumers and investors alike.