Upitne istraživačke prakse u kliničkoj psihologiji
Questionable research practices in clinical psychology

Summary/Abstract: The crisis of confidence in psychological science and the reliability of research findings appear when the results of unsuccessful replications of 100 correlation and experimental studies published in eminent psychological journals. The replication crisis has been observed in the areas of social and cognitive psychology, while an area such as clinical psychology remains isolated. Current psychological publications are characterized by a strong orientation towards confirming hypotheses. Research shows that the rate of confirmed hypotheses for the fields of psychology and psychiatry is 92%, and this threshold appears to have been reached by adjusting study design, selectively reporting unconfirmed, and post-hoc hypotheses. Clinical trials have traditionally dealt with relatively rare conditions, have small sample sizes and low statistical power, so it seems unlikely that clinical psychology will be immune to serious replication problems. According to some research, clinical psychology is less involved in the discussion of replication due to a methodological approach that is different than in other fields. The aim of this paper is to present the results of research on questionable research practices and reporting bias, especially in the field of psychotherapy. Biased reporting of results is common in clinical psychology and indicates that authors tend to modify the results originally obtained to avoid undesirable findings. The crisis of replication in clinical psychology is noticeable when the literature on the effectiveness of various psychotherapies is studied. The findings of the effectiveness of pharmacological versus psychological treatments are generally inconsistent. Efforts should be made to change the current incentive structure that inadvertently promotes and rewards questionable research practices.

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