News from the Accelerator - September 2019

monthly update
Author

Chris Chartier

Published

September 5, 2019

August was a very productive and exciting month for the PSA. Here we summarize last month's progress and activities, some exciting new things coming in the near future, and make a few small requests of all PSA members.

PSA Member Site

We have been organizing information about PSA members in a shared google sheet until now. This worked OK for a while, but as our network grew it became disorganized, unwieldy, and error-prone. Lucky for us, Erin Buchanan has been working hard on a new membership website (complete with member database) and is ready for all PSA members to register and provide some information. Eventually, we hope the site can become a "one stop shop" for each PSA member to find information about the status and next steps for any PSA studies they have joined, and any PSA tasks that need new contributors. For now, we are asking all members of the PSA to create an account on the site, login in, and complete the member information form. Erin also put together this awesome tutorial video to walk you through the process!

2 Policy Documents are Open for PSA-wide Feedback

Vision Statement

We have drafted and released a PSA vision statement. This document is a precursor to a more complete 5-year strategic plan to be drafted in 2020. We welcome feedback this month before editing and ultimately calling for a vote to make this statement a PSA policy.

Analysis Plan Approval Policy

In future projects, the Data and Methods (DM) committee intends to review the project analysis plan before the project is registered and/or submitted for peer review. This process is meant to ensure that all necessary components (sample size justification, analysis scripts, etc.) are present in the analysis plan when it is submitted for external review. Furthermore, the approval process should provide some minimum reassurance that major methodological issues and flaws in the analysis plan have been addressed before launch of data collection, in the very rare cases that such flaws escape the awareness of the co-author team. In line with the proposed guidelines for PSA policy proposals, the DM committee have sought and incorporated feedback from the PSA director and associate directors. We now invite all members of the PSA to provide feedback on the document, which can be found here. The document will be open for feedback for one week as of the posting of this newsletter. After this period the DM committee will incorporate feedback, and subsequently submit the policy for approval by vote by PSA Directors and all members of the PSA.

Policy Document up for a Vote

We now call for a vote on our "meta-policy" document! It describes how current PSA polices can be amended and how members can propose new policies. All members will receive a separate email asking for them to vote yes or no on this proposed policy document.

The PSA Just Turned 2!

August 26th marked two years of accelerating psychological science. To celebrate we had a flurry of productive hackathons and published 6 blog posts on exciting new developments and future plans for the PSA. We:

Seeking Additional Assistant Director of the Project Monitoring Committee

We are calling for applications for a second Assistant Director of the Project Monitoring Committee, to serve alongside Hannah Moshontz. You can read more and apply here.

2 PSA Members Suggest a Theory Committee

Peder Isager and Nick Coles have made a quite interesting suggestion - that the PSA could use a theory committee - in a recent blogpost. Have a read and let them know what you think!