(PS13-C59) Is Clinical Psychology Ready to Embrace Open Science?

            The mission of clinical psychology is to promote mental health and reduce the burden of mental illness. To accomplish this goal, it is essential that clinical psychology use research practices that are accessible, reliable, inclusive, and transparent (i.e., open science practices). Embracing open science practices can accelerate innovation by increasing the accuracy and efficiency of the scientific process and enhancing the translation of scientific knowledge beyond academia.

            However, despite open science practices becoming increasingly accessible and encouraged, they are not yet the norm, and inspiring researchers to adopt open science practices and make sustainable changes in their workflows remains a challenge. Even within psychology, a field that has been central to discussions of open science reform, there seems to be varying levels of readiness to adopt open science practices. For example, while subfields like social psychology have embraced open science practices, other subfields, including clinical psychology, have been criticized for being slow to transition away from using “closed” research practices. Further, although previous research has been helpful in identifying ways to promote systemic changes within the field of psychology broadly, these studies have typically taken a “one size fits all” approach and neglected the role of inspiring change at the individual level—despite the fact that researchers within different areas and career stages likely have different motivations and barriers for engaging in open science scholarship.

            Our proposed presentation aims to address these gaps and examine the extent to which psychology, and clinical psychology, has transitioned from “closed” to “open” science practices. We will present the results of an online study in which we assessed psychology researchers’ views of, and experiences with, various open science practices. Our results will be stratified by psychology subfield, research method, and career stage to contextualize individual factors influencing open science scholarship and to provide targeted recommendations for ways to promote open science within clinical psychology. Finally, because our survey incorporates insights from the Transtheoretical ("Stages of Change") Model of behavior change, we will present recommendations for how to encourage open science adoption at the individual (rather than societal) level.

            In sum, the goal of this proposed presentation will be to provide a nuanced, yet integrative, summary on the use of open science practices within psychology and to support systemic changes by making suggestions for encouraging behavior change at the individual level.