Solution:A research question or hypothesis must be investigated from many different perspectives before any significance can be attributed to the results of one study.Research methods and designs must be altered to eliminate design-specific results-results based on, and hence specific to, the design used. Similarly, subjects with a variety of characteristics should be studied from many angles to eliminate sample-specific results,
and statistical analyses need to be varied to eliminate method-specific results. In other words, every effort must be made to ensure that the results of any single study are not created by or dependent on a methodological factor; studies must be replicated.
Researchers overwhelmingly advocate the use of replication to establish scientific fact. Lykken (1968) and Kelly, Chase, and Tucker (1979) identify four basic types of replication that can be used to help validate a scientific test:
- Literal replication involves the exact duplication of a previous analysis, including the sampling procedures, experimental conditions, measuring techniques, and methods of data analysis.
- Operational replication attempts to duplicate only the sampling and experimental procedures of a previous analysis, to test whether the procedures will produce similar results.
- Instrumental replication attempts to duplicate the dependent measures used in a previous study and to vary the experimental conditions of the original study.
- Constructive replication tests the validity of methods used previously by deliberately not imitating the earlier study; both the manipulations and the measures differ from those used in the first study. The researcher simply begins with a statement of empirical “fact” uncovered in a previous study and attempts to find the same “fact.”