Department of Psychology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-2051, USA.
Hum Factors. 2010 Oct;52(5):586-95. doi: 10.1177/0018720810384394.
The present studies investigated the nature of replication research within the human factors literature.
Many claim that researchers in certain fields do not replicate prior research. This is troubling because replications allow science to self-correct. A successful replication corroborates the original finding, whereas an unsuccessful replication falsifies it. To date, no one has assessed whether this issue affects the field of human factors.
In the first study, eight articles (parent articles) were selected from the 1991 issues of the journal Human Factors. Each article that had referenced one of the eight parent articles between 1991 and September 2006 (child articles) were also retrieved. Two investigators coded and compared each child article against its 1991 parent article to determine whether the child article replicated its parent article. The second study replicated these procedures.
Half or more of the parent articles in Study I and Study 2 (75% and 50%, respectively) were replicated at least once. Furthermore, human factors researchers conducted replications of their own work as well as the work of others. However, many researchers did not state that they replicated previous research.
Replications seem to be common in the human factors literature. However, readers may not realize that a study replicated prior research. Thus, they may incorrectly assess the evidence concerning a given finding.
Human factors professionals should be taught how to identify replications and to be cautious of research that has not been replicated.
本研究调查了人类因素文献中复制研究的性质。
许多人声称某些领域的研究人员没有复制先前的研究。这很麻烦，因为复制可以让科学自我修正。成功的复制证实了原始发现，而不成功的复制则否定了它。迄今为止，还没有人评估这个问题是否会影响人类因素领域。
在第一项研究中，从 1991 年的《人类因素》杂志中选择了八篇文章（母本文章）。在 1991 年至 2006 年 9 月期间，参考了这八篇母本文章中的一篇或多篇的每一篇文章（子本文章）也被检索出来。两名调查员对每一篇子本文章与它的 1991 年母本文章进行了编码和比较，以确定子本文章是否复制了母本文章。第二项研究复制了这些程序。
在研究 I 和研究 2 中，一半或更多的母本文章（分别为 75%和 50%）至少被复制了一次。此外，人类因素研究人员不仅复制了自己的工作，还复制了其他人的工作。然而，许多研究人员并没有说明他们复制了先前的研究。
复制在人类因素文献中似乎很常见。然而，读者可能没有意识到一项研究复制了先前的研究。因此，他们可能会错误地评估关于给定发现的证据。
应该教授人类因素专业人员如何识别复制，并对未经过复制的研究保持谨慎。
