Seminar “Investigating the analytical robustness of the social and behavioural sciences”

Wednesday, 22 April 2026, at 11:00 AM, in Room A of Psychology (Psychology 3 building), with Balazs Aczel (ELTE, Budapest)

The study “Investigating the Analytical Robustness of the Social and Behavioural Sciences,” published in Nature in April 2026, is the outcome of a large-scale multilaboratory effort involving hundreds of authors worldwide, including researchers from the University of Padua’s Department of General Psychology.

The study addresses a key issue in the social and behavioural sciences: the extent to which a study’s findings depend on the statistical choices made by researchers. The starting point is simple yet important: the same data can be analysed in different ways, all of them methodologically justifiable, in order to answer the same research question. This degree of analytical flexibility can significantly influence the conclusions a study may yield.

The seminar will provide an opportunity to discuss one of the most relevant methodological issues today: whether a single analysis can be considered sufficient and comprehensive enough to ensure the robustness and soundness of a result. The study highlights the need to acknowledge and communicate this source of uncertainty explicitly, and to promote research practices that allow the systematic exploration of variability arising from the different choices that may be made when analysing data. Among the recommendations put forward by the authors are the adoption of multi-analyst studies and multiverse analysis, in order to assess how stable empirical conclusions remain across different analytical strategies.

Wednesday, 22 April 2026, at 11:00 AM, in Room A, Psychology (Psychology 3 building), with Balazs Aczel (ELTE, Budapest)