Suggested Offline Activities

Offline activities for autism research groups

Our suggested offline activities are intended for lab meetings or journal clubs. They could make for a nice away day for a team, a chance to discuss a paper together, and time to think about the application of open science matters to your group’s specific topics. You might find it helps to divide up the topics amongst your group, so a different person helps lead each one.

Activity/Topic 1 – Effect sizes in autism research

A paper by Rødgaard et al (2019) suggests that effect size are reducing in autism research. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 11 meta-analyses in autism research. They conclude that autism-non-autism group comparisons are showing reducing effect sizes over the decades, across multiple domains of research. They suggest this is due to the changing of diagnostic criteria for autism diagnosis, moving autism from what was a more homogenous population to a more heterogeneous population.

· If you attended the online session on the 8^th of September, you might find it interesting to look for measures of heterogeneity presented in this paper – can you find any?

· Do you know about the effect sizes usually expected for your own research topic? Do you/your lab leader(s) think they have reduced over time? What do they think affects these effect sizes?

· In an editorial in response to this paper, it was suggested that subtypes in autism research might be important to reflect heterogeneity in autism and understand which effects pattern with which subtypes. Perhaps understanding subtypes will explain this reduction in effect sizes. What do you think of this idea?

· What other reasons could lead to a reduction in effect sizes over time, other than changes in diagnostic processes?

Activity/Topic 2 – Open science in neurodevelopmental research

This preprint by Farran and Scerif considers the issue of reproducibility in research on neurodevelopmental conditions. The authors consider the issues of statistical power, measurement sensitivity and longitudinal research (and more) particularly in the context of theoretical approaches that acknowledge that neurodevelopment is dynamic, with interactions unfolding between biological, behavioural and environmental factors.

· The authors discuss ideas around the themes of increased collaboration and increased transparency to help improve things. Did any of the ideas strike you/your group as one that could be adopted in your own line of research? Can you think of any other ideas, apart from increasing collaboration and transparency, that would help?

· The authors suggest having agreed common measurement protocols, meaning that data could be pooled across many labs over time. What kinds of measures would be candidates for this, in your own area of research?

· What do you think the major barriers are to practicing open science in autism research, and your topics especially? By open science, we mean practices like:

o Sharing data, code and materials

o Preregistering studies, or publishing via registered reports

o Pre-printing

o Replication

Activity/Topic 3 – Replication and registered reports in autism research

Our workshop on the 8^th of September included a “how to” section on registered reports. Registered reports suit a research question with a hypothesis and clear predictions. Replication studies are particularly good candidates for this approach (though not all registered reports need be replications).

- What effects in their your research area would you be interested in replicating, or seeing others replicate?

- Are any of these good candidates for a registered report (or a preregistration, if time is a limiting factor to doing a registered report)? Does the registered report approach fit the topic area? Why/why not?

- What specific things would you need to take into consideration if you wanted to pursue a registered report on your topic? This might include learning how to conduct power analyses for your particular analytical approaches, deciding between certain measurements or tasks of interest, considering whether you would need to collect more data from more participants to meet journal power requirements for registered reports.

- If you are interested in pursuing a registered report or preregistration, do you know anyone in your department who has published these? (If not – you could check our directory to see if an autism researcher has listed this amongst their expertise, and contact them)

________________________________________________________________________________

These activities were assembled by Hannah Hobson. If you have any resources or topics you’d like to share/suggest that could make for a good offline activity in the future, please email hannah.hobson@york.ac.uk

To open the offline activities as a downloadable and printable document see below!