The Conceptualization of Migration Experiences: Making the Data and Results from a Systematic Scoping Review Accessible
Open Research objectives/practices
- open web application to interact with 230+ scales and 90+ theories on cultural adaptation
also:
- open access publication
- open data
- open supplements (including a detailed coding protocol and an interactive analysis code render)
- open code (analysis code and source code of web application)
Introduction
Five years ago, we started a large-scale undertaking to map and organize the conceptual literature on how migrants psychologically adapt in new cultural environments (i.e., psychological acculturation). Based on a local focus group discussion as well as the current literature, we propose to organize the conceptual elements based on the fundamental aspects of the human experience: wanting, feeling, thinking, and doing.
In the open access article, we describe the development of the framework and use the framework to assess the current conceptual landscape in the theoretical, methodological, and applied empirical literature. We assess the conceptual make-up of 92 theories, 233 psychometric articles as well as 530 applied empirical works.
As part of the article, we provide openly accessible OSF and GitHub repositories that include all open data, all source- and analysis code, as well as all open supplemental materials. However, beyond these open research practices we have spent considerable additional effort to also make the underlying data and results more easily accessible.
Motivation
As part of the systematic scoping review, we collected and coded a wide range of theoretical and methodological manuscripts on psychological acculturation. Given that this undertaking, to the best of our knowledge, brought together the largest collection of acculturation scales and theories to date, we decided to make the scales and theories as well as their attributes accessible to the readership. To this aim, we created an interactive acculturation directory, which aims to aid (1) selection, (2) accessibility, and (3) exploration.
The most practical function of the application is to aid researchers and practitioners in the selection of acculturation measurements and theories. The immense number of acculturation scales and theories has made it difficult to choose between different approaches. We aimed to simplify the overwhelming task of choosing among numerous approaches, styles, and content, by providing structured, intuitive, and interactive access.
We also hope to make the scales and theories more easily accessible to the users of the application. We do so by showcasing all (publicly) available scale items, response options, sample- and life domain information by clicking the eye icon in the ‘View’ column. We, additionally, list the full references to all works.
And finally, as part of the framework development and systematic review, we have arrived at several conclusions about the literature on acculturation. Readers can use this directory in conjunction with the main article and explore the results themselves. The search and filter options allow readers interactive access to the data and users can gain an intuitive understanding of the current state of the literature.
Lessons learned
Our first lesson learned was that open science should focus on accessibility. Our open science practices were initially focused on the availability of our materials, data, and code. However, beyond the transparency and reproducibility aims we found **accessibility** to be as important. Both the annotated analysis code document as well as the web application focus on ease of access and usability (i.e., accessibility) rather than only openness and availability.
Our second lesson learned was that not only the analysis results count for open science. Building an intuitive and interactive interface for the theories and measurement scales we collected has shown us that practical resources are often inherent in our works and making them accessible can add a new layer of impact to our works.
URLs, references and further information
| Last modified: | 05 December 2023 2.34 p.m. |