Final answer:
A study is replicated to ensure its reliability, involving the collection of new data on the same phenomenon. Replication, paired with peer review, guarantees the integrity of research findings, which must be ethical and adhere to standards of reliability and validity.
Step-by-step explanation:
Often a study is replicated in order to ensure its reliability. This involves collecting new data on the same phenomenon. This process allows researchers to be more confident in their findings and enables them to submit the findings to a peer-reviewed journal to be made public.
Replicating a study allows researchers to perform thorough testing and verification of results. Peer review acts as a form of quality control, ensuring that research findings are original, significant, logical, and thoroughly constructed. This is vital since only those findings that can be consistently replicated are likely to reach a consensus in the scientific community.
Research ethics play a crucial role and dictate that any research involving human participants must be approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB), require voluntary informed consent and provide a full debrief in the case of deception. Reliability and validity of data collection tools are critical, referring to consistent reproduction of results and the accuracy of the results respectively. Hence, replication not only supports the reliability of scientific findings but also contributes to the overall scientific knowledge base.