Advice to New Human-Robot Interaction Researchers

Abstract

As the field of Human-Robot Interaction is relatively young and highly interdisciplinary, it often happens that we as researchers make mistakes which could have been avoided had we known more about good and bad research practices in fields other than our own. Bad practices such as convenience sampling, p-hacking, or the Hawthorne effect will be known to some, but are too often unfamiliar to others. HRI is lucky to mature during one of the biggest revolutions in experimental psychology: the "replication crisis" was one of the most seminal moments in psychology and its repercussions are felt far and wide, including in HRI. This chapter lists some of the important mistakes often made in HRI studies and suggest practical recommendations for better research studies.