Attentional Control Data Collection: A Resource for Efficient Data Reuse

Publicly available data are required 1. to assess the reproducibility of each individual finding in the literature, and 2. to promote the reuse of data for a more efficient use of participants' time and public resources. Current data sharing efforts are well suited for the first goal; yet, they do not sufficiently address the second goal. Here, we show how structured collections of open data can be useful as they allow a larger community of researchers easy access to a large body of data from their own research area. We introduce the Attentional Control Data Collection, an SQL data base for attentional control experiments. We illustrate the structure of the data base, how it can be easily accessed using a shiny app and an R-package, and how researchers can contribute data from their studies to the data base. Finally, we conduct our own initial analysis of the 64 data sets in our data base, assessing the reliability of individual differences. The analysis highlights that reliability is generally low, and provides insights into planning future studies. For example researchers should consider to increase the number of trials per person and condition to at least 400. The analysis highlights how an open data base like ACDC can aid meta-analytic efforts as well as methodological innovation.