Conceptual Replications - Guidelines for implementation and factors influencing replicability across different fields in psychology
Variation of study characteristics, instead of exact replication, is a core aspect for understanding effect heterogeneity. We focus on systematic variation of study characteristics in conceptual replications and rely on the recently developed causal replication framework (CRF, Steiner & Wong, 2018; Steiner, Wong, & Anglin, 2019). The CRF uses causal theory for defining and designing replication studies.
Specifically, the CRF allows for causally identifying factors that impact replicability, and describes how research designs and analyses methods can be used for systematically studying effect heterogeneity.
So far, the framework has been successfully applied for conceptual replications in educational research. However, characteristics of studies and how they can be kept constant across replications differs across disciplines, calling for respective designs and analyses methods. We aim to make the CRF applicable to a broader range of disciplines. For this, we systematically design conceptual replications with the CRF in different psychological disciplines. We focus on social and cognitive psychology, representing different challenges for replication, and compare these to existing studies in educational psychology. Furthermore, cooperations within the SPP allow for an even broader interdisciplinary application of the CRF. As such, in our project we will develop approaches for the application of the CRF in various disciplines, identify factors that cause effect heterogeneity within and across different disciplines, and derive guidelines for conceptual replication studies.
Additional information can be found at the project website Conceptual Replications and the website Collaboratory Replication Lab of our cooperation partners on systematic replication studies.