Contextual sensitivity in scientific reproducibility

Significance

Scientific progress requires that findings can be reproduced by other scientists. However, there is widespread debate in psychology (and other fields) about how to interpret failed replications. Many have argued that contextual factors might account for several of these failed replications. We analyzed 100 replication attempts in psychology and found that the extent to which the research topic was likely to be contextually sensitive (varying in time, culture, or location) was associated with replication success. This relationship remained a significant predictor of replication success even after adjusting for characteristics of the original and replication studies that previously had been associated with replication success (e.g., effect size, statistical power). We offer recommendations for psychologists and other scientists interested in reproducibility.

Abstract

In recent years, scientists have paid increasing attention to reproducibility. For example, the Reproducibility Project, a large-scale replication attempt of 100 studies published in top psychology journals found that only 39% could be unambiguously reproduced. There is a growing consensus among scientists that the lack of reproducibility in psychology and other fields stems from various methodological factors, including low statistical power, researcher’s degrees of freedom, and an emphasis on publishing surprising positive results. However, there is a contentious debate about the extent to which failures to reproduce certain results might also reflect contextual differences (often termed “hidden moderators”) between the original research and the replication attempt. Although psychologists have found extensive evidence that contextual factors alter behavior, some have argued that context is unlikely to influence the results of direct replications precisely because these studies use the same methods as those used in the original research. To help resolve this debate, we recoded the 100 original studies from the Reproducibility Project on the extent to which the research topic of each study was contextually sensitive. Results suggested that the contextual sensitivity of the research topic was associated with replication success, even after statistically adjusting for several methodological characteristics (e.g., statistical power, effect size). The association between contextual sensitivity and replication success did not differ across psychological subdisciplines. These results suggest that researchers, replicators, and consumers should be mindful of contextual factors that might influence a psychological process. We offer several guidelines for dealing with contextual sensitivity in reproducibility.