Practice question · Multiple choice
Well-conducted studies finding nothing are much less likely to be published than studies finding an effect. Why does this distort the literature even when every individual study is faultless?
Hints
- Every study is fine. So where does the distortion enter?
- Nineteen labs find nothing and file it away. One finds something and publishes. What does the reader see?
Show the answer
D. Because what gets published is then a biased sample of what was done.
Why
The bias lives in the selection, not in any study: twenty honest tests of a non-existent effect yield about one significant result, and if that one is written up the literature shows unanimous support. No individual paper is at fault, which is why meta-analysis must test for the bias rather than pool what it can find.
Practise Reporting Research Findings
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Psychology I is free to start.
More questions on Reporting Research Findings
- Sort each practice by whether it tends to worsen or to counter publication-related bias.
- Enough detail for an independent replication belongs in the Results section.
- A finding is peer-reviewed and published in a good journal. What has that process actually established?
- Select every statement that is TRUE about reporting research.
- A researcher collects data, notices an unexpected pattern, and publishes it as the hypothesis the study set…
- Order the standard APA report sections as they appear in a paper.