articleAmerican PsychologistJan 1, 2015Closed access

Is psychology suffering from a replication crisis? What does “failure to replicate” really mean?

University of Notre Dame · Columbia University

PubMed
Indexed incrossrefpubmed

Abstract

Psychology has recently been viewed as facing a replication crisis because efforts to replicate past study findings frequently do not show the same result. Often, the first study showed a statistically significant result but the replication does not. Questions then arise about whether the first study results were false positives, and whether the replication study correctly indicates that there is truly no effect after all. This article suggests these so-called failures to replicate may not be failures at all, but rather are the result of low statistical power in single replication studies, and the result of failure to appreciate the need for multiple replications in order to have enough power to identify true…

Citation impact

1,046
total citations
FWCI
55.69
Percentile
100%
References
67
Citations per year

Authors

3

Topics & keywords

Keywords
  • Replicate
  • Replication (statistics)
  • Psychology
  • Sample (material)
  • Sample size determination
  • Statistical power
  • Power (physics)
  • False positive paradox
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