2015 Replicability Ranking of 54 Psychology Journals

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INTRODUCTION

This post shows the latest replicability rankings of psychological journals.

The following improvements have been made.

1 – The number of journals included in the ranking has doubled from 27 to 54 journals.

2 – The list of journals covers a broader range of psychological disciplines. It now includes journals for cognitive psychology (COG), social psychology (SOC), personality psychology (PER), developmental psychology (DEV), and clinical psychology (CLI).

3 – Replicability scores are now based on F-tests, t-tests, z-tests, correlation and regression coefficients, and confidence intervals.

4 – Replicability scores are reported with the number of tests that were used to compute replicability scores as well as 95% CI based on bootstrap analysis with 500 samples.

5 – The range of z-scores that is used for the computation of replicability scores has been expanded to a limit of z = 6.

6 – The more appropriate heterogeneous model is being used to estimate replicability scores. The heterogeneous model allows for variation the population effect sizes and true power across different analysis.

For more details on the computation of replicability scores see the text below the table and related posts (1, 2, 3, 4).

 

Rank Journal Area 2010-2014 Est. Low High 2015 Est. Low High  Grade
1 Cognitive Psychology COG 1733 0.72 0.69 0.75 186 0.75 0.63 0.79 B|C-B
2 Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology GEN 2277 0.65 0.61 0.69 238 0.74 0.66 0.79 B|C-B
3 Journal of Memory & Language COG 4729 0.67 0.64 0.69 409 0.74 0.67 0.78 B|C-B
4 Developmental Psychology DEV 4083 0.65 0.62 0.67 358 0.72 0.64 0.77 B|C-B↑
5 JEP: LMC COG 7730 0.7 0.68 0.71 1323 0.71 0.68 0.75 B|C-B
6 JEP: Human Percepetion and Performance COG 10342 0.72 0.7 0.74 1064 0.71 0.67 0.73 B|C-B
7 Journal of Experimental Psychology: General GEN 5045 0.65 0.62 0.67 708 0.71 0.65 0.74 B|C-B?
8 Judgment and Decision Making COG 978 0.67 0.6 0.7 110 0.71 0.6 0.78 B|C-B↑
9 Social Psychology SOC 1558 0.62 0.58 0.66 146 0.71 0.62 0.78 B|C-B↑
10 Archives of Sexual Behavior GEN 1271 0.7 0.66 0.74 226 0.7 0.61 0.75 B|C-B
11 Journal of Research in Personality PER 2366 0.64 0.61 0.67 230 0.7 0.63 0.77 B|D-B↑
12 JPSP: Personality Process & Individual Differences PER 1735 0.59 0.54 0.62 179 0.7 0.53 0.76 B|D-B↑
13 Personality and Individual Differences PER 5506 0.62 0.59 0.64 853 0.7 0.66 0.74 B|C-B↑
14 Cognition & Emotion EMO 3723 0.67 0.64 0.69 773 0.69 0.64 0.73 C|C-B
15 Depression & Anxiety CLI 878 0.65 0.59 0.7 227 0.68 0.6 0.74 C|C-B
16 Aggressive Behavior GEN 810 0.6 0.53 0.66 81 0.67 0.54 0.77 C|D-B↑
17 Personal Relationships SOC 1320 0.54 0.5 0.58 126 0.67 0.56 0.75 C|D-B↑
18 Behavior Research & Therapy CLI 3116 0.64 0.62 0.67 479 0.66 0.6 0.72 C|C-B
19 JPSP: Attitude & Social Cognition SOC 3550 0.54 0.5 0.58 354 0.66 0.58 0.72 C|D-B↑
20 Psychology and Aging DEV 4422 0.71 0.69 0.73 184 0.66 0.58 0.74 C|D-B↓
21 Psychology of Music COG 693 0.64 0.59 0.69 136 0.66 0.56 0.72 C|D-B
22 Appetite GEN 2164 0.58 0.55 0.6 384 0.64 0.6 0.72 C|C-B↑
23 Cognition COG 7744 0.65 0.63 0.67 1826 0.64 0.61 0.66 C|C-C
24 Journal of Applied Psychology APP 662 0.64 0.55 0.69 173 0.64 0.54 0.72 C|D-B
25 Social Psychology Personality Science SOC 2631 0.53 0.49 0.56 174 0.64 0.56 0.74 C|D-B↑
26 Journal of Positive Psychology GEN 518 0.63 0.57 0.68 125 0.62 0.5 0.7 C|D-B
27 British Journal of Social Psychology SOC 1357 0.54 0.49 0.59 119 0.61 0.5 0.73 C|D-B↑
28 Developmental Science DEV 4211 0.58 0.54 0.61 318 0.61 0.52 0.67 C|D-C
29 Journal of Personality PER 1338 0.52 0.48 0.55 249 0.6 0.47 0.68 C|F-C↑
30 Psychological Science GEN 7975 0.57 0.55 0.59 444 0.6 0.5 0.66 C|D-C
31 Law and Human Behavior APP 891 0.67 0.63 0.71 180 0.6 0.49 0.7 C|F-B↓
32 Child Development DEV 4707 0.62 0.58 0.63 493 0.59 0.49 0.64 D|F-C
33 Infancy DEV 1399 0.53 0.49 0.57 730 0.59 0.53 0.64 D|D-C↑
34 Journal of Experimental Social Psychology SOC 8720 0.52 0.48 0.54 1182 0.59 0.5 0.62 D|D-C↑
35 Motivation and Emotion EMO 2410 0.63 0.6 0.65 547 0.58 0.53 0.66 D|D-C↓
36 Psychophysiology BIO 8568 0.61 0.59 0.64 1346 0.58 0.54 0.63 D|D-C↓
37 Social Development DEV 1244 0.63 0.59 0.66 218 0.58 0.48 0.66 D|F-C↓
38 European Journal of Personality PER 400 0.67 0.61 0.72 71 0.56 0.37 0.71 D|F-B↓
39 Health Psychology APP 1503 0.56 0.52 0.6 121 0.56 0.43 0.67 D|F-C
40 Journal of Educational Psychology APP 1550 0.68 0.63 0.71 295 0.56 0.47 0.64 D|F-C↓
41 European Journal of Social Psychology SOC 3353 0.58 0.55 0.61 350 0.55 0.47 0.62 D|F-C
42 Journal of Social & Personal Relationships SOC 646 0.63 0.56 0.68 148 0.55 0.42 0.67 D|F-C↓
43 JPSP:Interpersonal Relationships & Group Processes SOC 4047 0.54 0.5 0.56 468 0.55 0.47 0.62 D|F-C
44 Organizational Behavior and Decision Processes APP 3373 0.62 0.59 0.65 608 0.55 0.49 0.61 D|F-C↓
45 Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin SOC 8737 0.54 0.52 0.56 1238 0.55 0.46 0.58 D|F-D
46 Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry DEV 1823 0.51 0.47 0.57 445 0.54 0.47 0.59 D|F-D
47 Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology CLI 1390 0.55 0.5 0.59 304 0.54 0.45 0.62 D|F-C
48 Personnel Psychology APP 287 0.62 0.53 0.66 72 0.54 0.33 0.68 D|F|C
49 Journal of Abnormal Psychology CLI 2034 0.55 0.52 0.59 258 0.53 0.41 0.61 D|F-C
50 Emotion EMO 5695 0.62 0.6 0.64 376 0.52 0.46 0.59 D|F-D↓
51 Evolution & Human Behavior GEN 450 0.55 0.48 0.63 56 0.51 0.29 0.72 D|F|B
52 Social Cognition SOC 1830 0.57 0.52 0.6 141 0.49 0.36 0.59 F|F-D↓
53 Group Processes & Intergroup Relations SOC 2059 0.53 0.51 0.57 352 0.46 0.39 0.54 F|F-D↓
54 Journal of Youth and Adolescence DEV 1724 0.6 0.56 0.65 282 0.46 0.33 0.5 F|F-D↓

Notes:   ↑↓ upward/downward trend if 2015 estimate is outside 2010-2014 confidence interval.
Estimate = Point estimate of bias-corrected power, low/high = 95% confidence interval limits based on 500 bootstrap analyses.

 

DEFINITION OF KEY TERMS

REPLICABILITY: I define replicability as the probability that an exact replication study with the same population effect size and sample size (and therewith the same true power) produces a significant result. This definition of replicability equates replicability with statistical power. Importantly, a replication study that does not replicate a significant result cannot be interpreted as evidence that an effect does not exist. The non-significant result can occur for several reasons. When replicability is estimated for a heterogeneous set of statistical tests (e.g., tests from different articles in a journal), replicability is the percentage of significant results that can be expected if all of the tests were carried out again in a new set of exact replication studies.

REPORTING BIAS: If journals would publish significant and non-significant results, the percentage of significant results in journals would provide a simple and valid measure of replicability (1, 2). However, psychological journals are much more likely to publish significant results (Sterling, 1959). As a result, published success rates provide biased and inflated estimates of replicability. Replicability rankings use a novel statistical method to correct for reporting bias and estimate the true replicability of significant results published in psychological journals.

DATA

The data were obtained from online published articles in the years from 2010-2015 using 2015 articles that were published online on October 1.  The results will be updated when all articles from 2015 are published.

The analysis are based on z-scores in the range from 2 (just above significance criterion of 1.96) and 6.  An additional 12% of z-scores with z > 6 were excluded.   A z-score of 6 has a probability of 1 in 10 billion to occur when the null-hypothesis is true.  Thus, any z-score greater than 6 can be considered to be a real effect and a failed replication (z < 2) would suggest that the two experiments are not exact replications.

The analysis is based on 19,133 articles.  Articles were scanned for reports of F-tests, t-tests, z-tests, correlations, regression coefficients, and confidence intervals.  The results of these tests were converted into absolute z-scores.  The search yielded 182,413 z-scores in the critical range from 2 to 6.

The majority of reported tests were F-tests (n = 100,014) followed by t-tests (n = 59,644), correlations (n = 18,679), z-tests (n = 3278), confidence intervals (n = 540), and regression coefficients with standard errors (n = 258).

The data were submitted to a post-hoc-power analysis. The method relies on the fact that a set of studies with a distribution of true powers produces a characteristic curve of observed z-scores. The shape of this distribution can be used to estimate the average true power based even for a truncated set of observed z-scores.  The method is illustrated below for the full set of 273,494 z-scores in the range form 0 to 6 (excluding 12% of data with z > 6), but only the 182,413 z-scores in the range from 2 to 6 are used to estimate average true power.

 

54journals

The blue line shows the observed z-scores and the green line shows simulated z-scores of the best fitting model. The best fitting model assigns weights to a set of true power values and uses the weighted average as an estimate of average true power.  The estimate is 61%.  A bootstrap analysis with 500 trials provides a confidence interval.  With over 100,000 observations the interval is small and ranges from 60 to 62%.

The green curve also estimates the number of non-significant results that were obtained but not reported.  To estimate the size of the proverbial file-drawer,  non-significant results are assigned a single z-score of 1, which corresponds to 17% power.  The weight assigned to these non-significant results is determined by the difference between the inflated power and the corrected power estimate.  The greater the inflation, the more non-significant results are hidden in file drawers.

2 thoughts on “2015 Replicability Ranking of 54 Psychology Journals”

  1. If you take requests, here are some other empirical journals that many cognitive psychologists care about:

    Memory & Cognition
    Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
    Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics
    Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
    Memory
    Acta Psychologica

    Thanks for the interesting analyses and posts.

    Best,

    Mike

    Reply
  2. Pingback: Why are Top Journals Top Journals? | lornecampbell

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