Reflections on the Replication Corner: In Praise of Conceptual Replications

Abstract

We contrast the philosophy guiding the Replication Corner at IJRM with replication efforts in psychology. Psychology has promoted ”exact” or “direct” replications, reflecting an interest in statistical conclusion validity of the original findings. Implicitly, this philosophy treats non-replication as evidence that the original finding is not “real” – a conclusion that we believe is unwarranted. In contrasts, we have encouraged “conceptual replications” (replicating at the construct level but with different operationalization) and “replications with extensions”, reflecting our interest in providing evidence on the external validity and generalizability of published findings. In particular, our belief is that this replication philosophy allows for both replication and the creation of new knowledge. We express our views about why we believe our approach is more constructive, and describe lessons learned in the three years we have been involved in editing the IJRM Replication Corner. Of our thirty published conceptual replications, most found results replicating the original findings, sometimes identifying moderators.

Keywords: Direct replication, conceptual replication, replication and extension, external validity

JEL Classification: M30, C91, C92, C93