An overview of the replicability, generalizability and practical relevance of eyewitness testimony research in the Journal of Criminal Psychology

Purpose

Before psychological research is used for policy reforms and recommendations, it is important to evaluate its replicability, generalizability and practical relevance. This paper aims to examine these three criteria for published articles in the Journal of Criminal Psychology.

Design/methodology/approach

Through a literature search for published articles in the Journal of Criminal Psychology related to the topics of the special issue Contemporary Developments in the Retrieval and Evaluation of Witness Testimony: Towards making research more applicable to investigations, this paper identified 158 eligible articles. For each article, this paper extracted variables related to the type of article, reported p-values, type of sample and stimuli, power analyses and conducted analyses and how effect sizes were used and interpreted. This paper analyzed these variables descriptively and conducted a z-curve analysis.

Findings

In terms of generalizability, the articles examined populations of interest (e.g. offenders, prisoners) and there was no sole reliance on Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic samples. However, for replicability, there were currently no replication studies or published Registered Reports and the z-curve analysis indicated a low expected replication rate. Moreover, when examining practical relevance, almost no power analyses were conducted and when they were conducted, they were not reproducible or did not use meaningful effect sizes. Finally, although the majority of studies reported effect sizes, they were oftentimes not interpreted.

Originality/value

The present study sheds light on the potential societal impact of published articles in the Journal of Criminal Psychology.