ArticlePloS one2021
Neglect of publication bias compromises meta-analyses of educational research.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Simulation-based infection prevention and control training for medical and healthcare students: a systematic review.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Assessing robustness to worst case publication bias using a simple subset meta-analysis.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2024Pooled it
- What works in radiology education for medical students: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medical education · 2024Pooled it
- International perspectives on gaps and solutions for integrating research evidence into classroom practices.NPJ science of learning · 2025Article
- Editorial: Be positive about the negative in pharmacology: clinical studies in renal pharmacology 2022.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2023Article
- Article
- Using selection models to assess sensitivity to publication bias: A tutorial and call for more routine use.Campbell systematic reviews · 2022Article
- Residual Disease After Primary Surgical Treatment for Advanced Epithelial Ovarian Cancer, Part 2: Network Meta-analysis Incorporating Expert Elicitation to Adjust for Publication Bias.American journal of therapeuticsArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Because negative findings have less chance of getting published, available studies tend to be a biased sample. This leads to an inflation of effect size estimates to an unknown degree. To see how meta-analyses in education account for publication bias, we surveyed all meta-analyses published in the last five years in the Review of Educational Research and Educational Research Review. The results show that meta-analyses usually neglect publication bias adjustment. In the minority of meta-analyses adjusting for bias, mostly non-principled adjustment methods were used, and only rarely were the conclusions based on corrected estimates, rendering the adjustment inconsequential. It is argued that appropriate state-of-the-art adjustment (e.g., selection models) should be attempted by default, yet one needs to take into account the uncertainty inherent in any meta-analytic inference under bias. We conclude by providing practical recommendations on dealing with publication bias.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.