The 2026 Annual Conference of the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP) took place in Strasbourg, France, from June 30 to July 4. As part of the opening symposium titled “Who Critiques the Critique? Toward a Reflexive Metascience,” Dr. Rizqy Amelia Zein, a postdoctoral researcher in the Research Methods and Data department at CAIS, gave a presentation together with Mario Gollwitzer from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
The presentation, titled “The Role of Context in Explaining Effect Size Heterogeneity in Replication Studies,” addressed the question of why replication studies conducted at multiple research sites often yield different effect sizes. Such differences do not necessarily mean that an original finding is unreliable. Rather, contextual factors can contribute to the variability of the results. Using data from two multi-site replication projects, the researchers demonstrated that, in one case studied, the heterogeneity of effect sizes could be explained by differences in the study protocols used, while the conceptually irrelevant contextual characteristics examined had no corresponding influence. The results illustrate that taking contextual conditions into account can contribute to the theoretical and methodological understanding of replication research.