The Validity of Inferential Judgments when Used in Theory-Testing Meta-Analysis

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Abstract
This article examines the use of inferential judgments in meta-analysis as a means of testing hypotheses in social psychological theory. The authors discuss difficulties that meta-analysts usually face when they try to investigate the effects of psychological mediators in a substantive research area and suggest the use of inferential judgments to overcome them. A validity study is presented that supports this recommendation. It shows that judgments regarding the level of psychological mediators, as inferred from a reading of method sections of social psychological experiments, correlate highly with manipulation-check effect sizes. This was true for each of two affective mediators (positive and negative mood) and each of two cognitive mediators (perception of control and source credibility). However, as was predicted from thle literature on the role playing of social psychological experiments, judgments about subjects' helping behavior or attitude change, though highly reliable, were not so consistently related to dependent-measure effect sizes.