Ming-Yu, a new PhD student, was just given her first assignment as a graduate research assistant for Professor Riggs. Professor Riggs was a quantitative psychologist who studied the effects of sport fishing on a variety of psychological outcomes. Ming-Yu was to take a stack of 60 studies obtained by the previous research assistant for a meta analytic study examining the varying effects of lake (e.g., bass), stream (e.g., trout), and deep-sea (e.g., marlin) fishing on stress levels of the participants. She was asked to “code” each study, and when she was done with that, she was to enter the relevant data and “analyze them.” 

Ming-Yu had never fished in her life so she did not have a clue as to what she should be coding in the studies. Undaunted, however, she read each study and eventually was able to come up with what she thought was a reasonable coding scheme. She then coded each study and extracted the relevant data to be entered into the meta-analysis program. She coded for year of study, size of sample, type of journal, type of design, and reported effect size. She also pulled out the relevant information to examine possible moderators. For example, she looked at where the fishing took place (river vs. lake/ocean) and the type of rod used (cheap vs. expensive). Thus, her next assignment was to enter the data and begin the preliminary analyses. However, Professor Riggs, being a quantitative psychologist, had six different meta-analysis programs. She tried to contact Professor Riggs to see which program he wanted her to use but he was not available, as he was out doing “field work” on his next fishing study. So, it was up to her to select an appropriate software option, enter the data, and obtain initial results. 

Ultimately, she chose one of the more popular meta-analysis programs and carried out the initial analysis. The preliminary analysis, however, seemed to indicate that the type of fishing made very little difference in the stress levels of participants. However, Professor Riggs had spent nearly his entire career demonstrating the superior stress reducing effects of stream fishing over other types of fishing. Ming-Yu was not looking forward to her next meeting with Professor Riggs. 

Questions 

1. If you were Ming-Yu, would you have coded for any other variables? 

2. What factors should Ming-Yu have considered in choosing which software package to use to analyze the data? 

3. What do you think could have led to Ming-Yu getting results contradictory to the results Professor Riggs had found in most of his individual studies? 

4. Should Ming-Yu have “updated” the previous literature search? If so, how? 

5. Because Ming-Yu didn’t find any difference, does she need to conduct moderator analyses?