How researchers respond to replication requests revisited

Abstract

Author cooperation is almost always needed when attempting to replicate important advertising research because critical study details are often omitted from articles due to the value of journal space. We replicate and extend Reid, Rotfeld, and Wimmer (1982) by measuring authors' compliance with requests to share their study's details, which are needed to replicate their published empirical advertising journal articles. More than a third of authors did not share enough details of the requested study to enable independent replication and extension of their work. Extending earlier research, we find that obtaining details of author-generated data is much easier (75%) than public secondary data (44%). Obtaining details of third-party data was largely impossible. We also found important differences in compliance with requests for replication information across journals. Our results have implications for advertising knowledge generation and the ability to independently replicate published research. We offer suggestions to improve and increase advertising scholars' ability to obtain necessary information to replicate published findings.