Abstract
<p>Purpose: This review aimed to determine the prevalence of author-identified replication studies in the field of Communication Sciences and Disorders and examine longitudinal changes in this prevalence across American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) journals from 1936 to 2024. This review is a conceptual replication of Cook and colleagues’ review of replications in special education journals.Method: Our data source comprised all 17,986 journal articles published in seven ASHA peer-reviewed journals between 1936 and 2024. We identified 3,903 articles, excluding duplicates, that contained one instance of the word replication or its stem (e.g., replicate, replicable). Two research team members independently screened articles to assess whether the study was a procedural replication aligned with our definition. One research team member coded each article’s study metadata, CSD topic area, participants, and methods, and replication information, such as type of replication and author-reported replication success. We conducted reliability checks on 20% of articles, with an average agreement of 89.7%.Results: Of 14,376 published studies for which a replication could have been conducted (i.e., exclusive of non-peer reviewed article types), we found 156 (1.09%) author-identified replication attempts. Most replications were conceptual (n = 122) and, according to the authors’ report, successfully replicated the previous study’s results (n = 77). The replication attempts involved a range of research designs, with experimental/quasi-experimental being the most prevalent (n = 78). Replication attempts were published more frequently over time.Conclusions: As the first field-wide study to investigate author-identified, methodological replication attempts in CSD, our findings suggest a low rate of attempts, consistent with findings in other fields. Importantly, these replication rates represent the most conservative estimates of replication within the field, as many studies report findings that may build on previous evidence, but do not clearly identify as a direct or conceptual replication and were excluded in the current review. To continue building a cumulative and rigorous evidence base in the field of CSD, researchers should consider sharing their data and materials and completing reporting tools and checklists to clearly detail their methods and analysis processes transparently, enabling future replication. A more extensive investigation is needed to identify replication studies published in other CSD-related journals and to explore whether additional studies that use broader definitions of replication should be considered.</p>