Funnel plot for "Racial Bias in Mock Juror Decision-Making"

This post reports on publication bias analyses for the Tara L. Mitchell et al. 2005 meta-analysis: "Racial Bias in Mock Juror Decision-Making: A Meta-Analytic Review of Defendant Treatment" [gated, ungated]. The appendices for the article contained a list of sample sizes and effect sizes, but the list did not match the reported results in at least one case. Dr. Mitchell emailed me a file of the correct data (here).

VERDICTS

Here is the funnel plot for the Mitchell et al. 2005 meta-analysis of verdicts:

mitchell-et-al-2005-verdicts-funnel-plotEgger's test did not indicate at the conventional level of statistical significance the presence of funnel plot asymmetry in any of the four funnel plots, with p-values of p=0.80 (white participants, published studies), p=0.82 (white participants, all studies), p=0.10 (black participants, published studies), and p=0.63 (black participants, all studies).

Trim-and-fill with the L0 estimator imputed missing studies for all four funnel plots to the side of the funnel plot indicating same-race favoritism:

mitchell-et-al-2005-verdicts-tf-l0Trim-and-fill with the R0 estimator imputed missing studies for only the funnel plots for published studies with black participants:

mitchell-et-al-2005-verdicts-tf-r0---

SENTENCES

Here is the funnel plot for the Mitchell et al. 2005 meta-analysis of sentences:

mitchell-et-al-2005-sentences-funnel-plotEgger's test did not indicate at the conventional level of statistical significance the presence of funnel plot asymmetry in any of the four funnel plots, with p-values of p=0.14 (white participants, published studies), p=0.41 (white participants, all studies), p=0.50 (black participants, published studies), and p=0.53 (black participants, all studies).

Trim-and-fill with the L0 estimator imputed missing studies for the funnel plots with white participants to the side of the funnel plot indicating same-race favoritism:

mitchell-et-al-2005-sentences-tf-l0Trim-and-fill with the R0 estimator did not impute any missing studies:

mitchell-et-al-2005-sentences-tf-r0---

I also attempted to retrieve and plot data for the Ojmarrh Mitchell 2005 meta-analysis ("A Meta-Analysis of Race and Sentencing Research: Explaining the Inconsistencies"), but the data were reportedly lost in a computer crash.

---

NOTES:

1. Data and code for the Mitchell et al. 2005 analyses are here: data file for verdicts, data file for sentences, R code for verdicts, and R code for sentences.

Tagged with: , ,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.