On the role of different publication bias adjustment methods in meta-analysis of social comparison as a behaviour change technique: A reply to Bartoš and colleagues

In a recent meta-analysis, we examined the efficacy of social comparison as a behaviour change technique (SC-BCT) across behavioural sciences. Our findings indicate that SC-BCT can effectively influence behaviour related to climate change mitigation, health, performance and service in the desired direction, although the effect sizes were small. Our data were re-analyzed by Bartoš et al. using a different statistical method to correct for publication bias, which did not support some of our conclusions. We appreciate the critical re-analysis of our data by Bartoš et al., which raises important methodological considerations regarding the influence of publication bias in meta-analyses and the relative performance of various methods to adjust for publication bias. A critical reflection on meta-analytical methods to correct for publication bias is important to examine the robustness of scientific findings, enabling genuine scientific progress. While we agree with Bartoš et al. that publication bias can significantly threaten the validity of meta-analytic results by inflating pooled effects and should therefore be taken into account both methodologically and when interpreting the results, we contend that two key issues limit the strength of their conclusions. First, we challenge the assumption that the method of Bartoš et al. to correct for publication bias offers a superior solution to the method we applied. Second, we are concerned with how this method was implemented in their re-analysis.