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GSS data and material are publically available at https://gss.norc.org/get-the-data.
Notes
I entered the term “replication” into the search bar on the journal’s homepage, limiting the date range to the last ten years (2013–2023). Forty-seven results were generated. I then perused titles and abstracts for signaling that an article was a replication study. I identified one article. Braithwaite et al. (2015) studied associations between pornography use and various casual sex behaviors in two samples of college students. Their abstract emphasized that they engaged in a “direct replication of [the pornography use-casual sex associations found in Study 1] in Study 2 with all point estimates falling within their respective [i.e., Study 1] confidence intervals.”
In the name of epistemological prudence, it is important to remind readers that unless participants are randomly assigned to conditions (e.g., pornography exposure vs. no viewing control) the possibility of a confounding third-variable is always a theoretical possibility. How much of a possibility I have taken up elsewhere (e.g., Wright & Tokunaga, 2022; Wright et al., 2022, 2023; Wright, 2021a, 2021b).
Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at University of Chicago, the GSS is the only full-probability, personal-interview survey designed to monitor changes in both social characteristics and attitudes in the United States (About the GSS, 2023). First conducted in 1972, the GSS surveys residence-inhabiting adults aged 18 or older. All residences in the U.S. have an equal chance of being selected for inclusion in the GSS; adults within each residence have an equal probability of being interviewed (For Survey Participants, 2023). To maximize measurement validity, the GSS began using computer assisted interviewing in 2002 (Smith et al., 2015).
Concerns about spurious relationships between sexual media use and sexual attitudes (as well as sexual behaviors) has led to the convention of including demographic variables (such as age, education, political orientation, and religiosity) as nonfocal “controls” in sexual media effects research (Wright et al., 2022). Because focal variables that have been residualized due to the inclusion of covariates are no longer a one-to-one replica of the focal variables as they actually manifested among study participants; and because the focal variables, are, by definition, of focal interest; parsimonious, covariate-free point-estimates are generally more pragmatically and conceptually valuable than covariate adjusted-point estimates, unless there are compelling theoretical reasons for the covariates’ inclusion (Becker et al., 2016; Meehl, 1971; Miller & Chapman, 2001; Sleep et al., 2017; Wright, 2021a). Consequently, if potential “confounds” (i.e., nonfocal covariates) are included in the original research being replicated, it is important to report results from parsimonious models (i.e., focal predictors only) in addition to the results of models adjusted for the nonfocal covariates included in the original research.
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Wright, P. Replication and Media Effects Research. Sexuality & Culture 28, 1311–1325 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-023-10164-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-023-10164-1