Moderators & Publication Bias (psychbull-moderators-and-bias)

Once a pooled effect and its heterogeneity exist, two questions decide the paper's credibility: what explains the variation (moderators), and is the effect an artifact of selective reporting (publication bias). Psychological Bulletin reviewers scrutinize both, and MARS requires reporting bias assessment. This skill extends the core model in psychbull-meta-analysis-methods.

When to trigger

• Testing pre-specified moderators / meta-regression to explain heterogeneity
• Running publication-bias diagnostics
• A reviewer asks for sensitivity / robustness analyses
• Reconciling conflicting signals across bias tests

Moderators & meta-regression