| Abstract: |
The social sciences face a replicability crisis. A key determinant of
replication success is statistical power. We assess the power of political
science research by collating over 16,000 hypothesis tests from about 2,000
articles. Using generous assumptions, we find that the median analysis has
about 10% power and that only about 1 in 10 tests have at least 80% power to
detect the consensus effects reported in the literature. We also find
substantial heterogeneity in tests across research areas, with some being
characterized by high power but most having very low power. To contextualize
our findings, we survey political methodologists to assess their expectations
about power levels. Most methodologists greatly overestimate the statistical
power of political science research. |