Boch Magdalena, Tran Ulrich S, Voracek Martin
Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Front Psychol. 2019 Jul 19;10:1601. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01601. eCollection 2019.
Till et al. (2016) reported that in an Austrian sample approximately one in ten respondents incorrectly believed that Austria still practices, or recently practiced, the death penalty, and that there is a positive association between the amount of weekly television viewing and this gross misperception of the Austrian justice system.
An endorsed, prereviewed, preregistered close ( = 597) served to test the veracity of these reported effects. This was coupled with the conceptual extension part, which (a) investigated the potential influence of watching American crime series, (b) accounted for further possible confounds, and (c) tested the generalizability of the effect of television viewing to online streaming.
Online survey data ( = 597) replicated the one-in-ten prevalence of incorrect answers with the 5-item death penalty questionnaire used in the original study, but not, when asking directly about Austria's death penalty practices (prevalence: 0.3%). Younger age, but not the amount of television viewing or online streaming, suggestibility, or preferred TV genre consistently predicted incorrect answers in the death penalty questionnaire. Incorrect answers were Mokken-scalable (i.e., formed a common scale, complying with a non-parametric item response model) and were highly consistent. In contrast to the replication study results, a small meta-analysis of all available evidence (three studies, including the present replication) suggested that the aggregate effect of television viewing nominally was significant, albeit small.
The replication study yielded mixed results, which indicate the perception of a high prevalence of beliefs that there is capital punishment in a country without death penalty probably is due to a faultily designed questionnaire and thus a research artifact. Also, positive associations of television viewing with such beliefs likely are only small at best.
蒂尔等人（2016年）报告称，在奥地利的一个样本中，约十分之一的受访者错误地认为奥地利仍在实施或最近实施过死刑，而且每周看电视的时长与对奥地利司法系统的这种严重误解之间存在正相关。
一项经过认可、预审核、预注册的封闭式调查（n = 597）用于检验这些报告效应的真实性。这与概念扩展部分相结合，该部分（a）调查了观看美国犯罪剧的潜在影响，（b）考虑了其他可能的混杂因素，（c）测试了电视观看效应在线上流媒体方面的普遍性。
在线调查数据（n = 597）通过原始研究中使用的5项死刑问卷，重现了十分之一的错误答案发生率，但在直接询问奥地利的死刑实践时则未重现（发生率：0.3%）。年龄较小，但不是看电视或线上流媒体的时长、易受暗示性或喜欢的电视类型，始终能预测死刑问卷中的错误答案。错误答案具有莫肯可扩展性（即形成一个共同量表，符合非参数项目反应模型）且高度一致。与重复研究结果相反，对所有现有证据（三项研究，包括本重复研究）进行的一项小型荟萃分析表明，电视观看的总体效应名义上是显著的，尽管很小。
重复研究得出了混合结果，这表明在一个没有死刑的国家中存在死刑的信念被普遍感知，可能是由于问卷设计有缺陷，因此是一种研究假象。此外，电视观看与这种信念之间的正相关关系充其量可能也很小。
