Getting Through the Gate: Statistical and Methodological Issues Raised in the Reviewing Process

This study empirically examined the statistical and methodological issues raised in the reviewing process to determine what the gatekeepers of the literature, the reviewers and editors, really say about methodology when making decisions to accept or reject manuscripts. Three hundred and four editors' and reviewers' letters for 69 manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Business and Psychology were qualitatively coded using an iterative approach. Systematic coding generated 267 codes from 1,751 statements that identified common methodological and statistical errors by authors and offered themes across these issues. We examined the relationship between the issues identified and manuscript outcomes. The most prevalent methodological and statistical topics were measurement, control variables, common method variance, factor analysis, and structural equation modeling. Common errors included the choice and comprehensiveness of analyses. This qualitative analysis of methods in reviews provides insight into how current methodological debates reveal themselves in the review process. This study offers guidance and advice for authors to improve the quality of their research and for editors and reviewers to improve the quality of their reviews.