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Bridging a gap in meta-analytical practices: A superior approach for converting standardized beta weights to correlations.

Piers Steel1; Hadi Fariborzi2; Patrick D. Dunlop3

1 University of Calgary · 2 Mount Royal University · 3 Curtin University

Journal of Applied Psychology 2026

, correctly identify error variance. Due to imputation error, reporting beta weights alone typically destroys 95% to over 99% of the information originally held by a full correlation matrix. For fields that almost exclusively report betas, such as economics, it necessarily hampers them from becoming cumulative sciences. We recommend that all previous uses of Peterson and Brown be reevaluated, future aggregations of standardized beta weights use our provided imputation techniques, and correlation matrices be routinely reported. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

DOI
10.1037/apl0001379
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