A comment on "Validation of the CRAVE-C scale in Chinese adults: a four-study examination of competing motivations for physical activity versus rest"

Abel Brodeur, Niklas Jakobsson, Kristjan Moore and Bruno Barbarioli

No 324, I4R Discussion Paper Series from The Institute for Replication (I4R)

Abstract: Inspection of the publicly archived replication package for Cheng et al. (2024) reveals several data integrity concerns across three of the four reported studies. In Study 1, 18 survey sessions contain rows sharing identical participant numbers, timestamps, IP addresses, and contact details, indicating repeated submissions by the same respondent or duplicates that were not screened out before analysis. In Study 2, the healthy control group contains 500 observations despite the paper stating 481, and the N = 500 mean matches the reported statistic exactly. The clinical group subscale scores contain 17 values exceeding the scale maximum of 50, and all Study 4 item responses fall in the range 1-11 rather than the stated 0-10, suggesting a possible scale mismatch between groups; if unharmonised, the paper's primary finding - that chronic illness patients show higher Rest desire than controls - disappears entirely. The abstract additionally states the wrong direction for the psychiatric Move comparison. Study 3 data are absent from the repository, and Study 4 statistics cannot be reproduced from the released files.

Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:324

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