Dear colleagues,

We are conducting two meta-analyses relating to children’s explanations for the causes of inequality (https://osf.io/u53yd and https://osf.io/6vwts). This subject is the focus of growing interest in the fields of social and developmental psychology and we believe that robust meta-analyses of existing work will make a valuable contribution to our understanding of these social and developmental trajectories. Specifically, we are asking:

RQ1: How do children explain inequalities?
RQ2: What are the downstream consequences of children’s explanations for inequality?

We are now looking for unpublished studies that match the following criteria:

1. Study includes at least some participants aged 2-17.
2. Study includes either:
a. a quantitative measure of children’s perceptions/explanations/attributions for the causes of some kind of inequality (this could be coded open explanations generated by children or their evaluations of provided explanations).
b. a manipulation/intervention offering a causal explanation for inequality and a quantitative outcome variable.
3. Study includes sample sizes and effect sizes for relevant analyses, or the appropriate data to calculate these.

If you have relevant unpublished data or manuscripts, we would greatly appreciate your contribution by 24th March 2025 so that we can include it in our meta-analysis. For more information or to share your data, please contact lewis.doyle@univ-poitiers.fr. Alternatively, you can share your data or manuscript via this private and secured Google form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSflrjVtVLYD20Guo5vZ0S1aNMY6VYDaaPswxUROFPZKD3zc5Q/viewform.

We would also be grateful if you could forward this request to any colleagues who might have relevant studies.

Thank you for your time and consideration—we look forward to your contributions and know they will make an invaluable addition to this synthesis!

Andrei Cimpian, New York University
Sébastien Goudeau, Université de Poitiers
Julia Spielmann, New York University, Abu Dhabi
Lewis Doyle, Université de Poitiers