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[–]FoxySDT 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The problems of the meta-analysis you linked has been pointed out here:

These replication rates aren’t great, but they are also easy to explain. First, many of these studies measured ethnic diversity in a way that would call a half White half Black neighborhood and a half British American half German American neighborhood equally diverse. More specifically, ethnic diversity was often measured as the probability that two randomly selected two people from the same region would be of different ethnics groups were the list of possible ethnic groups included not 3-6 “races” but, rather, 100+ ethnic groups. Thus, many of these studies looked at ethnic, rather than racial, diversity. This is problematic because ethnic groups are far more genetically (and phenotypically) similar than races are. The second problem with this meta-analysis is that many of the studies referenced controlled for the mechanisms by which ethnic diversity might damage social cohesion. For instance, many studies controlled for income inequality and crime. The results of such an analysis will be misleading because ethnic diversity might cause a decrease in social cohesion by causing an increase in crime and income inequality. Thus, many of these studies controlled for the effects of diversity and then concluded that diversity had not effect.

The worst of these are studies that actually controlled for racial diversity. For instance, Aizlewood and Pendakur (2005) and Andersen and Millligan (2011) both found that the proportion of a neighborhood which is non white negatively correlated with its level of social cohesion but that ethnic diversity had no, or a positive, impact on social cohesion, after controlling for the effects of variation in the size of the population that isn’t white! Several of these studies were counted as “failed replications” by Meet and Tolsma.

Given the degree to which the deck was stacked against successful replications , the fact that less than 25% of studies clearly failed to replicate Putnam’s finding should be seen as more impressive than it might at first seem.

Also, there has been a recent meta-analysis which found that diversity has negative impact on social cohesion

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335924797_Ethnic_Diversity_and_Social_Trust_A_Narrative_and_Meta-Analytical_Review