The Cite Frequency Approach (CFA) is an accepted method for identifying potential factors influencing bid/no-bid decisions, yet no study has systematically validated its theoretical foundation. The aim of this study was to elucidate the theoretical basis of CFA and ascertain whether citation frequency truly reflects factor importance. Through rigorous screening undertaken using the PRISMA method, 24 journal articles with bid/no-bid decision (BNBD) factors’ RII were extracted for analysis. By constructing a 276-times pairwise comparisons of these articles, a matrix of 121 factors’ RII was built. Based on the matrix data, 2380 Spearman correlation coefficients (rhos) between cite frequency and RII were calculated. Significant level rhos of medium and high strength account for only 15.59%. This demonstrates that the cite frequencies of factors found in previous studies are not highly representative of their importance. Cite frequencies are therefore shown to be unreliable in identifying the potential factors affecting BNBD. Moreover, the Meta-Analyses approach (MAA) is proposed as a superior factor selection method (MAA), and this was verified to be more representative and effective than CFA. This study provides the first systematic and global validation of CFA’s core assumption supported by robust and generalizable findings. It enriches the methods for identifying potential factors affecting decisions, including but not limited to BNBD.
Li et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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