Meehl (1986) published a brilliant paper with the title “What Social Scientists Don’t Understand.” I believe that that a better characterization of the situation is to broaden the reference class to include behavioral scientists in general. Also, I believe that most behavioral scientists do understand these issues at some level, but that they are not willing to accept the implications that an explicit understanding would force. Concern has been expressed, for the past 40 years or so, that the strategies of research design and statistical analysis used by behavioral scientists are woefully inadequate to support a progressive scientific enterprise. In this article I will summarize the nature of some of these concerns, and will identify some of the impediments that they impose to the development of progressive conceptual frameworks adequate to the task of achieving an understanding of the behavior of complex organisms in their environment. Although there has been little disagreement regarding the soundness of the methodological criticisms that have been made, there is little reason to believe that the methodological and statistical criticisms have had any great impact on the activities of either journal editors or research scientists. A review of these concerns is appropriate at this time because a number of articles have appeared recently that defend the status quo, and which are based either on faulty premises or a questionable view of the problems that impede scientific progress. And, hopefully, yet another critique might enhance the rate at which we arrive at a more satisfying state of affairs. Following this polemic I will suggest some orienting attitudes, research procedures, and analytic strategies that should lead us to a better understanding of the universe of events we, as behavioral scientists, are attempting to understand. These alternative views are based on current developments in the philosophy of science and entail the use of design and analytic strategies that are of sufficient complexity to permit advances in the understanding of the behavior of organisms in their environment.
{"title":"What Behavioral Scientists Are Unwilling to Accept","authors":"L. Petrinovich","doi":"10.2458/jmmss.3061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jmmss.3061","url":null,"abstract":"Meehl (1986) published a brilliant paper with the title “What Social Scientists Don’t Understand.” I believe that that a better characterization of the situation is to broaden the reference class to include behavioral scientists in general. Also, I believe that most behavioral scientists do understand these issues at some level, but that they are not willing to accept the implications that an explicit understanding would force. Concern has been expressed, for the past 40 years or so, that the strategies of research design and statistical analysis used by behavioral scientists are woefully inadequate to support a progressive scientific enterprise. In this article I will summarize the nature of some of these concerns, and will identify some of the impediments that they impose to the development of progressive conceptual frameworks adequate to the task of achieving an understanding of the behavior of complex organisms in their environment. Although there has been little disagreement regarding the soundness of the methodological criticisms that have been made, there is little reason to believe that the methodological and statistical criticisms have had any great impact on the activities of either journal editors or research scientists. A review of these concerns is appropriate at this time because a number of articles have appeared recently that defend the status quo, and which are based either on faulty premises or a questionable view of the problems that impede scientific progress. And, hopefully, yet another critique might enhance the rate at which we arrive at a more satisfying state of affairs. Following this polemic I will suggest some orienting attitudes, research procedures, and analytic strategies that should lead us to a better understanding of the universe of events we, as behavioral scientists, are attempting to understand. These alternative views are based on current developments in the philosophy of science and entail the use of design and analytic strategies that are of sufficient complexity to permit advances in the understanding of the behavior of organisms in their environment.","PeriodicalId":90602,"journal":{"name":"Journal of methods and measurement in the social sciences","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41635272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For several decades, leading behavioral scientists have offered strong criticisms of the common practice of null hypothesis significance testing as producing spurious findings without strong theoretical or empirical support. But only in the past decade has this manifested as a full-scale replication crisis. We consider some possible reasons why, on or about December 2010, the behavioral sciences changed.
{"title":"Why Did It Take So Many Decades for the Behavioral Sciences to Develop a Sense of Crisis Around Methodology and Replication?","authors":"A. Gelman, S. Vazire","doi":"10.2458/jmmss.3062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jmmss.3062","url":null,"abstract":"For several decades, leading behavioral scientists have offered strong criticisms of the common practice of null hypothesis significance testing as producing spurious findings without strong theoretical or empirical support. But only in the past decade has this manifested as a full-scale replication crisis. We consider some possible reasons why, on or about December 2010, the behavioral sciences changed.","PeriodicalId":90602,"journal":{"name":"Journal of methods and measurement in the social sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44412563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Petrinovich highlighted many salient issues in the behavioral and social sciences that are of concern to this day, such as insufficient attention to construct validity. Structural equation modeling, particularly with regard to latent variables, is introduced and discussed in this context. Though conceptual issues remain, analytic and statistical techniques have made immense strides in the past three decades since the article was written, and properly used, offer solutions to many problems Petrinovich identified.
{"title":"Latent Variable Structural Equation Modeling: A Flexible Tool for Establishing Validity and More","authors":"D. Altschul","doi":"10.2458/jmmss.3065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jmmss.3065","url":null,"abstract":"Petrinovich highlighted many salient issues in the behavioral and social sciences that are of concern to this day, such as insufficient attention to construct validity. Structural equation modeling, particularly with regard to latent variables, is introduced and discussed in this context. Though conceptual issues remain, analytic and statistical techniques have made immense strides in the past three decades since the article was written, and properly used, offer solutions to many problems Petrinovich identified.","PeriodicalId":90602,"journal":{"name":"Journal of methods and measurement in the social sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43164693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Preface: What Behavioral Scientists Are Unwilling to Accept","authors":"A. Weiss, Melinda F. Davis","doi":"10.2458/jmmss.3060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jmmss.3060","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":90602,"journal":{"name":"Journal of methods and measurement in the social sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44749274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Forward: What Behavioral Scientists Are Unwilling to Accept by Lewis Petrinovich","authors":"A. Figueredo","doi":"10.2458/jmmss.3059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jmmss.3059","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":90602,"journal":{"name":"Journal of methods and measurement in the social sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49332247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The viewer’s processes of inference making in the cinema involve the framing of hypotheses about the world of the narrative that may be overturned by subsequent information and are, therefore, nonmonotonic. The goal of narrative researchers is to understand the nature of those processes and how texts organise the deployment of those processes in order to present a narrative successfully. To do this we need methods capable of describing processes of hypothesis framing and belief revision. In this paper, I describe the application of the Transferable Belief Model to a hypothetical example of narrative comprehension based on an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as one such method.
{"title":"Modelling Inference in the Comprehension of Cinematic Narratives","authors":"Nick Redfern","doi":"10.2458/V11I2.23919","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/V11I2.23919","url":null,"abstract":"The viewer’s processes of inference making in the cinema involve the framing of hypotheses about the world of the narrative that may be overturned by subsequent information and are, therefore, nonmonotonic. The goal of narrative researchers is to understand the nature of those processes and how texts organise the deployment of those processes in order to present a narrative successfully. To do this we need methods capable of describing processes of hypothesis framing and belief revision. In this paper, I describe the application of the Transferable Belief Model to a hypothetical example of narrative comprehension based on an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as one such method.","PeriodicalId":90602,"journal":{"name":"Journal of methods and measurement in the social sciences","volume":"11 1","pages":"45-59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48603625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From the Editors","authors":"E. Board","doi":"10.2458/v11i2.23918","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/v11i2.23918","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":90602,"journal":{"name":"Journal of methods and measurement in the social sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48573119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Journal of Methods and Measurement Reviewers","authors":"E. Board","doi":"10.2458/v11i2.23920","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/v11i2.23920","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":90602,"journal":{"name":"Journal of methods and measurement in the social sciences","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42677457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Evaluation During a Pandemic","authors":"Melinda F. Davis, B. Krauss","doi":"10.2458/V11I2.23944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/V11I2.23944","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":90602,"journal":{"name":"Journal of methods and measurement in the social sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46166855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From the Editors","authors":"E. Board","doi":"10.2458/v11i1.23913","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/v11i1.23913","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":90602,"journal":{"name":"Journal of methods and measurement in the social sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47507471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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