Methodological Issues in Psychology: Concept, Method, and Measurement

Methodological Issues in Psychology is a comprehensive text that challenges current practice in the discipline and provides solutions that are more useful in contemporary research, both basic and applied.

This book begins by equipping the readers with the underlying foundation pertaining to basic philosophical issues addressing theory verification or falsification, distinguishing different levels of theorizing, or hypothesizing, and the assumptions necessary to negotiate between these levels. It goes on to specifically focus on statistical and inferential hypotheses including chapters on how to dramatically improve statistical and inferential practices and how to address the replication crisis. Advances to be featured include the author’s own inventions, the a priori procedure and gain-probability diagrams, and a chapter about mediation analyses, which explains why such analyses are much weaker than typically assumed.The book also provides an introductory chapter on classical measurement theory and expands to new concepts in subsequent chapters. The final measurement chapter addresses the ubiquitous problem of small effect sizes in psychology and provides recommendations that directly contradict typical thinking and teaching in psychology, but with the consequence that researchers can enjoy dramatically improved effect sizes.

Methodological Issues in Psychology is an invaluable asset for students and researchers of psychology. It will also be of vital interest to social science researchers and students in areas such as management, marketing, sociology, and experimental philosophy.

David Trafimow is a Distinguished Achievement Professor of psychology at New Mexico State University, a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, Executive Editor of the Journal of General Psychology, and for Basic and Applied Social Psychology. He received his PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993. His current research interests include attribution, attitudes, cross-cultural research, ethics, morality, philosophy and philosophy of science, methodology, potential performance theory, the a priori procedure, and gain-probability diagrams.