Psychological statistics is application of formulas, theorems, numbers and laws to psychology. Statistical methods for psychology include development and application statistical theory and methods for modeling psychological data. These methods include psychometrics, factor analysis, experimental designs, and Bayesian statistics. The article also discusses journals in the same field.
Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally refers to specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and related activities. Psychometrics is concerned with the objective measurement of latent constructs that cannot be directly observed. Examples of latent constructs include intelligence, introversion, mental disorders, and educational achievement. The levels of individuals on nonobservable latent variables are inferred through mathematical modeling based on what is observed from individuals' responses to items on tests and scales.
Statistics is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a statistical model to be studied. Populations can be diverse groups of people or objects such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal". Statistics deals with every aspect of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.
A statistical hypothesis test is a method of statistical inference used to decide whether the data at hand sufficiently support a particular hypothesis.
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research.
In statistical hypothesis testing, a result has statistical significance when it is very unlikely to have occurred given the null hypothesis. More precisely, a study's defined significance level, denoted by , is the probability of the study rejecting the null hypothesis, given that the null hypothesis is true; and the p-value of a result, , is the probability of obtaining a result at least as extreme, given that the null hypothesis is true. The result is statistically significant, by the standards of the study, when . The significance level for a study is chosen before data collection, and is typically set to 5% or much lower—depending on the field of study.
Social statistics is the use of statistical measurement systems to study human behavior in a social environment. This can be accomplished through polling a group of people, evaluating a subset of data obtained about a group of people, or by observation and statistical analysis of a set of data that relates to people and their behaviors.
In statistics, an effect size is a value measuring the strength of the relationship between two variables in a population, or a sample-based estimate of that quantity. It can refer to the value of a statistic calculated from a sample of data, the value of a parameter for a hypothetical population, or to the equation that operationalizes how statistics or parameters lead to the effect size value. Examples of effect sizes include the correlation between two variables, the regression coefficient in a regression, the mean difference, or the risk of a particular event happening. Effect sizes complement statistical hypothesis testing, and play an important role in power analyses, sample size planning, and in meta-analyses. The cluster of data-analysis methods concerning effect sizes is referred to as estimation statistics.
Physical Review Letters (PRL), established in 1958, is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society. As also confirmed by various measurement standards, which include the Journal Citation Reports impact factor and the journal h-index proposed by Google Scholar, many physicists and other scientists consider Physical Review Letters to be one of the most prestigious journals in the field of physics.
Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a label for a diverse set of methods used by scientists in both experimental and observational research across the sciences, business, and other fields. It is used most in the social and behavioral sciences. A definition of SEM is difficult without reference to highly technical language, but a good starting place is the name itself.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of statistical analysis packages.
Shlomo S. Sawilowsky was professor of educational statistics and Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where he has received teaching, mentoring, and research awards.
The multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) matrix is an approach to examining construct validity developed by Campbell and Fiske (1959). It organizes convergent and discriminant validity evidence for comparison of how a measure relates to other measures.
The Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by SAGE Publications on behalf of the American Educational Research Association and American Statistical Association. It covers statistical methods and applied statistics in the educational and behavioral sciences. The journal was established in 1976 as the Journal of Educational Statistics and obtained its current name in 1994. The journal's editors are Li Cai (University of California, Los Angeles) and Daniel McCaffrey.
Abelson's paradox is an applied statistics paradox identified by Robert P. Abelson. The paradox pertains to a possible paradoxical relationship between the magnitude of the r2 effect size and its practical meaning.
In statistics, one purpose for the analysis of variance (ANOVA) is to analyze differences in means between groups. The test statistic, F, assumes independence of observations, homogeneous variances, and population normality. ANOVA on ranks is a statistic designed for situations when the normality assumption has been violated.
Sankhyā: The Indian Journal of Statistics is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal on statistics published by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).
The Solomon four-group design is a research method developed by Richard Solomon in 1949. It is sometimes used in social science, psychology and medicine. It can be used if there are concerns that the treatment might be sensitized by the pre-test. The four groups have four different experiences:
- Pre-test, treatment, post-test
- Pre-test, no treatment, post-test
- Treatment, post-test
- No treatment, post-test
Bruno D. Zumbo is a mathematical scientist trained in the tradition of research that combines pure and applied mathematics with statistical and algorithmic techniques to develop theory and solve problems arising in measurement, testing, and surveys in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. He is currently Professor and Distinguished University Scholar, the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Psychometrics and Measurement, and the Paragon UBC Professor of Psychometrics & Measurement at University of British Columbia.
