Abandon Statistical Significance McShane, Blakeley B.; Gal, David; Gelman, Andrew ...
The American statistician,
03/2019, Letnik:
73, Številka:
sup1
Journal Article
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We discuss problems the null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) paradigm poses for replication and more broadly in the biomedical and social sciences as well as how these problems remain ...unresolved by proposals involving modified p-value thresholds, confidence intervals, and Bayes factors. We then discuss our own proposal, which is to abandon statistical significance. We recommend dropping the NHST paradigm-and the p-value thresholds intrinsic to it-as the default statistical paradigm for research, publication, and discovery in the biomedical and social sciences. Specifically, we propose that the p-value be demoted from its threshold screening role and instead, treated continuously, be considered along with currently subordinate factors (e.g., related prior evidence, plausibility of mechanism, study design and data quality, real world costs and benefits, novelty of finding, and other factors that vary by research domain) as just one among many pieces of evidence. We have no desire to "ban" p-values or other purely statistical measures. Rather, we believe that such measures should not be thresholded and that, thresholded or not, they should not take priority over the currently subordinate factors. We also argue that it seldom makes sense to calibrate evidence as a function of p-values or other purely statistical measures. We offer recommendations for how our proposal can be implemented in the scientific publication process as well as in statistical decision making more broadly.
Connections between personality traits and psychopathology in children and adolescents have frequently been reported in research studies. However, despite the occurrence of significant and systematic ...relationships between personality and mental disorders in childhood, a thorough understanding of the cause, nature, and implications of these relationships is lacking. In this paper, a comprehensive taxonomy of childhood personality is used to link research on children with that on adults, as well as provide a framework for discussing the personality–psychopathology relationship. Next, research on children and adolescents is integrated into various proposed models of the personality–psychopathology relationship. Finally, clinical implications and future directions are proposed for research on personality and psychopathology in children.
Like adults, children and adolescents can be described in terms of personality traits: characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. We review recent research examining how youths' ...specific behavioral tendencies cohere into broader traits, how these traits develop across childhood and adolescence, and how they relate to important biological, social, and health outcomes. We conclude that there are both key similarities and key differences between youth and adult personality traits, that youths' personality traits help shape the course of their lives, and that a full understanding of youth personality traits will require additional research at the intersection of personality, developmental, and clinical psychology.
•Irritability is a transdiagnostic feature of a wide range of psychiatric disorders.•Irritability reflects extreme expression of temperamental negative emotionality.•Neural substrates of irritability ...include low midbrain dopamine activity/reactivity.•Irritability can be expressed as both a mood state and an emotion.
In recent years, irritability has received increasing attention among mental health professionals given its transdiagnostic associations with diverse forms of psychopathology. In contrast to other emotional states and traits, however, literature addressing associations between irritability and related temperament and personality constructs is limited. In addition, those who study irritability have diverse perspectives on its neurobiological substrates. In this comment, we situate irritability in the literatures on child temperament and adult personality, and describe a model in which irritability derives from low tonic dopamine (DA) levels and low phasic DA reactivity in subcortical neural structures implicated in appetitive responding. We note that different findings often emerge in neuroimaging studies when irritability is assessed in circumscribed diagnostic groups versus representative samples. We conclude with directions for future research, and propose that more authors use hierarchical Bayesian modeling, which captures functional dependencies between irritability and other dispositional traits (e.g., trait anxiety) that standard regression models are insensitive too. Treatment implications are also considered.
Background
Structural models of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) symptoms have gained empirical support but await greater empirical scrutiny on issues such as reconciliation between competing ...models, evidence for gender differences, and delineation of external correlates. More extensive validation evidence is particularly necessary in consideration of their incorporation in psychiatric nomenclature.
Methods
We fitted previously proposed, but competing, models to ODD symptoms assessed with the Computerized Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (Shaffer et al., 2000, J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry, 39, 28) in a community sample and then fitted the best‐fitting model in a replication sample (combined N = 730, Mage = 9.89, SD = 0.75). Analyses also examined potential classes based on resulting subfactors, gender differences, longitudinal associations with later behavioral problems, and concurrent personality associations.
Results
Burke's (2010) two‐factor model composed of Irritability and Oppositionality subfactors best fit the data. Irritability and Oppositionality showed convergent and divergent patterns of association with personality traits at T1 and with externalizing and internalizing problems at T2. Latent class analyses revealed three classes (low severity, irritable/combined, and oppositional) which showed parallel divergence in externalizing and internalizing problem comorbidity. These findings were largely robust across gender and samples.
Conclusions
These findings support Irritability/Oppositionality subfactors of ODD in two mixed‐gender samples, demonstrate strong evidence for a lack of gender differences in such subfactors, and demonstrate their convergent and divergent validity in emergent latent classes, later behavioral problems, and personality correlates.
Despite psychological scientists' increasing interest in replicability, open science, research transparency, and the improvement of methods and practices, the clinical psychology community has been ...slow to engage. This has been shifting more recently, and with this review, we hope to facilitate this emerging dialogue. We begin by examining some potential areas of weakness in clinical psychology in terms of methods, practices, and evidentiary base. We then discuss a select overview of solutions, tools, and current concerns of the reform movement from a clinical psychological science perspective. We examine areas of clinical science expertise (e.g., implementation science) that should be leveraged to inform open science and reform efforts. Finally, we reiterate the call to clinical psychologists to increase their efforts toward reform that can further improve the credibility of clinical psychological science.
The transition to adolescence is marked by enormous change in social, biological, and personality development. Although accumulating evidence has offered insight into the nature of higher-order ...personality trait development during this period, much less is known about the development of lower-order personality traits, or "facets." The current study used a cohort-sequential longitudinal design to examine domain- and facet-level trajectories for mother-reported personality traits during the early adolescent transition. Personality trait domains and facets were assessed with the Inventory of Child Individual Differences-Short Form (Deal, Halverson, Martin, Victor, & Baker, 2007). Participants were 440 children followed at 4 annual timepoints from middle childhood (Mage = 9.97, SD = 0.81) to early adolescence (Mage = 13.11, SD = 0.84). Results of latent growth curve models showed substantial facet-level personality stability in this period, as well as small to moderate linear change in 13 of 15 facets. Gender differences in change were evident for 9 facets. Overall patterns suggested consistent increases in agreeableness facets with null to small gender differences. Neuroticism and openness to experience facet change was heterogeneous within each domain, but patterns were similar for boys and girls. Extraversion primarily decreased, though the magnitude and direction of change differed between facets and genders. Conscientiousness increased across all facets, but only among girls. These findings overall demonstrate a high degree of developmental consistency in facets within each domain as well as some notable differences. Further, this study contributes to a small and somewhat mixed evidence base for current theories of adolescent personality development.
Discussions about the replicability of psychological studies have primarily focused on improving research methods and practices, with less attention paid to the role of well-specified theories in ...facilitating the production of reliable empirical results. The field is currently in need of clearly articulated steps to theory specification and development, particularly regarding frameworks that may generalize across different fields of psychology. Here we focus on two approaches to theory specification and development that are typically associated with distinct research traditions: computational modeling and construct validation. We outline the points of convergence and divergence between them to illuminate the anatomy of a scientific theory in psychology—what a well-specified theory should contain and how it should be interrogated and revised through iterative theory-development processes. We propose how these two approaches can be used in complementary ways to increase the quality of explanations and the precision of predictions offered by psychological theories.
Replication is complicated in psychological research because studies of a given psychological phenomenon can never be direct or exact replications of one another, and thus effect sizes vary from one ...study of the phenomenon to the next-an issue of clear importance for replication. Current large-scale replication projects represent an important step forward for assessing replicability, but provide only limited information because they have thus far been designed in a manner such that heterogeneity either cannot be assessed or is intended to be eliminated. Consequently, the nontrivial degree of heterogeneity found in these projects represents a lower bound on the true degree of heterogeneity. We recommend enriching large-scale replication projects going forward by embracing heterogeneity. We argue this is the key for assessing replicability: if effect sizes are sufficiently heterogeneous-even if the sign of the effect is consistent-the phenomenon in question does not seem particularly replicable and the theory underlying it seems poorly constructed and in need of enrichment. Uncovering why and revising theory in light of it will lead to improved theory that explains heterogeneity and increases replicability. Given this, large-scale replication projects can play an important role not only in assessing replicability but also in advancing theory.
The last decade has seen enormous advances in research transparency in psychology. One of these advances has been the creation of a common interface for openness across the sciences-the Open Science ...Framework (OSF). While social, personality, and cognitive psychologists have been at the fore in participating in open practices on the OSF, clinical psychology has trailed behind. In this article, we discuss the advantages and special considerations for clinical assessment researchers' participation in open science broadly, and specifically in using the OSF for these purposes. We use several studies from our lab to illustrate the uses of the OSF for psychological studies, as well as the process of implementing this tool in assessment research. Among these studies are an archival assessment study, a project using an extensive unpublished assessment battery, and one in which we developed a short-form assessment instrument.
Public Significance Statement
The present article reviews various tools the Open Science Framework offers to clinical and assessment researchers, demonstrating their operationalization and utility and calling for clinical researchers to become more engaged with open science practices.
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