Mother–Adolescent Conflict: Adolescent Goals,Maternal Perspective‐Taking,and Conflict Intensity

Younger and older adolescents were interviewed about their goals in recent disagreements with their mothers. Six goals were identified: instrumental (simply gaining their immediate desire); dyadic concern; achieving emotional support; autonomy; dominance; and nonengagement (avoidance of conflict). Younger adolescents reported significantly more instrumental and significantly fewer emotional support and dominance goals than did older adolescents. Maternal perspective‐taking predicted more dyadic concern and fewer dominance goals, as well as more nonengagement goals for younger adolescents. Dominance goals mediated the effect of maternal dyadic perspective‐taking on conflict intensity for older adolescents.     

Abandon Statistical Significance

ABSTRACT

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.     

Large-Scale Replication Projects in Contemporary Psychological Research

ABSTRACT

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.     

Urban ecosystems and ecosystem services in megacity Dhaka: mapping and inventory analysis

Urban Ecosystems - Urban ecosystems and ecosystem services have received little research attention in South Asian countries where rapid urban development is currently problematic. We developed a...     

General union attitude: A construct validation

Attitude toward labor unions has become an important variable in many areas of industrial relations research. Unfortunately, measures of general union attitude abound, making it difficult to compare results, and there has been little attempt to examine their construct validity. The present study tested the construct validity of the two most popular scales as well as an instrument developed by the author. The results indicate that the author’s General Union A ttitude scale and Getman et al. ’s (1976) Union Attitude Index are good measures of attitude toward labor unions. Although a popular measure, Uphoff and Dunnette’s (1956) Unionism in General scale was less satisfactory because of its lack of unidimensionality. Some items in the scale represented the power of unions rather than their value.