Bach, Dominik R;
(2024)
Psychometrics in experimental psychology: A case for calibration.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
, 31
(4)
pp. 1461-1470.
10.3758/s13423-023-02421-z.
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Abstract
Psychometrics is historically grounded in the study of individual differences. Consequently, common metrics such as quantitative validity and reliability require between-person variance in a psychological variable to be meaningful. Experimental psychology, in contrast, deals with variance between treatments, and experiments often strive to minimise within-group person variance. In this article, I ask whether and how psychometric evaluation can be performed in experimental psychology. A commonly used strategy is to harness between-person variance in the treatment effect. Using simulated data, I show that this approach can be misleading when between-person variance is low, and in the face of methods variance. I argue that this situation is common in experimental psychology, because low between-person variance is desirable, and because methods variance is no more problematic in experimental settings than any other source of between-person variance. By relating validity and reliability with the corresponding concepts in measurement science outside psychology, I show how experiment-based calibration can serve to compare the psychometric quality of different measurement methods in experimental psychology.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Psychometrics in experimental psychology: A case for calibration |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3758/s13423-023-02421-z |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02421-z |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Calibration; Retrodictive validity; Metrology; Psychometrics; Measurement accuracy; Measurement uncertainty |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208186 |
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