Statistics — Page 6
Explore statistical methods, their assumptions, interpretation and limitations.
Research field
Method family
Self-Monitoring Scale
The Self-Monitoring Scale, introduced by Mark Snyder in 1974, measures the extent to which people observe and control their expressive behavior and self-presentation in response to situational and interpersonal cues. High self-monitors are...
Semantic Differential
The Semantic Differential is an attitude measurement technique that assesses the connotative meaning (emotional and evaluative associations) of concepts through ratings on multiple bipolar adjective scales. Developed by Osgood, Suci, and Ta...
Short Form Measurement Invariance
Short form measurement invariance testing evaluates whether an abbreviated version of a psychological scale measures the same latent construct equivalently across groups or conditions. It applies the hierarchical multigroup confirmatory fac...
Short form construct validity
Short form construct validity is the systematic evaluation of whether an abbreviated version of a psychological scale still measures the same underlying construct as the original full-length instrument. It combines item selection procedures...
Short form content validity
Short-form content validity evaluates whether items retained in an abbreviated scale still adequately represent every substantive facet of the construct measured by the original full-length instrument. It ensures that shortening a scale doe...
Short form differential item functioning
Short-form differential item functioning (DIF) analysis examines whether individual items in an abbreviated scale function equivalently across demographic or subgroup comparisons. When a scale is shortened, retained items must still behave...
Short form generalizability theory
Short form generalizability theory applies the G-theory variance-component framework to abbreviated measurement instruments, using G-studies and D-studies to estimate how many items a short scale must retain to achieve a desired reliability...
Short form nomological validity
Short form nomological validity examines whether an abbreviated version of a psychological scale preserves the pattern of theoretically expected correlations with conceptually related and unrelated constructs. It is a cornerstone step in ju...
Short-Form Scale Development
Short-form scale development is the systematic process of reducing a full-length psychological scale to a smaller subset of items while preserving the construct validity, reliability, and measurement properties of the original instrument. I...
Short-form McDonald's omega
Short-form McDonald's omega applies the omega reliability coefficient to abbreviated or shortened versions of psychological scales. It provides a theoretically sound reliability estimate that accounts for the multidimensional structure of t...
Short-form item analysis
Short-form item analysis is the systematic psychometric evaluation and selection of items when constructing an abbreviated version of a longer measurement instrument. It applies classical and modern item-analysis criteria — item-total corre...
Short-form reliability analysis
Short-form reliability analysis evaluates whether an abbreviated version of a psychological scale maintains acceptable internal consistency, validity, and structural integrity after items are removed. It is used in survey and assessment res...
Short-form test-retest reliability
Short-form test-retest reliability quantifies how consistently an abbreviated version of a measurement instrument produces the same scores across two administrations separated by a defined time interval. It is a critical validation step whe...
Signal Detection Theory
Signal Detection Theory (SDT) is a framework for analyzing how observers detect signals embedded in noise, accounting for both sensory capacity and decision-making bias. Developed by Green and Swets in the 1960s, it provides a principled me...
Stop-Signal Reaction Time
The Stop-Signal Reaction Time (SSRT) task is a behavioral measure of response inhibition and executive control. Participants make rapid responses to go signals but must cancel responses when an occasional stop signal appears. By analyzing h...
Stroop Task
The Stroop task is a classic measure of cognitive control and selective attention. Participants name the color of words while ignoring the words' semantic content. When the color and word meaning match (e.g., the word 'red' printed in red i...
Support for Political Violence Measure
This measure assesses citizens' willingness to endorse violence against political opponents, a key indicator of democratic fragility. Nathan Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason's research, synthesized in Radical American Partisanship (2022), maps a c...
Test Equating
Test equating is a family of statistical methods that converts scores earned on one test form onto the score scale of another form, so that scores from different administrations or versions can be compared and reported on a common metric. T...
Ultimatum Game
The Ultimatum Game is a two-player economic decision-making task that reveals preferences for fairness and social norms. One player (proposer) receives money and offers a portion to a second player (responder). The responder accepts or reje...
Value-Added Modeling
Value-Added Modeling (VAM) is a method for assessing the contribution of schools or teachers to student achievement growth, developed by Sanders and Horn (1998). VAM isolates the effect of a teacher or school by comparing student gains (val...
Wordfish
Wordfish is a statistical model for scaling documents on latent dimensions, developed by Slapin and Proksch (2008). Unlike reference-based methods like Wordscores, Wordfish uses a Poisson generative model to jointly estimate word frequencie...
Wordscores
Wordscores is a text-based scaling method developed by Laver, Benoit, and Garry (2003) that estimates the policy positions of political actors based on word frequencies in their texts. By comparing word usage in reference texts of known pos...