Statistics — Page 53
Explore statistical methods, their assumptions, interpretation and limitations.
Research field
Method family
Regime-Switching Model
The Markov regime-switching model, introduced by James D. Hamilton in 1989, is a hidden-state time-series model in which financial series such as returns or volatility behave with different parameters across distinct economic regimes (bull/...
Regression Discontinuity
Regression Discontinuity Design is a quasi-experimental method that identifies a causal effect by locally comparing units just above and just below a cutoff on a continuous assignment (running) variable. Formalised for applied work by Imben...
Regression Discontinuity Design
Regression Discontinuity Design is a quasi-experimental method that estimates a local causal effect around a threshold (cutoff) value, comparing units just below and just above the cutoff as if they were almost randomly assigned. It is the...
Regression Discontinuity in Policy Evaluation
Regression discontinuity (RD) is a quasi-experimental design for estimating the causal effect of a policy that is assigned by a sharp threshold on some continuous eligibility score — an income line for a benefit, a test score for a scholars...
Regression Kink Design
The Regression Kink Design is a quasi-experimental method that estimates a causal effect when a policy rule creates a change in slope (a kink) — rather than a jump — at a known threshold of a running variable. It was formalised as a general...
Regression discontinuity design in education research
Regression discontinuity design (RDD) in education research exploits a score-based eligibility cutoff — such as a test score threshold, GPA requirement, or age cutoff — to estimate the causal effect of a program, intervention, or policy on...
Regulatory Focus Questionnaire
The Regulatory Focus Questionnaire (RFQ), developed by Higgins and colleagues in 2001, measures two independent motivational orientations derived from regulatory focus theory: a promotion focus concerned with growth, ideals, gains, and eage...
Reilly's Law of Retail Gravitation
Reilly's law of retail gravitation is a deterministic model that predicts how an intermediate town's retail trade divides between two larger competing cities. Formulated by William J. Reilly in 1931 by analogy with Newtonian gravity, it sta...
Relational Event Model
The relational event model (REM), introduced by Carter Butts in 2008, analyzes streams of time-stamped interactions — emails, radio calls, messages, citations — as a continuous-time event-history process. Rather than treating a network as a...
Relational Gompertz Fertility Model
The relational Gompertz model expresses any population's cumulative fertility schedule as a simple linear transformation of a fixed standard schedule, after both are mapped through a double-logarithm (gompit) transform. Developed by William...
Relative Index of Inequality
The relative index of inequality (RII) is the relative counterpart of the slope index of inequality: instead of the absolute difference in a health outcome between the bottom and top of the socioeconomic hierarchy, it expresses that differe...
Reliability Analysis
Statistical reliability analysis models the time-to-failure of components, systems, or products using parametric lifetime distributions fitted to observed or censored failure data. Formalized comprehensively by William Q. Meeker and Luis A....
Religious Doubt Scale
The Religious Doubt Scale, associated with Bruce Hunsberger and colleagues, measures the extent to which a person doubts or questions religious beliefs and issues. Rather than asking only whether someone believes, it captures the often-over...
Religious Fundamentalism Scale
The Religious Fundamentalism (RF) Scale, introduced by Bob Altemeyer and Bruce Hunsberger in 1992, measures fundamentalism as a psychological attitude rather than as membership in any particular tradition. They defined it as the belief that...
Religious Orientation Scale (ROS)
The Religious Orientation Scale (ROS), introduced by Gordon Allport and J. Michael Ross in 1967, is the instrument that operationalized Allport's distinction between two motivational stances toward faith. The extrinsic orientation treats re...
Remittance Impact Evaluation
Remittance impact evaluation is the set of causal-inference designs used to estimate what remittances actually do to the households that receive them — their effect on investment, schooling, child labor, entrepreneurship, and labor supply —...
Remote Sensing Classification
Remote sensing classification assigns discrete thematic labels — such as forest, urban, water, or cropland — to pixels in a satellite or aerial image based on their spectral, spatial, and temporal properties. It underpins land-use/land-cove...
Repeat Victimization Analysis
Repeat victimization analysis studies the sharply elevated short-term risk that the same target — a household, person, or business — is victimized again soon after an initial offense. Established as a crime-prevention priority by Ken Pease,...
Repeated-measures ANOVA
Repeated-measures ANOVA is a parametric hypothesis test that compares three or more measurements taken from the same individuals — typically across time points or conditions — to decide whether their means differ. It extends one-way ANOVA t...
Repertory Grid
The Repertory Grid is a qualitative-quantitative method derived from Personal Construct Theory that elicits how individuals construe (interpret and evaluate) a domain of interest—people, concepts, events, or objects—through their own idiosy...
Reproduction Number
The basic reproduction number R0 is the expected number of secondary infections produced by a single infectious individual introduced into a fully susceptible population. Formally defined and computationally grounded by Diekmann, Heesterbee...
Rescorla-Wagner Model
The Rescorla-Wagner Model is a quantitative theory of associative learning that predicts how organisms learn associations between stimuli (e.g., tone and shock in fear conditioning). The model proposes that learning is driven by prediction...
Resource Curse Analysis
Resource curse analysis is the empirical study of the paradox that economies rich in natural resources — oil, gas, minerals — often grow more slowly, remain less democratic, and suffer more conflict than resource-poor economies. Jeffrey Sac...
Response Surface Methodology
Response Surface Methodology is a collection of statistical and mathematical techniques for building an empirical second-order polynomial model that relates a continuous response variable to two or more controllable input factors, and then...