Dear Tipsters,
Opinion seems to be coalescing around avoiding “effect” for any kind of
correlations design. Jim has suggested a number of useful terms in that case.
We might also consider saying that one variable (or group of variables)
“predicts” another one.
That would leave the term “effect” to mean cause and effect in experiments and
Chris’s statistical effect.
How does this seem for a summary?
Stuart
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"Floreat Labore"
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"Recti cultus pectora roborant"
Stuart J. McKelvie, Ph.D., Phone: 819 822 9600 x 2402
Department of Psychology, Fax: 819 822 9661
Bishop's University,
2600 rue College,
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Québec J1M 1Z7,
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E-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> (or
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Floreat Labore"
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___________________________________________________________________________
From: Jim Clark [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: July-19-17 1:34 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: RE: [tips] Opinions needed
Hi
One thing to consider with respect to use of effect would be whether there are
more precise alternatives. There are a number of phrases that capture the
“effect” without using that term. One mentioned earlier was “relationship.”
Others would be “correlated with,” “related to,” “covaried,” “associated with,”
and probably others. Given such alternatives, use of “effect” could easily be
avoided and prevent incorrect inferences. One exception would be Chris’s point
about statistical effects.
Take care
Jim
From: Carol DeVolder [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 19-Jul-17 5:31 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [tips] Opinions needed
Hi Annette,
I didn't hear about the hearing loss risk factor, but I did hear about the
sleep one. The thought is that sleep apnea is associated with poor quality
sleep and promotes the formation of beta amyloid and tau proteins. Poor quality
sleep (too little or interrupted) seems to be a stressor, resulting in build up
of stress-related proteins. Since sleep apnea is associated with controllable
factors such as obesity and use of breathing stabilizers (e.g., CPAP), it is
something one can reduce. Now the hearing one is a different story, and I would
have to agree that it might be correlated in the same way that loss of
olfaction is related, but not necessarily a risk factor. That's my take on it,
but then again, I'm not a stats person by any means.
Carol
On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 9:07 AM, Annette Taylor
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Back in the good old days....when I was in graduate school...I specifically
being told by my advisor that "effect" could not be used in a title unless it
was a clearly causal effect. So this does err on the side of emphasizing
causal. Nevertheless, I also heard somewhere from someone (???) that the reason
that the APA guidelines reduced the maximum number of words for a title in APA
style was to focus on the actual variables in the title and eliminate any
suggestion of "effect" in the title to reduce the abuse of the term "effect"
Now, it makes for splashier headlines when your study gets published and people
can talk about something BY INFERENCE "causing" something else simply because
it is systematically linked with it.
Finally, on a similar topic, I woke up this morning to a news story about "risk
factors" for Alzheimer's and my immediate thought was, how are these things
"risk factors?" Specifically it mentioned hearing loss and sleep apnea. My
understanding of a "risk factor" when talking about health research is that
these are things that are either set: a family history of ....xyz; or something
we can manage such as obesity or smoking. So hearing loss may be associated
with Alzheimer's, might predict that some amount of the variance in developing
Alzheimer's is accounted for by something like hearing loss. But is the use of
the phrase "risk factor" correct in this instance.
Again, it seems to be a phrase that is being abused, much like "effect" is
being abused.
Early morning musings--so they might be mushy.
Annette
Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D.
Professor, Psychological Sciences
University of San Diego
5998 Alcala Park
San Diego, CA 921210
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 10:00 PM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
digest <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Subject: Opinions needed
From: Dap Louw <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2017 18:27:55 +0000
Tipsters
I am well aware that (and often frustrated by) all sorts of buzz words,
concepts, theories, etc become the flavour of the month/year in organizations,
including universities. I would therefore appreciate your viewpoint on the
following, especially as research methodology is not my field of specialization:
To what extent can we measure 'effect'? In the last 40 years in Psychology
I've been involved in hundreds of studies on "The effect of .........
(television on ...; poverty on ....., etc, etc)". BTW, when I used ' "the
effect of" psychology' in Google Scholar search I got 2 460 000 results.
However:
According to the latest recommendations of our University's Research Committee
we cannot measure effect unless you make use of especially the longitudinal
design. Therefore any title such as "The effect of ......... (television on
...; poverty on ....., etc, etc)" is unacceptable and should be replaced by
"the perceived effect of ....." or something similar. Is this a case of
methodology or semantics?
I look forward to hearing from you. It's high time to get the TIPS ball
rolling again!
Regards from this side of the ocean.
Dap
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