Administration time and reliability in measurement
For some research designs, one pays the participants by the amount of time they spend on the task (like regular work). For other designs where one does not, usually participants…
Organ donation consent vs. actual rates
There is a famous paper arguing the case for libertarian paternalism by using organ donation consent rates. Johnson, E. J., & Goldstein, D. (2003). Do defaults save lives?. Science, 302(5649),…
Clinical vs. statistical prediction
I learned about this topic many years ago reading Scott Lilienfeld's 50 Myths of popular psychology. In it, they write: In his blockbuster bestselling book Blink: The Power of Thinking…
Cognitive ability, surveys and measurement error: possible bias in GxE studies
I saw this paper at random: The consequences of heavy alcohol use remain a serious public health problem. Consistent evidence has demonstrated that both genetic and social influences contribute to…
Predictions for an individual-level general crime factor study using Swedish register data
There is a lot of research on the link between crime and cognitive ability. (For criminal outcomes, see the problems in my previous post.) E.g. Is the Association between General…
Measurement error and behavioral genetics in criminology
I am watching Brian Boutwell's (Twitter, RG) talk at a recent conference and this got me thinking. https://youtu.be/yDm9bCgPKvs?list=PLD7ASfe52RybK4nYTZejG4-kQYqKI1rXX What are we measuring? As far as I know, there are typically…
Music and work performance: what do we know?
Many people listen to some kind of music while working, or perhaps to some kind of colored noise. Many people will swear that this works. There are multiple ways it…
Scraping IMDB user ratings
There are some sites that have scraped the average movie ratings at various sites such as IMDB, Rotten Tomatos and Allmovies. Here is one particularly good (and still online) job.…
Personal freedom and cognitive ability: OKCupid dataset replication
Noah Carl has been investigating the relationship between cognitive ability and political opinions aside from the usual confused 1-axis left-right model. Specifically, looking at the economic freedom and personal freedom…
Aarhus University’s reply to SJW letter
In the fallout of the OKCupid dataset release, some people wrote a complaint letter to Aarhus University. I haven't read the letter, but Aarhus University has now replied to it:…