Social Psychology in the Information Age: Data sleuthing made easy

Friday, December 27, 2019

Data sleuthing made easy

You all know that I have done just a bit of data sleuthing here or there. I do so with no real fancy background in statistics. I have sufficient course work to teach stats courses at the undergraduate level, but I am no quantitative psychologist. So, I appreciate articles like How to Be a Statistical Detective. The author lays out some common problems and how any of us can use our already existing skills to detect those problems. I use some of these resources already, and am reasonably adept at using a calculator. I will likely add more links to these resources to this blog.

This article is behind a paywall, but I suspect my more enterprising readers already know how to obtain a copy. This article is fundamental reading.

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About

Hi! I am A. James Benjamin, Jr., PhD. Most folks call me James or JB eventually.

I am an educator trained as a social psychologist. I work as an Associate Professor at University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. I earned my PhD from University of Missouri-Columbia in 2000. Much of my research has touched on cognitive and behavioral effects of aggression-related cues (e.g., video games and weapon images), increasingly from a critical and skeptical perspective. I have also examined person variables such as authoritarianism and short-term media exposure in relation to attitudes toward violence and toward torture. My more recent interests involve the psychometric properties of various measures of aggressive cognition that are commonly used by aggression researchers. My work intersects with that of related researchers in areas such as Media Communication.

As an educator, I primarily teach methodology courses and the undergraduate survey course in social psychology. I also regularly teach the introductory psychology course. I make a point of introducing students at all levels to the replication crisis. Increasingly, I am trying interactive activities to engage students to become more critical readers of the research literature in my field.

I use this blog to express my own professional and personal perspectives. This blog is completely independent of any organizations with which I am affiliated. Assume that the views I express here are exclusively mine and do not reflect the views of any employer.