Psychological methodsPub Date : 2025-04-01Epub Date: 2023-05-25DOI: 10.1037/met0000560
Mirka Henninger, Rudolf Debelak, Yannick Rothacher, Carolin Strobl
{"title":"Interpretable machine learning for psychological research: Opportunities and pitfalls.","authors":"Mirka Henninger, Rudolf Debelak, Yannick Rothacher, Carolin Strobl","doi":"10.1037/met0000560","DOIUrl":"10.1037/met0000560","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In recent years, machine learning methods have become increasingly popular prediction methods in psychology. At the same time, psychological researchers are typically not only interested in making predictions about the dependent variable, but also in learning which predictor variables are relevant, how they influence the dependent variable, and which predictors interact with each other. However, most machine learning methods are not directly interpretable. Interpretation techniques that support researchers in describing how the machine learning technique came to its prediction may be a means to this end. We present a variety of interpretation techniques and illustrate the opportunities they provide for interpreting the results of two widely used black box machine learning methods that serve as our examples: random forests and neural networks. At the same time, we illustrate potential pitfalls and risks of misinterpretation that may occur in certain data settings. We show in which way correlated predictors impact interpretations with regard to the relevance or shape of predictor effects and in which situations interaction effects may or may not be detected. We use simulated didactic examples throughout the article, as well as an empirical data set for illustrating an approach to objectify the interpretation of visualizations. We conclude that, when critically reflected, interpretable machine learning techniques may provide useful tools when describing complex psychological relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":20782,"journal":{"name":"Psychological methods","volume":" ","pages":"271-305"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9876144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological methodsPub Date : 2025-04-01Epub Date: 2023-05-11DOI: 10.1037/met0000580
Kilian Hasselhorn, Charlotte Ottenstein, Tanja Lischetzke
{"title":"Modeling careless responding in ambulatory assessment studies using multilevel latent class analysis: Factors influencing careless responding.","authors":"Kilian Hasselhorn, Charlotte Ottenstein, Tanja Lischetzke","doi":"10.1037/met0000580","DOIUrl":"10.1037/met0000580","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As the number of studies using ambulatory assessment (AA) has been increasing across diverse fields of research, so has the necessity to identify potential threats to AA data quality such as careless responding. To date, careless responding has primarily been studied in cross-sectional surveys. The goal of the present research was to identify latent profiles of momentary careless responding on the occasion level and latent classes of individuals (who differ in the distribution of careless responding profiles across occasions) on the person level using multilevel latent class analysis (ML-LCA). We discuss which of the previously proposed indices seem promising for investigating careless responding in AA studies, and we show how ML-LCA can be applied to model careless responding in intensive longitudinal data. We used data from an AA study in which the sampling frequency (3 vs. 9 occasions per day, 7 days, <i>n</i> = 310 participants) was experimentally manipulated. We tested the effect of sampling frequency on careless responding using multigroup ML-LCA and investigated situational and respondent-level covariates. The results showed that four Level 1 profiles (\"careful,\" \"slow,\" and two types of \"careless\" responding) and four Level 2 classes (\"careful,\" \"frequently careless,\" and two types of \"infrequently careless\" respondents) could be identified. Sampling frequency did not have an effect on careless responding. On the person (but not the occasion) level, motivational variables were associated with careless responding. We hope that researchers might find the application of an ML-LCA approach useful to shed more light on factors influencing careless responding in AA studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":20782,"journal":{"name":"Psychological methods","volume":" ","pages":"374-392"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9498811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological methodsPub Date : 2025-04-01Epub Date: 2023-03-16DOI: 10.1037/met0000563
Craig K Enders
{"title":"Missing data: An update on the state of the art.","authors":"Craig K Enders","doi":"10.1037/met0000563","DOIUrl":"10.1037/met0000563","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The year 2022 is the 20th anniversary of Joseph Schafer and John Graham's paper titled \"Missing data: Our view of the state of the art,\" currently the most highly cited paper in the history of <i>Psychological Methods</i>. Much has changed since 2002, as missing data methodologies have continually evolved and improved; the range of applications that are possible with modern missing data techniques has increased dramatically, and software options are light years ahead of where they were. This article provides an update on the state of the art that catalogs important innovations from the past two decades of missing data research. The paper addresses topics described in the original paper, including developments related to missing data theory, full information maximum likelihood, Bayesian estimation, multiple imputation, and models for missing not at random processes. The paper also describes newer factored regression specifications and missing data handling for multilevel models, both of which have been a focus of recent research. The paper concludes with a summary of the current software landscape and a discussion of several practical issues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":20782,"journal":{"name":"Psychological methods","volume":" ","pages":"322-339"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9500543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bayesian nonparametric latent class analysis with different item types.","authors":"Meng Qiu, Sally Paganin, Ilsang Ohn, Lizhen Lin","doi":"10.1037/met0000728","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000728","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Latent class analysis (LCA) requires deciding on the number of classes. This is traditionally addressed by fitting several models with an increasing number of classes and determining the optimal one using model selection criteria. However, different criteria can suggest different models, making it difficult to reach a consensus on the best criterion. Bayesian nonparametric LCA based on the Dirichlet process mixture (DPM) model is a flexible alternative approach that allows for inferring the number of classes from the data. In this article, we introduce a DPM-based mixed-mode LCA model, referred to as DPM-MMLCA, which clusters individuals based on indicators measured on mixed metrics. We illustrate two algorithms for posterior estimation and discuss inferential procedures to estimate the number of classes and their composition. A simulation study is conducted to compare the performance of the DPM-MMLCA with the traditional mixed-mode LCA under different scenarios. Five design factors are considered, including the number of latent classes, the number of observed variables, sample size, mixing proportions, and class separation. Performance measures include evaluating the correct identification of the number of latent classes, parameter recovery, and assignment of class labels. The Bayesian nonparametric LCA approach is illustrated using three real data examples. Additionally, a hands-on tutorial using R and the nimble package is provided for ease of implementation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":20782,"journal":{"name":"Psychological methods","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143670682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Klazien de Vries, Marieke E Timmerman, Anja F Ernst, Casper J Albers
{"title":"Adjusting for nonrepresentativeness in continuous norming using multilevel regression and poststratification.","authors":"Klazien de Vries, Marieke E Timmerman, Anja F Ernst, Casper J Albers","doi":"10.1037/met0000752","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000752","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In psychological test norming, nonrepresentativeness in background variables in the normative sample can lead to bias in the normed score estimates. Because representativeness is difficult to establish in practice, adjustment methods are needed to combat this bias. As a candidate adjustment method, we investigated generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape with multilevel regression and poststratification (GAMLSS + MRP), the combination of MRP and continuous norming with GAMLSS. This adjustment method was then compared to current adjustment methods in continuous norming using weighted regression: GAMLSS + P (with poststratification) and cNORM + R (with raking). The results of our simulation showed that GAMLSS + MRP was generally more efficient than GAMLSS + P and cNORM + R. Furthermore, GAMLSS + MRP was better than the current methods at reducing bias in samples where the nonrepresentativeness was age-dependent. We argue that GAMLSS + MRP is a valid adjustment method in continuous norming and recommend this adjustment method to mitigate bias in nonrepresentative normative samples. To facilitate the use of GAMLSS + MRP in practice, we provide a step-wise approach for the implementation of GAMLSS + MRP. We illustrate this approach by deriving normed scores from the normative data of the third Schlichting language test. All analysis code for this illustration is provided. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":20782,"journal":{"name":"Psychological methods","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143625380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unsupervised [randomly responding] survey bot detection: In search of high classification accuracy.","authors":"Carl F Falk, Amaris Huang, Michael John Ilagan","doi":"10.1037/met0000746","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000746","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>While online survey data collection has become popular in the social sciences, there is a risk of data contamination by computer-generated random responses (i.e., bots). Bot prevalence poses a significant threat to data quality. If deterrence efforts fail or were not set up in advance, researchers can still attempt to detect bots already present in the data. In this research, we study a recently developed algorithm to detect survey bots. The algorithm requires neither a measurement model nor a sample of known humans and bots; thus, it is model agnostic and unsupervised. It involves a permutation test under the assumption that Likert-type items are exchangeable for bots, but not humans. While the algorithm maintains a desired sensitivity for detecting bots (e.g., 95%), its classification accuracy may depend on other inventory-specific or demographic factors. Generating hypothetical human responses from a well-known item response theory model, we use simulations to understand how classification accuracy is affected by item properties, the number of items, the number of latent factors, and factor correlations. In an additional study, we simulate bots to contaminate real human data from 35 publicly available data sets to understand the algorithm's classification accuracy under a variety of real measurement instruments. Through this work, we identify conditions under which classification accuracy is around 95% or above, but also conditions under which accuracy is quite low. In brief, performance is better with more items, more categories per item, and a variety in the difficulty or means of the survey items. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":20782,"journal":{"name":"Psychological methods","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143597819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A tutorial on estimating dynamic treatment regimes from observational longitudinal data using lavaan.","authors":"Wen Wei Loh, Terrence D Jorgensen","doi":"10.1037/met0000748","DOIUrl":"10.1037/met0000748","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Psychological and behavioral scientists develop interventions toward addressing pressing societal challenges. But such endeavors are complicated by treatments that change over time as individuals' needs and responses evolve. For instance, students initially in a multiyear mentoring program to improve future academic outcomes may not continue with the program after interim school engagement improves. Conventional interventions bound by rigid treatment assignments cannot adapt to such time-dependent heterogeneity, thus undermining the interventions' practical relevance and leading to inefficient implementations. Dynamic treatment regimes (DTRs) are a class of interventions that are more tailored, relevant, and efficient than conventional interventions. DTRs, an established approach in the causal inference and personalized medicine literature, are designed to address the causal query: how can individual treatment assignments in successive time points be adapted, based on time-evolving responses, to optimize the intervention's effectiveness? This tutorial offers an accessible introduction to DTRs using a simple example from the psychology literature. We describe how, using observational data from a single naturally occurring longitudinal study, to estimate the outcomes had different DTRs been counterfactually implemented. To improve accessibility, we implement the estimation procedure in lavaan, a freely available statistical software popular in psychology and social science research. We hope this tutorial guides researchers on framing, interpreting, and testing DTRs in their investigations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":20782,"journal":{"name":"Psychological methods","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143567974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Network science in psychology.","authors":"Tracy Sweet, Selena Wang","doi":"10.1037/met0000745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000745","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Social network analysis can answer research questions such as why or how individuals interact or form relationships and how those relationships impact other outcomes. Despite the breadth of methods available to address psychological research questions, social network analysis is not yet a standard practice. To promote the use of social network analysis in psychological research, we present an overview of network methods, situating each method within the context of research studies and questions in psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":20782,"journal":{"name":"Psychological methods","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143543203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Iterated community detection in psychological networks.","authors":"M A Werner, J de Ron, E I Fried, D J Robinaugh","doi":"10.1037/met0000744","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000744","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Psychological network models often feature communities: subsets of nodes that are more densely connected to themselves than to other nodes. The Spinglass algorithm is a popular method of detecting communities within a network, but it is a nondeterministic algorithm, meaning that the results can vary from one iteration to the next. There is no established method for determining the optimal solution or for evaluating instability across iterations in the emerging discipline of network psychometrics. We addressed this need by introducing and evaluating iterated community detection: Spinglass (IComDetSpin), a method for aggregating across multiple Spinglass iterations to identify the most frequent solution and quantify and visualize the instability of the solution across iterations. In two simulation studies, we evaluated (a) the performance of IComDetSpin in identifying the true community structure and (b) information about the fuzziness of community boundaries; information that is not available with a single iteration of Spinglass. In Study 1, IComDetSpin outperformed single-iteration Spinglass in identifying the true number of communities and performed comparably to Walktrap. In Study 2, we extended our evaluation to networks estimated from simulated data and found that both IComDetSpin and Exploratory Graph Analysis (a well-established community detection method in network psychometrics) performed well and that IComDetSpin outperformed Exploratory Graph Analysis when correlations between communities were high and number of nodes per community was lower (5 vs. 10). Overall, IComDetSpin improved the performance of Spinglass and provided unique information about the stability of community detection results and fuzziness in community structure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":20782,"journal":{"name":"Psychological methods","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143543201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unidim: An index of scale homogeneity and unidimensionality.","authors":"William Revelle, David Condon","doi":"10.1037/met0000729","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000729","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>How to evaluate how well a psychological scale measures just one construct is a recurring problem in assessment. We introduce an index, u, of the unidimensionality and homogeneity of a scale. u is just the product of two other indices: τ (a measure of τ equivalence) and ρc (a measure of congeneric fit). By combining these two indices into one, we provide a simple index of the unidimensionality and homogeneity of a scale. We evaluate u through simulations and with real data sets. Simulations of u across one-factor scales ranging from three to 24 items with various levels of factor homogeneity show that τ and, therefore, u are sensitive to the degree of factor homogeneity. Additional tests with multifactorial scales representing 9, 18, 27, and 36 items with a hierarchical factor structure varying in a general factor loading show that ρc and, therefore, u are sensitive to the general factor saturation of a test. We also demonstrate the performance of u on 45 different publicly available personality and ability measures. Comparisons with traditional measures (i.e., ωh, α, ωt, comparative fit index, and explained common variance) show that u has greater sensitivity to unidimensional structure and less sensitivity to the number of items in a scale. u is easily calculated with open source statistical packages and is relatively robust to sample sizes ranging from 100 to 5,000. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":20782,"journal":{"name":"Psychological methods","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143543205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}