Reflexivity in quantitative research: A rationale and beginner's guide

Reflexivity is the act of examining one's own assumption, belief, and judgement systems, and thinking carefully and critically about how these influence the research process. The practice of reflexivity confronts and questions who we are as researchers and how this guides our work. It is central in debates on objectivity, subjectivity, and the very foundations of social science research and generated knowledge. Incorporating reflexivity in the research process is traditionally recognized as one of the most notable differences between qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Qualitative research centres and celebrates the participants' personal and unique lived experience. Therefore, qualitative researchers are readily encouraged to consider how their own unique positionalities inform the research process and this forms an important part of training within this paradigm. Quantitative methodologies in social and personality psychology, and more generally, on the other hand, have remained seemingly detached from this level of reflexivity and general reflective practice. In this commentary, we, three quantitative researchers who have grappled with the compatibility of reflexivity within our own research, argue that reflexivity has much to offer quantitative methodologists. The act of reflexivity prompts researchers to acknowledge and centre their own positionalities, encourages a more thoughtful engagement with every step of the research process, and thus, as we argue, contributes to the ongoing reappraisal of openness and transparency in psychology. In this paper, we make the case for integrating reflexivity across all research approaches, before providing a ‘beginner's guide’ for quantitative researchers wishing to engage reflexively with their own work, providing concrete recommendations, worked examples, and reflexive prompts.     

5-11岁儿童元知觉发展的实验研究

本项研究旨在探索 5 -1 1岁儿童元认知发展的规律 ,2 80名昆明市及路南县汉、撒尼族儿童参与了三项知觉实验 ,实验结果表明 :1儿童随年龄的增长 ,有关知觉组织策略的知识及自我监察的能力也逐渐发展 ,表现为系统观察、选取有效策略及计划性的增强。 2儿童对信息的加工不断深入 ,从表浅的加工过渡到详尽的加工 ,不仅要求补充必要的信息 ,而且主动搜索隐蔽的线索以促进识辨。3儿童自我评价从笼统、含糊逐渐向客观、全面发展。4路南儿童元知觉的发展晚于昆明儿童两年 ,但在路南的汉族儿童和撒尼族儿童之间不存在显著差异 ,说明文化教育对儿童元知觉发展的重要影响。     

A multi-element analysis of the effect of teacher aides in an "open"-style classroom

Open classrooms with few rules, individualized instruction, and informal class organization present new problems for the application of behavior principles. The effects of three types of teacher aides on student achievement and on-task behavior were studied. Each was compared with a standard no-aide condition. Subjects were 54 third graders in two "open"-style classrooms. The three types of aide, helping adult, disciplinary adult, and helping fifth-grade aide, were compared in a multi-element design with a no-aide control. The helping-adult aide significantly affected the academic output of the class, when compared with the no-aide condition. All aide conditions produced more academic work and on-task behavior than did the standard no-aide condition.     

Toward a More Credible Understanding of Post-Traumatic Growth

Traditional research on post-traumatic growth has utilized methodologically flawed cross-sectional designs that involve retrospective assessments of post-traumatic growth. This has resulted in a majority of research in this field suffering from a lack of credibility and reliability. In this special issue, we present nine articles that seek to make innovative conceptual and methodological contributions with the goal of promoting better research practices on post-traumatic growth. In the introduction to this special issue, we provide an overview of these contributions, and discuss the implications of these articles both to improving future scholarship and to encouraging personality scientists to examine this important phenomenon in the years and decades to come.     

Fonctionnements et dysfonctionnements des psychothérapies : synthèse de la littérature et présentation de deux méthodologies associées aux meilleurs résultats

IntroductionPsychological difficulties are part of higher stakes health issues. What are the real effects and the difficulties to generate results of psychotherapies?Literature resultsPsychotherapy is efficient for multiple psychological disorders, as well in controlled as in naturalistic studies, and participate in reduction of health expenditure. However, all patients do not get real benefits from care, patients can deteriorate or drop-out treatment, and persistent side effects can occur; clinicians overestimate their efficiency and their performances decline during their career. Two promising methodologies seems to be associated with better outcomes: Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM) and a specific form of training clinician expertise named “Deliberate Practice”.DiscussionUsing client feedback allows to implement ROM and “Deliberate Practice” in routine care.ConclusionImplementation of Routine Outcome Monitoring should be encouraged in French Speaking countries to produce evidence-informed practice for the delivering, the improvement and the payment for psychotherapy expenditure.     

正式反馈的发展与临床应用

摘要:正式反馈通过系统收集当事人的效果反馈来追踪其治疗进展,进而识别缺乏治疗进展的个案,并通过促进治疗策略的调整来阻止治疗失败。正式反馈是近20年来发展出的一种循证治疗手段,其目的为进一步提高当事人的咨询效果。正式反馈的发展大致经历了临床有效性检验和实用性发展两个阶段。正式反馈可用于促进个体、夫妻和团体咨询的效果,也可用于评估临床督导效果、确定督导个案和指导临床督导。未来研究可探讨咨询师对待正式反馈的态度,拓展正式反馈的使用价值,建立正式反馈系统的本土化常模。     

Online implementation of an event history calendar with formr: A tutorial

Event history calendars (EHCs) are popular tools for retrospective data collection. Originally conceptualized as face‐to‐face interviews, EHCs contain various questions about the respondents' autobiography in order to use their experiences as cues to facilitate remembering. For relationship researchers, EHCs are particularly valuable when trying to reconstruct the relational past of individuals. However, although many studies are conducted online nowadays, no freely available online adaptation of the EHC is available yet. In this tutorial, detailed instructions are provided on how to implement an online EHC for the reconstruction of romantic relationship histories within the open‐source framework formr. Ways to customize the online EHC and provide a template for researchers to adapt the tool for their own purposes are showcased.     

Processing reduced word forms: the suffix restoration effect

Listeners cannot recognize highly reduced word forms in isolation, but they can do so when these forms are presented in context (Ernestus, Baayen, & Schreuder, 2002). This suggests that not all possible surface forms of words have equal status in the mental lexicon. The present study shows that the reduced forms are linked to the canonical representations in the mental lexicon, and that these latter representations induce reconstruction processes. Listeners restore suffixes that are partly or completely missing in reduced word forms. A series of phoneme-monitoring experiments reveals the nature of this restoration: the basis for suffix restoration is mainly phonological in nature, but orthography has an influence as well.     

Functional recovery of skilled forelimb use in rats obliged to use the impaired limb after grafting of the frontal cortex lesion with homotopic fetal cortex

The long-term effect of transplanting embryonic frontal cortex into a unilateral frontal cortex lesion has been studied in adult rats. Before surgery, activity in an open field, muscular strength of both forelimbs, and performance in a paw-reaching-for-food task were scored in 26 rats. In 21 animals a unilateral cortex lesion was then made in the forelimb motor area of the hemisphere contralateral to the preferred paw in the paw-reaching-for-food task, while the other 5 animals were sham-operated. On retesting, the lesion animals changed the preferred paw. A solid homotopic transplant of embryonic tissue (embryonic day 17) was then placed in the lesion cavity in 11 of the lesion rats. Three months later neither lesion alone nor lesion plus transplantation affected open field behavior and muscular strength, but the lesion permanently affected performance in the paw-reaching-for-food task, as shown by a change of preferred paw and a functional deficit in the paw contralateral to the lesion. Transplantation ameliorated the deficits caused by the lesion, but this was only evident when animals were forced to reach with the paw contralateral to the lesion plus transplant. The behavioral results were independent of the size of the lesion and graft. Connections between graft and host tissue were studied by means of the fluorescent tracer 1,1'-dioctadecyl-3,3,3'3'-tetramethylindocarbocyanine perchlorate (DiI). A dense array of labeled fibers was found in the host cortex adjacent to the transplant. The results suggest that functional recovery depends on grafting but is only evident when the animal is obliged to use the affected limb.