Lack of Theory Building and Testing Impedes Progress in The Factor and Network Literature

Fried, Eiko I.

doi:10.1080/1047840x.2020.1853461

Cited by 211 publications

(237 citation statements)

References 134 publications

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“…Hardly, because there are many unknowns (cf. Fried, 2021;Fried & Cramer, 2017). Do we measure x and y at the right time frame to capture causal relations at all, and does the specified functional form (here, a linear relation) match the data-generating process (Robinaugh et al, 2021)?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…And are we certain we do not include elements in the system that should not be included, such as colliders that can induce spurious relations among variables (de Ron et al, 2019)? There are many more auxiliaries, including specific assumptions that come with the use of particular statistical models such as the VAR model (Epskamp et al, 2018;Fried, 2021), which does not investigate whether changes in x predict changes in y but whether deviations from a person-wise average in x predict deviations from a person-wise average in y. For these reasons, we see exploratory network modeling in time-series data as an important first step in mapping out complex, multivariate, conditional dependence relations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mental Health and Social Contact During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

Fried

Papanikolaou

Epskamp

2021

Clinical Psychological Science

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For many students, the COVID-19 pandemic caused once-in-a-lifetime disruptions of daily life. In March 2020, during the beginning of the outbreak in the Netherlands, we used ecological momentary assessment to follow 80 undergraduate students four times per day for 14 days to assess mental health, social contact, and COVID-19-related variables. Despite rapidly increasing rates of infections and deaths, we observed decreases in anxiety, loneliness, and COVID-19-related concerns, especially in the first few days. Other mental health variables, such as stress levels, remained stable, whereas depressive symptoms increased. Despite social-distancing measures implemented by the Dutch government halfway through our study, students showed no changes in the frequency of in-person social activities. Dynamic network models identified potential vicious cycles between mental health variables and being alone, which predicted concerns about COVID-19 and was followed by further mental health problems. Findings and implications are discussed in detail.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental Health and Social Contact During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

Fried

Papanikolaou

Epskamp

2021

Clinical Psychological Science

Self Cite

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“…In media psychology, as in psychological research in general, the lack of strong theories makes it difficult to explain how an activity like gaming interacts with people's health, wellbeing, and lives in general (e.g. Bowman, 2016;Orben, 2020; see also Fried, 2020). In this phenomenologically oriented work, we offer a qualitatively motivated typological perspective that can help mapping out potential paths toward such theories (Figure 1).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eight Hypotheses on Technology Use and Mental Wellbeing: A Bicultural Phenomenological Study of Gaming during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Karhulahti¹,

Nerg²,

Laitinen³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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In this nonconfirmatory qualitative study, we pursued a range of possible answers regarding gaming’s role in coping with, managing, and surviving the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. With the help of an explorative survey (n=793), a gaming-based interview frame for interpretive phenomenological analysis on Chinese (n=10) and Finnish (n=10) interviews was developed and applied. The interpreted range of experiences yielded an experiential typology consisting of eight macro types, with a specific statically testable psychological hypothesis drawn from each. As a side product, we found a wide spectrum of social experience related to videogame play, which we present as a 27-component taxonomy of social gaming. The study supports including personally meaningful solitary gaming to the existing policies that promote social videogame play during lockdown situations.

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“…Testing hypotheses with no theory to motivate them is a fishing expedition regardless of methodological rigor. See [44,[75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84] for discussions on scientific theory.…”

Section: Valid Conditional Inference Is Well Establishedmentioning

confidence: 99%

The case for formal methodology in scientific reform

et al. 2021

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Current attempts at methodological reform in sciences come in response to an overall lack of rigor in methodological and scientific practices in experimental sciences. However, most methodological reform attempts suffer from similar mistakes and over-generalizations to the ones they aim to address. We argue that this can be attributed in part to lack of formalism and first principles. Considering the costs of allowing false claims to become canonized, we argue for formal statistical rigor and scientific nuance in methodological reform. To attain this rigor and nuance, we propose a five-step formal approach for solving methodological problems. To illustrate the use and benefits of such formalism, we present a formal statistical analysis of three popular claims in the metascientific literature: (i) that reproducibility is the cornerstone of science; (ii) that data must not be used twice in any analysis; and (iii) that exploratory projects imply poor statistical practice. We show how our formal approach can inform and shape debates about such methodological claims.

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Lack of Theory Building and Testing Impedes Progress in The Factor and Network Literature

Cited by 211 publications

References 134 publications

Mental Health and Social Contact During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

Mental Health and Social Contact During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

Eight Hypotheses on Technology Use and Mental Wellbeing: A Bicultural Phenomenological Study of Gaming during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The case for formal methodology in scientific reform

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