Abductive Research Methods in Psychological Science

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Haig
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Exploratory Factor Analysis ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
The Third ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Common Causes ◽  
Explanatory Coherence

This chapter discusses a number of different abductive research methods of relevance to psychological research. The first of these, exploratory factor analysis, has been widely employed to generate rudimentary explanatory theories about common causes, although it is not generally recognized as an abductive method. The second method, analogical modelling, can be viewed as an abductive strategy for developing explanatory theories once they have been generated. The third abductive method, known generally as inference to the best explanation, gets formulated in different ways. These methods of inference to the best explanation can be used to evaluate the worth of competing explanatory theories. Theories of explanatory coherence are important in this regard.

Digital Traces: New Data, Resources, and Tools for Psychological-Science Research

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 560-566 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anat Rafaeli ◽  
Shelly Ashtar ◽  
Daniel Altman
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Large Scale Data ◽  
Scale Data

New technologies create and archive digital traces—records of people’s behavior—that can supplement and enrich psychological research. Digital traces offer psychological-science researchers novel, large-scale data (which reflect people’s actual behaviors), rapidly collected and analyzed by new tools. We promote the integration of digital-traces data into psychological science, suggesting that it can enrich and overcome limitations of current research. In this article, we review helpful data sources, tools, and resources and discuss challenges associated with using digital traces in psychological research. Our review positions digital-traces research as complementary to traditional psychological-research methods and as offering the potential to enrich insights on human psychology.

scholarly journals Robustness of factor solutions in exploratory factor analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Goretzko ◽  
Markus Bühner
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Exploratory Factor Analysis ◽  
Big Five ◽  
Sampling Error ◽  
Information Criterion ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Stable Factor ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The One

AbstractReplicability has become a highly discussed topic in psychological research. The debates focus mainly on significance testing and confirmatory analyses, whereas exploratory analyses such as exploratory factor analysis are more or less ignored, although hardly any analysis has a comparable impact on entire research areas. Determining the correct number of factors for this analysis is probably the most crucial, yet ambiguous decision—especially since factor structures have often been not replicable. Hence, an approach based on bootstrapping the factor retention process is proposed to evaluate the robustness of factor retention criteria against sampling error and to predict whether a particular factor solution may be replicable. We used three samples of the “Big Five Structure Inventory” and four samples of the “10 Item Big Five Inventory” to illustrate the relationship between stable factor solutions across bootstrap samples and their replicability. In addition, we compared four factor retention criteria and an information criterion in terms of their stability on the one hand and their replicability on the other. Based on this study, we want to encourage researchers to make use of bootstrapping to assess the stability of the factor retention criteria they use and to compare these criteria with regard to this stability as a proxy for possible replicability.

scholarly journals The Reasons of Lack of Polish Young Potential Employees’ Interest in Universities as Employers in the Context of Perception of People Working in These Organizations

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-229
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Izabela Baruk ◽  
Anna Goliszek
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Internal Structure ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Exploratory Factor Analysis ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Theoretical Part ◽  
The Way

Summary The article has a theoretical and empirical character. Identifying the internal structure of reasons of lack of Polish young potential employees’ interest in universities as employers was the main goal of this paper. To prepare its theoretical part the method of cognitive-critical analysis of world literature on marketing and management was applied. The results of this analysis show that the aspects connected with the mentioned reasons have not been studied yet. The more the opinions about the way of perception of universities’ employees in the comparison of other organizations’ employees have not been taken into account in the analysis. So one can talk about the existence of a cognitive gap and an empirical gap in this scope. Striving to reduce these gaps the empirical studies were conducted. The research covered representatives of Polish young potential employees. Gathered primary data were statistically analysed applying the following research methods and tests: exploratory factor analysis and Kruskal-Wallis test. The results of these analyses show that the opinions on relative perception of universities’ employees decide about differences in the structure of reasons of lack of interest in universities as employers. But the mentioned opinions are the element differentiating in a statistically significant way only one reason.

scholarly journals Factor Analysis of Service Expectation of Farmer Producer Organization from Agribusiness Incubator

2021 ◽  
pp. 391-398
Author(s):  
R. Ramesh Kumar ◽  
M. Malarkodi ◽  
K. Uma
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Exploratory Factor Analysis ◽  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Business Development ◽  
Survey Method ◽  
Business Incubator ◽  
The Third ◽  
Service Expectation ◽  
Interview Questionnaire

This paper aimed to study the service expectation of Farmer Producer Organization from the Agribusiness incubator. The study was carried out with 60 FPO’s in Tamil Nadu. The data was collected through survey method using a well-structured online interview questionnaire. The exploratory factor analysis was carried out to reduce the data. The first factor named as which explained 25.37 percent of the variance, the second factor named as early stage business development services which explained 10.27 percent of the variance, the third factor named as business development services which explained 11.50 percent of the variance, the fourth factor named as physical infrastructural assistance which explained 2.21 percent of the variance. The obtained results of Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed that four factors such as market assistance services, early stage business development services, business development services and physical infrastructural assistance explained about 71.69 percent of the variance of factors with respect to service expectation of FPO's from the Business incubator.

scholarly journals The role of religious beliefs and collective narcissism in interreligious contact on university students

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahkman Ardi ◽  
Diah Budiarti
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Regression Analysis ◽  
University Students ◽  
Exploratory Factor Analysis ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
T Test ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
The Third

The rise of exclusive puritanism movements challenges several communities to live in peaceful coexistence. This research aimed to observe the level of interreligious contact on university students. This was a threefold study. The first part was an initial inquiry to construct an interreligious contact scale. The second sought to see the inferential association between interreligious contact, belief in religious teachings (i.e. fundamental religious belief, kindly religious belief, and meta-religion endorsement), and collective narcissism. The third part was to investigate the differences between those variables, between students who joined student political organizations with religion-based ideology and those who did not. There were 381 respondents from various religious backgrounds (e.g. Muslim, Christian, and other) participating in this research. The result of the exploratory factor analysis indicated a unidimensionality of the interreligious contact scale. Regression analysis found that fundamental religious belief and collective narcissism made individuals less likely to exhibit interreligious contact. However, kindly religious belief and meta-religion endorsement encouraged interreligious contact. In addition, the independent sample t-test suggested that there was a difference of inclusivism level between religion-based student organization members and non-members. Members of such organization tended to exhibit a lower level of interreligious contact, while their level of fundamental religious belief and collective narcissism were higher compared to their non-member counterparts.

scholarly journals Collections2: Using “Crowdsourcing” within Psychological Research

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy J. McCarthy ◽  
Christopher R. Chartier
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Research Questions

“Crowdsourcing” is a methodological approach in which several researchers coordinate their resources to achieve research goals that would otherwise be difficult to attain individually. This article introduces a Nexus—a collection of empirical and theoretical articles that will be published in Collabra: Psychology—that is intended to encourage more crowdsourced research in psychological science by providing a specific outlet for such projects and by assisting researchers in developing and executing their projects. We describe how individuals can propose and lead a crowdsourced research project, how individuals can contribute to other ongoing projects, and other ways to contribute to this Nexus. Ultimately, we hope this Nexus will contain a set of highly-informative articles that demonstrate the flexibility and range of the types of research questions that can be addressed with crowdsourced research methods.

An exploratory factor analysis of the Nerdy Personality Attributes Scale in a sample of self-identified nerds/geeks.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
callum finister ◽  
Thomas Victor Pollet ◽  
Nicholas Neave
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Exploratory Factor Analysis ◽  
Factor Structure ◽  
Subjective Wellbeing ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Personality Types ◽  
Openness To Experience ◽  
The Past ◽  
Behavioural Characteristics ◽  
Starting Point

In the past, the terms ‘geek’ and ‘nerd’ had negative social connotations, but so-called ‘Geek’ subculture is becoming increasingly mainstream, and its social and economic influence is expanding. There has been very little psychological research into this subculture and its associated personality types, but some authors have reported links with narcissism, extraversion, openness to experience, depression and subjective wellbeing. In a sample of 425 self-identified geeks/nerds registered with the Facebook community Geek Asylum and the Facebook page of the Manchester 2019 Comic-Con, we explored the factor structure of the Nerdy Personality Attributes Scale. Using exploratory factor analysis, we find that the scale items load onto three factors - ‘Social awkwardness’, ‘Interest in learning and science’ and ‘Interest in books’, with all correlating weakly to moderately with self-reported nerdiness. This scale may form a useful starting point to further assess the personality and behavioural characteristics of nerdiness.

Access shrugged: The decline of the copyleft and the rise of utilitarian openness

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482095730
Author(s):  
Aram Sinnreich ◽  
Patricia Aufderheide ◽  
Maggie Clifford ◽  
Saif Shahin
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Exploratory Factor Analysis ◽  
Google Trends ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Search Terms ◽  
The Us ◽  
Online Culture ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
Keyword Searches

This article maps patterns of interest in key terms associated with copyright and online culture in the US context. Using exploratory factor analysis of data from Google Trends, authors examined patterns in keyword searches between 2004 and 2019. The data show three distinct periods of interest. The first period consists of utopian, cause-driven search terms; the second marks a rise and eventual decline in creatively motivated, maker-fueled searches; and the third is characterized by rising utilitarian and institutional interest in accessible copyrighted material. These data show empirically that the public curiosity about alternatives to strict copyright have changed during the study period. Earlier, more idealistic movements contrast with later, more practical approaches.

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