One of the most common statistical analyses in experimental psychology concerns the comparison of two means using the frequentist t test. However, frequentist t tests do not quantify evidence and require various assumption tests. Recently, popularized Bayesian t tests do quantify evidence, but these were developed for scenarios where the two populations are assumed to have the same variance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNetwork psychometrics uses graphical models to assess the network structure of psychological variables. An important task in their analysis is determining which variables are unrelated in the network, i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current practice of reliability analysis is both uniform and troublesome: most reports consider only Cronbach's α, and almost all reports focus exclusively on a point estimate, disregarding the impact of sampling error. In an attempt to improve the status quo we have implemented Bayesian estimation routines for five popular single-test reliability coefficients in the open-source statistical software program JASP. Using JASP, researchers can easily obtain Bayesian credible intervals to indicate a range of plausible values and thereby quantify the precision of the point estimate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe last 25 years have shown a steady increase in attention for the Bayes factor as a tool for hypothesis evaluation and model selection. The present review highlights the potential of the Bayes factor in psychological research. We discuss six types of applications: Bayesian evaluation of point null, interval, and informative hypotheses, Bayesian evidence synthesis, Bayesian variable selection and model averaging, and Bayesian evaluation of cognitive models.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLinear regression analyses commonly involve two consecutive stages of statistical inquiry. In the first stage, a single 'best' model is defined by a specific selection of relevant predictors; in the second stage, the regression coefficients of the winning model are used for prediction and for inference concerning the importance of the predictors. However, such second-stage inference ignores the model uncertainty from the first stage, resulting in overconfident parameter estimates that generalize poorly.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPopular measures of reliability for a single-test administration include coefficient , coefficient , the greatest lower bound (glb), and coefficient . First, we show how these measures can be easily estimated within a Bayesian framework. Specifically, the posterior distribution for these measures can be obtained through Gibbs sampling - for coefficients , , and the glb one can sample the covariance matrix from an inverse Wishart distribution; for coefficient one samples the conditional posterior distributions from a single-factor CFA-model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite the increasing popularity of Bayesian inference in empirical research, few practical guidelines provide detailed recommendations for how to apply Bayesian procedures and interpret the results. Here we offer specific guidelines for four different stages of Bayesian statistical reasoning in a research setting: planning the analysis, executing the analysis, interpreting the results, and reporting the results. The guidelines for each stage are illustrated with a running example.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In mental health, outcomes are currently measured by changes of individual scores. However, such an analysis on individual scores does not take into account the interaction between symptoms, which could yield crucial information while investigating outcomes. Network analysis techniques can be used to routinely study these systems of interacting symptoms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBehav Res Methods
October 2019
Signal detection theory (SDT) is used to quantify people's ability and bias in discriminating stimuli. The ability to detect a stimulus is often measured through confidence ratings. In SDT models, the use of confidence ratings necessitates the estimation of confidence category thresholds, a requirement that can easily result in models that are overly complex.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe decision process in choice reaction time data is traditionally described in detail with diffusion models. However, the total reaction time is assumed to consist of the sum of a decision time (as modeled by the diffusion process) and the time devoted to nondecision processes (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBayesian hypothesis testing presents an attractive alternative to p value hypothesis testing. Part I of this series outlined several advantages of Bayesian hypothesis testing, including the ability to quantify evidence and the ability to monitor and update this evidence as data come in, without the need to know the intention with which the data were collected. Despite these and other practical advantages, Bayesian hypothesis tests are still reported relatively rarely.
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