JEPS Bulletin

Are You Registering That? An Interview with Prof. Chris Chambers

There is no panacea for bad science, but if there were, it would certainly resemble Registered Reports. Registered Reports are a novel publishing format in which authors submit only the introduction, methods, and planned analyses without actually having collected the data. Thus, peer-review only focuses on the soundness of the research proposal and is not contingent on the “significance” of the results (Chambers, 2013). In one strike, this simple idea combats publication bias, researchers’ degrees of freedom, makes apparent the distinction between exploratory and confirmatory research, and calms the researcher’s mind. There are a number of journals offering Registered Reports, and this is arguable the most important step journals can take to push psychological science forward (see also King et al., 2016). For a detailed treatment of Registered Reports, see here, here, here, and Chambers (2015). Continue reading →

Fabian Dablander

Fabian Dablander just finished his Masters in Cognitive Science at the University of Tübingen. He is interested in innovative ways of data collection, Bayesian statistics, and open science. You can find him on Twitter @fdabl.

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Introducing jamovi: Free and Open Statistical Software Combining Ease of Use with the Power of R

For too long, Psychology has had to put up with costly, bulky, and inflexible statistics software. Today, we’d like to introduce you to a breath of fresh air: jamovi, free statistics software available for all platforms that is intuitive and user-friendly, and developed with so much pace that its capabilities will potentially soon outrun SPSS. Continue reading →

Peter Edelsbrunner

Peter is currently doctoral student at the section for learning and instruction research of ETH Zurich in Switzerland. He graduated from Psychology at the University of Graz in Austria. Peter is interested in conceptual knowledge development and the application of flexible mixture models to developmental research. Since 2011 he has been active in the EFPSA European Summer School and related activities.

Magical 7±2 Tips for Psychologists Participating in a Hackathon

A hackathon is an event, typically lasting for 24-48 hours, in which a group of people with diverse backgrounds come together to solve a problem by building a first working prototype of a solution (usually a web app, program or a utility).

There is something inherently likable, or dare I say, smart, about hackathons. They have a specific goal, your progress and results are measurable, getting a first working prototype is both achievable and realistic, and it will all be over in 24-48 hours. I have come to appreciate hackathons a lot over the last five months where I’ve participated in five, and won two of them with my teams. I would like to invite you to participate in one as well by giving you 7±2 tips to make your hackathon experience especially enjoyable. Continue reading →

Taavi Kivisik

Data scientist and developer at Qlouder. While at the University of Tartu and University of Toronto, I was inspired to learn more about efficient learning and mnemonics. Midway through the studies I discovered my passion for research methodology and technical side of research, statistics and programming, also machine learning. I’m volunteering as a Lead Archivist for the Nordic Psychology Students’ Conference (NPSC). I'm former President of the Estonian Psychology Students’ Association and former Junior Editor at the Journal of European Psychology Students’ (JEPS). I sometimes tweet @tkivisik .

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Open online education: Research findings and methodological challenges

With a reliable internet connection comes access to the enormous World Wide Web. Being so large, we rely on tools like Google to search and filter all this information. Additional filters can be found in sites like Wikipedia, offering a library style access to curated knowledge, but it too is enormous. In more recent years, open online courses has rapidly become a highly popular method of gaining easy access to curated, high quality, as well as pre-packaged knowledge. A particularly popular variety is the Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, which are found on platforms like Coursera and edX. The promise – global and free access to high quality education – has often been applauded. Some have heralded the age of the MOOC as the death of campus based teaching. Others are more critical, often citing the high drop-out rates as a sign of failure, or argue that MOOCs do not or cannot foster ‘real’ learning (e.g., Zemsky, 2014; Pope, 2014). Continue reading →

Tim van der Zee

Skeptical scientist. I study how people learn from educational videos in open online courses, and how we can help them learn better. PhD student at Leiden University (the Netherlands), but currently a visiting scholar at MIT and UMass Lowell. You can follow me on Twitter: @Research_Tim and read my blog at www.timvanderzee.com

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Introduction to Data Analysis using R

R Logo

R is a statistical programming language whose popularity is quickly overtaking SPSS and other “traditional” point-and-click software packages (Muenchen, 2015). But why would anyone use a programming language, instead of point-and-click applications, for data analysis? An important reason is that data analysis rarely consists of simply running a statistical test. Instead, many small steps, such as cleaning and visualizing data, are usually repeated many times, and computers are much faster at doing repetitive tasks than humans are. Using a point-and-click interface for these “data cleaning” operations is laborious and unnecessarily slow: Continue reading →

Matti Vuorre

Matti Vuorre is a PhD Student at Columbia University in New York City. He studies cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and focuses on understanding the mechanisms underlying humans' metacognitive capacities.

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Not solely about that Bayes: Interview with Prof. Eric-Jan Wagenmakers

Last summer saw the publication of the most important work in psychology in decades: the Reproducibility Project (Open Science Collaboration, 2015; see here and here for context). It stirred up the community, resulting in many constructive discussions but also in verbally violent disagreement. What unites all parties, however, is the call for more transparency and openness in research.

Eric-Jan “EJ” Wagenmakers has argued for pre-registration of research (Wagenmakers et al., 2012; see also here) and direct replications (e.g., Boekel et al., 2015; Wagenmakers et al., 2015), for a clearer demarcation of exploratory and confirmatory research (de Groot, 1954/2013), and for a change in the way we analyze our data (Wagenmakers et al., 2011; Wagenmakers et al., in press). Continue reading →

Fabian Dablander

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Publishing a Registered Report as a Postgraduate Researcher

Registered Reports (RRs) are a new publishing format pioneered by the journal Cortex (Chambers 2013). This publication format emphasises the process of rigorous research, rather than the results, in an attempt to avoid questionable research practices such as p-hacking and HARK-ing, which ultimately reduce the reproducibility of research and contribute to publication bias in cognitive science (Chambers et al. 2014). A recent JEPS post by Dablander (2016) and JEPS’ own editorial for adopting RRs (King et al. 2016) have given a detailed explanation of the RR process. However, you may have thought that publishing a RR is reserved for only senior scientists, and is not a viable option for a postgraduate student. In fact, 5 out of 6 of the first RRs published by Cortex have had post-graduate students as authors, and publishing by RR offers postgraduates and early career researchers many unique benefits. Continue reading →

James Bartlett

I'm James Bartlett, a PhD student at Coventry University, UK. The aim of my project is to create a profile of cognitive mechanisms associated with substance use in light and heavy smokers. I keep myself occupied outside of academia by playing hockey, or watching ice hockey. You can also find me on Twitter (@JamesEBartlett).

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Do Smokers Consist of a Single Group?

When you think of a smoker, it is likely that you are imagining someone who goes through a pack of cigarettes per day and can often be found running to the nearest store to maintain their supply. Perhaps you amuse yourself watching your friend conspicuously leaving work to stand outside and huddle around their cigarette in the rain. Your assumption would often be correct as the majority of smokers are dependent on nicotine and smoke throughout the day. These daily smokers account for approximately 89% of current smokers in the UK (Herbec, Brown and West 2014), and between 67%-75% of smokers in the USA (Coggins, Murrelle and Carchman 2009). However, what about this missing proportion of smokers? Continue reading →

James Bartlett

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Python Programming in Psychology – From Data Collection to Analysis

Why programming?

Programming is a skill that all psychology students should learn. I can think of so many reasons on why, including automating boring stuff, and practicing problem solving skills through learning to code and programming. In this post I will focus on two more immediate ways that may be relevant for a Psychology student, particularly during data collection and data analysis. For a more elaborated discussion on the topic read the post on my personal blog: Every Psychologist Should Learn Programming.

Here is what we will do in this post:

Basic Python by example (i.e., a t-test for paired samples)
Program a Flanker task using the Python library Expyriment
Visualise and analyse data Continue reading →

Erik Marsja

Erik Marsja is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Psychology, Umeå University, Sweden. In his dissertation work, he examines attention and distraction from a cross-modal and multisensory perspective (i.e., using auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli). Erik is teaching in both qualitative and quantitative research methods, applied cognitive psychology, cognitive psychology, and perception. In the lab group he has been part of since his Bachelor's thesis he has been responsible for programming his own, and some of the other members and collaborators, experiments. Programming skills have been, and will be, something valuable for his research and his career. Some of the code that have been used can be found on his GitHub page.

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The Statistics Hell has expanded: An interview with Prof. Andy Field

Does the mention of the word “statistics” strike fear into your heart and send shivers down your spine? The results section of your thesis seeming like that dark place one should avoid at all cost? Heteroscedasticity gives you nightmares? You dread having to explain to someone what degrees of freedom are? What is the point of using ANOVA if we can do a series of t-tests? If any of these remind you of the pain of understanding statistics, or the dread of how much more lies ahead during your studies, when all you really want is someone to explain it in a humanly understandable way—look no further. Quite a few fellow students might tell you “You should go and look at Andy Field’s books. Now, at least, I understand stats”. The “Discovering statistics using …” is a gentle, student friendly introduction to statistics. Principles are introduced at a slow pace, with plenty of workable examples so that anyone with basic maths skills will be able to digest it. Now add a lens of humor and sarcasm that will have you giggling about statistics in no time! Continue reading →

Lea Jakob

Lea Jakob is currently finishing her psychology Master’s degree at University of Zagreb, Centre for Croatian Studies. Her research interests include clinical psychology within which she is writing her masters thesis on the topic of cognitive impairment in pulmonary patients as well as music perception and cognition. Apart from her passion for research, she has a serious case of wanderlust paired with polyglotism.

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