Critical Debates on Quantitative Psychology and Measurement: Revived and Novel Perspectives on Fundamental Problems

Jana Uher^1*Jan Ketil Arnulf²Barbara Hanfstingl³

• ¹University of Greenwich, London, United Kingdom
• ²BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway
• ³Department of Psychology, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria

This Research Topic presents novel and revived perspectives on the fundamental problems 49 underlying psychology's crises in replicability, validity, generalisability and thus, confidence 50 in its findings. Its 15 articles present critical analyses of established theories and practices 51 that are widely used in quantitative psychology and psychological 'measurement'. They 52show that, contrary to current beliefs, questionable research practices (QRPs) are just 53 surface-level symptoms of much more profound issues that are still hardly discussed. 54Uher, Arnulf, Barrett, Heene, Heine, Martin, Mazur, McGann, Mislevy, Speelman, 55Toomela and Weber argue that psychology's crises are rooted in the Questionable 56Research Fundamentals (QRFs) of many of its theories, concepts, approaches and methods 57 (e.g., of psychometrics), and therefore cannot be tackled by just remedying Questionable 58Research Practices (QRPs), as currently believed. The authors argue that advancing 59 psychology's theories and philosophies of science is essential for integrating its fragmented 60 empirical database and lines of research. To give new impetus to the current debates, they 61 provide a comprehensive multi-perspectival review of key problems in psychological 62 measurement, highlighting diverse philosophies of science (ontologies, epistemologies and 63 methodologies) that are used in quantitative psychology and pinpointing four major areas of 64 development. Luchetti explores psychological 'measurement' from a philosophical viewpoint. He 66 highlights that, without independent ways for assessing whether a given procedure does, 67 indeed, allow for measuring the intended target property, measurement inherently involves 68 epistemic circularity. From both a modern and a historically-situated perspective, he 69 analyses how Fechner tackled this problem in psychophysics. He shows that Fechner 70 developed a first successful step of a longer-term quantification process. Nevertheless, 71 findings about individuals' sensory perceptions of physical stimuli (e.g., sound) cannot be 72 generalised to perceptions of all psychical phenomena in lack of evident observable 73properties that can be connected to the psychical phenomena of interest. The author 74 discusses epistemic circularity as a useful conceptual tool to reflect on the criteria by which 75 measurement standards are regarded as successful in a scientific community. 76Kuhbandner and Mayerhofer evaluate limitations of experimental psychology. They 77 critically discuss the field's common assumption that the complexity of the human psyche 78 could be studied in experimentally controlled settings, enabling the study of law-like 79 behaviours reflective of isolated psychical 'mechanisms'. The authors highlight that even 80 minimal differences in the experimental setup, including differences regarded as irrelevant 81for a given study, can build up to large unsystematic effects. Moreover, the identification of 82 isolated 'mechanisms', if such were possible, could have no explanatory value given that the 83 psyche functions as a holistic system. They emphasise that non-mechanistic functioning of 84 the higher-order psychical processes cannot be studied experimentally. 199 With our compilation of research papers, we aim to contribute to and stimulate critical 200 debates on quantitative psychology and measurement. We hope that the revived and novel 201 perspectives discussed in these papers will provide good food for thought to motivate and 202 help psychologist to tackle the current challenges and advance psychology as a science. 203