Stolle Dennis P, Robbennolt Jennifer K, Patry Marc, Penrod Steven D
Litigation Department of Barnes & Thornburg, 11 South Meridian Street, Indianapolis, IN 46204, USA.
Behav Sci Law. 2002;20(1-2):5-17. doi: 10.1002/bsl.475.
Researchers considering novel or exploratory psycholegal research are often able to easily generate a sizable list of independent variables (IVs) that might influence a measure of interest. Where the research question is novel and the literature is not developed, however, choosing from among a long list of potential variables those worthy of empirical investigation often presents a formidable task. Many researchers may feel compelled by legal psychology's heavy reliance on full-factorial designs to narrow the IVs under investigation to two or three in order to avoid an expensive and unwieldy design involving numerous high-order interactions. This article suggests that fractional factorial designs provide a reasonable alternative to full-factorial designs in such circumstances because they allow the psycholegal researcher to examine the main effects of a large number of factors while disregarding high-order interactions. An introduction to the logic of fractional factorial designs is provided and several examples from the social sciences are presented.
考虑开展新颖或探索性心理法学研究的研究者，通常能够轻松列出一长串可能影响相关测量指标的自变量（IVs）。然而，当研究问题新颖且相关文献较少时，从众多潜在变量中挑选出值得进行实证研究的变量往往是一项艰巨的任务。由于法律心理学严重依赖全因子设计，许多研究者可能会觉得不得不将所研究的自变量数量缩减至两三个，以避免设计过于昂贵且繁琐，涉及众多高阶交互作用。本文指出，在这种情况下，部分因子设计为全因子设计提供了合理的替代方案，因为它们使心理法学研究者能够在忽略高阶交互作用的同时，检验大量因素的主效应。本文介绍了部分因子设计的逻辑，并列举了社会科学领域的几个例子。
