Blanca María J, Alarcón Rafael, Bono Roser
Department of Psychobiology and Behavioral Sciences Methodology, University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain.
Department of Social Psychology and Quantitative Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Front Psychol. 2018 Dec 13;9:2558. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02558. eCollection 2018.
This paper analyzes current practices in psychology in the use of research methods and data analysis procedures (DAP) and aims to determine whether researchers are now using more sophisticated and advanced DAP than were employed previously. We reviewed empirical research published recently in prominent journals from the USA and Europe corresponding to the main psychological categories of Journal Citation Reports and examined research methods, number of studies, number and type of DAP, and statistical package. The 288 papers reviewed used 663 different DAP. Experimental and correlational studies were the most prevalent, depending on the specific field of psychology. Two-thirds of the papers reported a single study, although those in journals with an experimental focus typically described more. The papers mainly used parametric tests for comparison and statistical techniques for analyzing relationships among variables. Regarding the former, the most frequently used procedure was ANOVA, with mixed factorial ANOVA being the most prevalent. A decline in the use of non-parametric analysis was observed in relation to previous research. Relationships among variables were most commonly examined using regression models, with hierarchical regression and mediation analysis being the most prevalent procedures. There was also a decline in the use of stepwise regression and an increase in the use of structural equation modeling, confirmatory factor analysis, and hierarchical linear modeling. Overall, the results show that recent empirical studies published in journals belonging to the main areas of psychology are employing more varied and advanced statistical techniques of greater computational complexity.
本文分析了心理学领域当前在研究方法和数据分析程序（DAP）使用方面的实践情况，旨在确定研究人员目前使用的DAP是否比以前使用的更复杂、更先进。我们回顾了最近在美国和欧洲著名期刊上发表的与《期刊引证报告》主要心理学类别相对应的实证研究，并研究了研究方法、研究数量、DAP的数量和类型以及统计软件包。所审查的288篇论文使用了663种不同的DAP。实验研究和相关研究最为普遍，这取决于心理学的具体领域。三分之二的论文报告了一项单一研究，尽管以实验为重点的期刊中的论文通常描述得更多。这些论文主要使用参数检验进行比较，并使用统计技术分析变量之间的关系。关于前者，最常用的程序是方差分析（ANOVA），其中混合因子方差分析最为普遍。与先前的研究相比，观察到非参数分析的使用有所下降。变量之间的关系最常使用回归模型进行检验，其中层次回归和中介分析是最普遍的程序。逐步回归的使用也有所下降，而结构方程建模、验证性因子分析和层次线性建模的使用有所增加。总体而言，结果表明，最近在心理学主要领域的期刊上发表的实证研究采用了更多样化、更先进且计算复杂度更高的统计技术。
