Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T20:06:23.596Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Replication is already mainstream: Lessons from small-N designs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2018

Daniel R. Little  and
Philip L. Smith
Daniel R. Little
Affiliation:
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia. [email protected]@unimelb.edu.auhttp://psychologicalsciences.unimelb.edu.au/research/research-groups/knowlab
Philip L. Smith
Affiliation:
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia. [email protected]@unimelb.edu.auhttp://psychologicalsciences.unimelb.edu.au/research/research-groups/knowlab
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Replication is already mainstream in areas of psychology that use small-N designs. Replication failures often result from weak theory, weak measurement, and weak control over error variance. These are hallmarks of phenomenon-based research with sparse data. Small-N designs, which focus on understanding processes, treat the individual rather than the experiment as the unit of replication and largely circumvent these problems.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 41 , 2018 , e141
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Grice, J., Barrett, P., Cota, L., Felix, C., Taylor, Z., Garner, S., Medellin, E. & Vest, A. (2017) Four bad habits of modern psychologists. Behavioral Sciences 7:53.Google Scholar
Lee, M. D. & Wagenmakers, E. J. (2005) Bayesian statistical inference in psychology: Comment on Trafimow (2003). Psychological Review 112:662–68.Google Scholar
Little, D. R., Altieri, N., Fific, M. & Yang, C-T. (2017) Systems factorial technology: A theory driven methodology for the identification of perceptual and cognitive mechanisms. Academic.Google Scholar
Meehl, P. E. (1967) Theory-testing in psychology and physics: A methodological paradox. Philosophy of Science 34(2):103–15.Google Scholar
Meehl, P. E. (1990a) Why summaries of research on psychological theories are often uninterpretable. Psychological Reports 66(1):195–244. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1990.66.1.195.Google Scholar
Smith, P. L. & Little, D. R. (2018) Small is beautiful: In defence of the small-N design. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-018-1451-8.Google Scholar
Sternberg, S. (1969) The discovery of processing stages: Extensions of Donders' method. Acta Psychologica 30:276–315.Google Scholar
Yarkoni, T. & Westfall, J. (2017) Choosing prediction over explanation in psychology: Lessons from machine learning. Perspectives on Psychological Science 1–23.Google Scholar