Validation of psychological tests has not yet been adequately conceptualized, as the APA Committee on Psychological Tests learned when it undertook (1950-54) to specify what qualities should be investigated before a test is published. In order to make coherent recommendations the Committee found it necessary to distinguish four types of validity, established by different types of research and requiring different interpretation. The chief innovation in the Committee's report was the term construct validity.[2] This idea was first formulated by a subcommittee (Meehl and R. C. Challman) studying how proposed recommendations would apply to projective techniques, and later modified and clarified by the entire Committee (Bordin, Challman, Conrad, Humphreys, Super, and the present writers). The statements agreed upon by the Committee (and by committees of two other associations) were published in the Technical Recommendations (59). The present interpretation of construct validity is not "official" and deals with some areas where the Committee would probably not be unanimous. The present writers are solely responsible for this attempt to explain the concept and elaborate its implications.

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Construct validity in psychological tests.

We consider 27 population and community terms used frequently by parasitologists when describing the ecology of parasites. We provide suggestions for various terms in an attempt to foster consistent use and to make terms used in parasite ecology easier to interpret for those who study free-living organisms. We suggest strongly that authors, whether they agree or disagree with us, provide complete and unambiguous definitions for all parameters of their studies.

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Parasitology meets ecology on its own terms: Margolis et al. revisited.

Reproducibility is a defining feature of science, but the extent to which it characterizes current research is unknown. We conducted replications of 100 experimental and correlational studies published in three psychology journals using high-powered designs and original materials when available. Replication effects were half the magnitude of original effects, representing a substantial decline. Ninety-seven percent of original studies had statistically significant results. Thirty-six percent of replications had statistically significant results; 47% of original effect sizes were in the 95% confidence interval of the replication effect size; 39% of effects were subjectively rated to have replicated the original result; and if no bias in original results is assumed, combining original and replication results left 68% with statistically significant effects. Correlational tests suggest that replication success was better predicted by the strength of original evidence than by characteristics of the original and replication teams.

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Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science

Drawing upon philosophy and social theory, Social Theory of International Politics develops a theory of the international system as a social construction. Alexander Wendt clarifies the central claims of the constructivist approach, presenting a structural and idealist worldview which contrasts with the individualism and materialism which underpins much mainstream international relations theory. He builds a cultural theory of international politics, which takes whether states view each other as enemies, rivals or friends as a fundamental determinant. Wendt characterises these roles as 'cultures of anarchy', described as Hobbesian, Lockean and Kantian respectively. These cultures are shared ideas which help shape state interests and capabilities, and generate tendencies in the international system. The book describes four factors which can drive structural change from one culture to another - interdependence, common fate, homogenization, and self-restraint - and examines the effects of capitalism and democracy in the emergence of a Kantian culture in the West.

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Social Theory of International Politics

This is the second edition of Randall's concise introductory text for general marketing courses, combining academic rigour with an accessible writing style. While providing a comprehensive overview of 'classical' marketing, the book also covers 'new' marketing, including the shift from transactions to relationships, one-to-one marketing and mass customisation, changes in the role and organization of the marketing function, marketing accountability and marketing metrics. With new chapters on e-commerce and branding, there is also additional material on marketing ethics/social responsibility, knowledge management and technical developments, environmental marketing, and a focus on financial marketing in the services marketing chapter.

Principles of Marketing

Aspects of scientific explanation

To explain the phenomena in the world of our experience, to answer the question \"why?\" rather than only the question \"what?\", is one of the foremost objectives of all rational inquiry; and especially, scientific research in its various branches strives to go beyond a mere description of its subject matter by providing an explanation of the phenomena it investigates. While there is rather general agreement about this chief objective of science, there exists considerable difference of opinion as to the function and the essential characteristics of scientific explanation. In the present essay, an attempt will be made to shed some light on these issues by means of an elementary survey of the basic pattern of scientific explanation and a subsequent more rigorous analysis of the concept of law and of the logical structure of explanatory arguments. The elementary survey is presented in Part I of this article; Part II contains an analysis of the concept of emergence; in Part III, an attempt is made to exhibit and to clarify in a more rigorous manner some of the peculiar and perplexing logical problems to which the familiar elementary analysis of explanation gives rise. Part IV, finally, is devoted to an examination of the idea of explanatory power of a theory; an explicit definition, and, based on it, a formal theory of this concept are developed for the case of a scientific language of simple logical structure.

Studies in the Logic of Explanation

Aspects of Scientific Explanation and other Essays in the Philosophy of Science

In section 3.3 of [i]Philosophy of Natural Science[/i], Hempel argues that crucial tests are not sufficient enough to prove a given hypothesis or to disprove them. Hempel states what some may believe why a crucial test can prove or disprove a hypothesis. If there are two competing hypothesis which involve the same subject and no available evidence favors one or the other, then there exists a test, which will produce conflicting outcomes for the different hypotheses. This test is the so-called crucial test would then presumably refute one hypothesis while supporting the other. Hempel then presents his side of this argument using an example of past experiments involving the nature of light. He describes how Foucault performed an experiment involving the velocity of light through air and water. This experiment was meant to show whether light consists of waves or extremely small particles as presented by Newton. Foucault’s experiment was performed and the resulting outcome was used to refute Newton’s view of light as small particles traveling at a high velocity. Hempel believed that this test was not strong enough to completely support or refute either view of light. The experiment relied on the assumption that light as waves would travel faster in air than in water. However Hempel argues that the conception of light as streams of particles was too indefinite to assume that it would travel slower in air without additional assumptions about the motion of particles and their surrounding medium. So even though the results may seem to support and prove the wave hypothesis, it doesn’t necessarily disprove the particle theory. In fact Einstein later proposed a theory, which eliminated the classical wave theory, using support from an experiment by Lenard in 1903. But again as in the previous example one of the hypotheses was not definitely refuted, in this case being the wave theory. M.-M. V.

Philosophy of Natural Science

1. It is a rather widely held opinion that history, in contradistinction to the so-called physical sciences, is concerned with the description of particular events of the past rather than with the search for general laws which might govern those events. As a characterization of the type of problem in which some historians are mainly interested, this view probably can not be denied; as a statement of the theoretical function of general laws in scientific historical research, it is certainly unacceptable. The following considerations are an attempt to substantiate this point by showing in some detail that general laws have quite analogous functions in history and in the natural sciences, that they form an indispensable instrument of historical research, and that they even constitute the common basis of various procedures which are often considered as characteristic of the social in contradistinction to the natural sciences.

Carl G. Hempel

Papers

Aspects of scientific explanation

Studies in the Logic of Explanation

Aspects of Scientific Explanation and other Essays in the Philosophy of Science

Philosophy of Natural Science

The Function of General Laws in History