Re: First Solid Evidence that the Study of Music Promotes Intellectual Development

[Donald McBurney]

Number of chairs is at least ratio measurement, and according to some, it is even better: absolute measurement. (The data cannot be transformed in any way without altering the meaning of the numbers.) So, parametric stats are perfectly okay, even for those who believe that parametric stats should be limited to interval data. (Statisticians don't believe in that restriction, as we have discussed at least once before on this list, so please let's not go there.)     don     Donald McBurney     Universits of Pittsburgh Don Allen wrote: I quite agree, and I wish it were the only lapse in APS editing. In Holland et al. "Don't Stand So Close to Me: The Effects of Self-Construal on Interpersonal Closeness" ( Psychological Science Volume 15 Issue 4 Page 237 - April 2004 ). They report the following methodology: "After completing the lexical decision task, the participants were asked to take a seat in a waiting area, ostensibly to give the experimenter some time to prepare the second part of the experiment. Four chairs were lined up in the waiting area, with a jacket hanging over the chair on the extreme left. This jacket suggested the presence of another person (Macrae & Johnston, 1998). The dependent variable was the distance, *** in number of chairs, *** (my emphasis) between the chair with the jacket on it and the chair that the participant chose to sit on." They then analyse the data as follows: "To examine the effects of self-construal and gender, we performed a 2 (self-construal: independent vs. control)2 (gender: female vs. male) between-subjects analysis of variance on the distance between the participant's chair and the occupied chair. As expected, participants in the independent-self condition sat further away (M=2.07) than participants in the control condition (M=1.66), F(1, 73)=8.57, p<.01. 1 No main effect of gender was obtained. Also, no interaction effect was found." Now I have a hard time accepting that "number of chairs" is interval data. A non parametric analysis would have been far more appropriate. Editorial rigour just ain't what it used to be. -Don. Stephen Black said: Ronald C. Blue wrote: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2004/pr040819.cfm First Solid Evidence that the Study of Music Promotes Intellectual Development and Chris Greeen commented: Now none of this is out and out "wrong," Oh, it's wrong all right. See earlier exchanges on this "solid evidence", between Ken Steele and me, for example, at http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg10749.html Stephen ___________________________________________________ Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661 Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm _______________________________________________ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]