Psychology's Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs): Key problems in quantitative psychology and psychological measurement beyond Questionable Research Practices (QRPs)
Psychology's crises (e.g., replicability, generalisability) are currently believed to derive from Questionable Research Practices (QRPs), thus scientific misconduct. Just improving the same practices, however, cannot tackle the root causes of psychology's problems—the Questionable Research...
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2025-08-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1553028/full |
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| author | Jana Uher Jan Ketil Arnulf Jan Ketil Arnulf Paul T. Barrett Moritz Heene Jörg-Henrik Heine Jack Martin Lucas B. Mazur Lucas B. Mazur Marek McGann Robert J. Mislevy Craig Speelman Aaro Toomela Ron Weber Ron Weber |
| author_facet | Jana Uher Jan Ketil Arnulf Jan Ketil Arnulf Paul T. Barrett Moritz Heene Jörg-Henrik Heine Jack Martin Lucas B. Mazur Lucas B. Mazur Marek McGann Robert J. Mislevy Craig Speelman Aaro Toomela Ron Weber Ron Weber |
| author_sort | Jana Uher |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Psychology's crises (e.g., replicability, generalisability) are currently believed to derive from Questionable Research Practices (QRPs), thus scientific misconduct. Just improving the same practices, however, cannot tackle the root causes of psychology's problems—the Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs) of many of its theories, concepts, approaches and methods (e.g., psychometrics), which are grounded in their insufficiently elaborated underlying philosophies of science. Key problems of psychological measurement are critically explored from independent perspectives involving various fields of expertise and lines of research that are well established but still hardly known in mainstream psychology. This comprehensive multi-perspectival review presents diverse philosophies of science that are used in quantitative psychology and pinpoints four major areas of development. (1) Psychology must advance its general philosophy of science (esp. ontology, epistemology, methodology) and elaborate coherent paradigms. (2) Quantitative psychologists must elaborate the philosophy-of-science fundamentals of specific theories, approaches and methods that are appropriate for enabling quantitative research and for implementing genuine analogues of measurement in psychology, considering its study phenomena's peculiarities (e.g., higher-order complexity, non-ergodicity). (3) Psychologists must heed the epistemic necessity to logically distinguish between the study phenomena (e.g., participants' beliefs) and the means used for their exploration (e.g., descriptions of beliefs in items) to avoid confusing ontological with epistemological concepts—psychologists' cardinal error. This requires an increased awareness of the complexities of human language (e.g., inbuilt semantics) and of the intricacies that these entail for scientific inquiry. (4) Epistemically justified strategies for generalising findings across unique individuals must be established using case-by-case based (not sample-based) nomothetic approaches, implemented through individual-/person-oriented (not variable-oriented) analyses. This is crucial to avoid the mathematical-statistical errors that are inherent to quantitative psychologists' common sample-to-individual inferences (e.g., ergodic fallacy) as well as to enable causal analyses of possibly underlying structures and processes. Concluding, just minimising scientific misconduct, as currently believed, and exploiting language-based algorithms (NLP, LLMs) without considering the intricacies of human language will only perpetuate psychology's crises. Rethinking psychology as a science and advancing its philosophy-of-science theories as necessary fundamentals to integrate its fragmented empirical database and lines of research requires open, honest and self-critical debates that prioritise scientific integrity over expediency. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-9aa69244218a4cababbc0c9b05e2ab09 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-08-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
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| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj-art-9aa69244218a4cababbc0c9b05e2ab092025-08-25T05:25:40ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782025-08-011610.3389/fpsyg.2025.15530281553028Psychology's Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs): Key problems in quantitative psychology and psychological measurement beyond Questionable Research Practices (QRPs)Jana Uher0Jan Ketil Arnulf1Jan Ketil Arnulf2Paul T. Barrett3Moritz Heene4Jörg-Henrik Heine5Jack Martin6Lucas B. Mazur7Lucas B. Mazur8Marek McGann9Robert J. Mislevy10Craig Speelman11Aaro Toomela12Ron Weber13Ron Weber14School of Human Sciences, University of Greenwich, London, United KingdomBI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, NorwayNorwegian Defence University College, Oslo, NorwayAdvanced Projects R&D Ltd, Auckland, New ZealandLudwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, GermanyUniversity of the Bundeswehr Munich, Neubiberg, GermanyDepartment of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, CanadaJagiellonian University, Kraków, PolandSigmund Freud University Berlin, Berlin, Germany0Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland1University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, United States2Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, WA, Australia3Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia4Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia5School of Business, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, AustraliaPsychology's crises (e.g., replicability, generalisability) are currently believed to derive from Questionable Research Practices (QRPs), thus scientific misconduct. Just improving the same practices, however, cannot tackle the root causes of psychology's problems—the Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs) of many of its theories, concepts, approaches and methods (e.g., psychometrics), which are grounded in their insufficiently elaborated underlying philosophies of science. Key problems of psychological measurement are critically explored from independent perspectives involving various fields of expertise and lines of research that are well established but still hardly known in mainstream psychology. This comprehensive multi-perspectival review presents diverse philosophies of science that are used in quantitative psychology and pinpoints four major areas of development. (1) Psychology must advance its general philosophy of science (esp. ontology, epistemology, methodology) and elaborate coherent paradigms. (2) Quantitative psychologists must elaborate the philosophy-of-science fundamentals of specific theories, approaches and methods that are appropriate for enabling quantitative research and for implementing genuine analogues of measurement in psychology, considering its study phenomena's peculiarities (e.g., higher-order complexity, non-ergodicity). (3) Psychologists must heed the epistemic necessity to logically distinguish between the study phenomena (e.g., participants' beliefs) and the means used for their exploration (e.g., descriptions of beliefs in items) to avoid confusing ontological with epistemological concepts—psychologists' cardinal error. This requires an increased awareness of the complexities of human language (e.g., inbuilt semantics) and of the intricacies that these entail for scientific inquiry. (4) Epistemically justified strategies for generalising findings across unique individuals must be established using case-by-case based (not sample-based) nomothetic approaches, implemented through individual-/person-oriented (not variable-oriented) analyses. This is crucial to avoid the mathematical-statistical errors that are inherent to quantitative psychologists' common sample-to-individual inferences (e.g., ergodic fallacy) as well as to enable causal analyses of possibly underlying structures and processes. Concluding, just minimising scientific misconduct, as currently believed, and exploiting language-based algorithms (NLP, LLMs) without considering the intricacies of human language will only perpetuate psychology's crises. Rethinking psychology as a science and advancing its philosophy-of-science theories as necessary fundamentals to integrate its fragmented empirical database and lines of research requires open, honest and self-critical debates that prioritise scientific integrity over expediency.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1553028/fullmeasurementquantitative psychologypsychometricslanguage modelsontologyepistemology |
| spellingShingle | Jana Uher Jan Ketil Arnulf Jan Ketil Arnulf Paul T. Barrett Moritz Heene Jörg-Henrik Heine Jack Martin Lucas B. Mazur Lucas B. Mazur Marek McGann Robert J. Mislevy Craig Speelman Aaro Toomela Ron Weber Ron Weber Psychology's Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs): Key problems in quantitative psychology and psychological measurement beyond Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) Frontiers in Psychology measurement quantitative psychology psychometrics language models ontology epistemology |
| title | Psychology's Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs): Key problems in quantitative psychology and psychological measurement beyond Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) |
| title_full | Psychology's Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs): Key problems in quantitative psychology and psychological measurement beyond Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) |
| title_fullStr | Psychology's Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs): Key problems in quantitative psychology and psychological measurement beyond Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) |
| title_full_unstemmed | Psychology's Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs): Key problems in quantitative psychology and psychological measurement beyond Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) |
| title_short | Psychology's Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs): Key problems in quantitative psychology and psychological measurement beyond Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) |
| title_sort | psychology s questionable research fundamentals qrfs key problems in quantitative psychology and psychological measurement beyond questionable research practices qrps |
| topic | measurement quantitative psychology psychometrics language models ontology epistemology |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1553028/full |
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