Zoé Ziani, Ph.D.’s Post

The (beautiful) graph below is not a modernist painting from a cerebral European artist: It shows how fragmented the field of psychological science has become! 🤔 Based on two large datasets from the American Psychology Association that track constructs, measures, and research in psychological science, a team of researchers investigated the degree of fragmentation in psychological science (and 5 sub-fields: Cognitive Psychology, Educational and Developmental Psychology, Health and Clinical Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology). By fragmentation, they mean “how many constructs and measures are there, and how often are they re-used across papers”? Their findings are sobering: ➡ There have been approximately 39000 novel constructs and 43000 novel measures published since 1993 in psychological science. ➡ 53% of these measures have never been used outside of the paper that introduced them. In I/O Psychology, and Personality & Social Psychology, this number goes up to 70% and 54% respectively. ➡ They observe a slow trend towards greater fragmentation, with I/O Psychology having the highest level of fragmentation since 2003. In the treemap plot below, each tile represents a measure, and the size of each tile is proportional to how often the measure is used. The greater the number of small tiles, the more fragmented the field is. The fact that it looks like a pointillist painting is very bad news… What does this mean about the state of psychological science then? 1️⃣ We have way too many constructs and measures that are poorly defined. Researchers are very keen to come up with new constructs and measures when doing psychological research, but rarely go through the boring (but essential) work of defining the boundaries of their proposed constructs; or of studying the psychometric properties of their proposed measures. 2️⃣ It makes it very difficult to build cumulative knowledge. In a world in which they are dozens and dozens of different constructs describing phenomena that are, at face value, indistinguishable from each other; or dozens and dozens of different scales purporting to measure the same construct, it becomes very difficult to agree on what we know and do not know. Until journals stop rewarding novelty (at the expense of methodological rigor in construct definition and scale development), and researchers stop coming up with new (and often low-quality) constructs and measures, the fragmentation of the field will continue. As the authors point out, psychological measures aren’t supposed to be like toothbrushes: We must encourage researchers to reuse psychological constructs / measures that have been developed and used by others... as long as these constructs and measures were properly developed, of course. #Science #PsychologicalScience #Research

The (beautiful) graph below is not a modernist painting from a cerebral European artist: It shows how fragmented the field of psychological science has become! 🤔 Based on two large datasets from the American Psychology Association that track constructs, measures, and research in psychological science, a team of researchers investigated the degree of fragmentation in psychological science (and 5 sub-fields: Cognitive Psychology, Educational and Developmental Psychology, Health and Clinical Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology). By fragmentation, they mean “how many constructs and measures are there, and how often are they re-used across papers”? Their findings are sobering: ➡ There have been approximately 39000 novel constructs and 43000 novel measures published since 1993 in psychological science. ➡ 53% of these measures have never been used outside of the paper that introduced them. In I/O Psychology, and Personality & Social Psychology, this number goes up to 70% and 54% respectively. ➡ They observe a slow trend towards greater fragmentation, with I/O Psychology having the highest level of fragmentation since 2003. In the treemap plot below, each tile represents a measure, and the size of each tile is proportional to how often the measure is used. The greater the number of small tiles, the more fragmented the field is. The fact that it looks like a pointillist painting is very bad news… What does this mean about the state of psychological science then? 1️⃣ We have way too many constructs and measures that are poorly defined. Researchers are very keen to come up with new constructs and measures when doing psychological research, but rarely go through the boring (but essential) work of defining the boundaries of their proposed constructs; or of studying the psychometric properties of their proposed measures. 2️⃣ It makes it very difficult to build cumulative knowledge. In a world in which they are dozens and dozens of different constructs describing phenomena that are, at face value, indistinguishable from each other; or dozens and dozens of different scales purporting to measure the same construct, it becomes very difficult to agree on what we know and do not know. Until journals stop rewarding novelty (at the expense of methodological rigor in construct definition and scale development), and researchers stop coming up with new (and often low-quality) constructs and measures, the fragmentation of the field will continue. As the authors point out, psychological measures aren’t supposed to be like toothbrushes: We must encourage researchers to reuse psychological constructs / measures that have been developed and used by others... as long as these constructs and measures were properly developed, of course. #Science #PsychologicalScience #Research

The (beautiful) graph below is not a modernist painting from a cerebral European artist: It shows how fragmented the field of psychological science has become! 🤔 Based on two large datasets from the American Psychology Association that track constructs, measures, and research in psychological science, a team of researchers investigated the degree of fragmentation in psychological science (and 5 sub-fields: Cognitive Psychology, Educational and Developmental Psychology, Health and Clinical Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology). By fragmentation, they mean “how many constructs and measures are there, and how often are they re-used across papers”? Their findings are sobering: ➡ There have been approximately 39000 novel constructs and 43000 novel measures published since 1993 in psychological science. ➡ 53% of these measures have never been used outside of the paper that introduced them. In I/O Psychology, and Personality & Social Psychology, this number goes up to 70% and 54% respectively. ➡ They observe a slow trend towards greater fragmentation, with I/O Psychology having the highest level of fragmentation since 2003. In the treemap plot below, each tile represents a measure, and the size of each tile is proportional to how often the measure is used. The greater the number of small tiles, the more fragmented the field is. The fact that it looks like a pointillist painting is very bad news… What does this mean about the state of psychological science then? 1️⃣ We have way too many constructs and measures that are poorly defined. Researchers are very keen to come up with new constructs and measures when doing psychological research, but rarely go through the boring (but essential) work of defining the boundaries of their proposed constructs; or of studying the psychometric properties of their proposed measures. 2️⃣ It makes it very difficult to build cumulative knowledge. In a world in which they are dozens and dozens of different constructs describing phenomena that are, at face value, indistinguishable from each other; or dozens and dozens of different scales purporting to measure the same construct, it becomes very difficult to agree on what we know and do not know. Until journals stop rewarding novelty (at the expense of methodological rigor in construct definition and scale development), and researchers stop coming up with new (and often low-quality) constructs and measures, the fragmentation of the field will continue. As the authors point out, psychological measures aren’t supposed to be like toothbrushes: We must encourage researchers to reuse psychological constructs / measures that have been developed and used by others... as long as these constructs and measures were properly developed, of course. #Science #PsychologicalScience #Research

The (beautiful) graph below is not a modernist painting from a cerebral European artist: It shows how fragmented the field of psychological science has become! 🤔 Based on two large datasets from the American Psychology Association that track constructs, measures, and research in psychological science, a team of researchers investigated the degree of fragmentation in psychological science (and 5 sub-fields: Cognitive Psychology, Educational and Developmental Psychology, Health and Clinical Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology). By fragmentation, they mean “how many constructs and measures are there, and how often are they re-used across papers”? Their findings are sobering: ➡ There have been approximately 39000 novel constructs and 43000 novel measures published since 1993 in psychological science. ➡ 53% of these measures have never been used outside of the paper that introduced them. In I/O Psychology, and Personality & Social Psychology, this number goes up to 70% and 54% respectively. ➡ They observe a slow trend towards greater fragmentation, with I/O Psychology having the highest level of fragmentation since 2003. In the treemap plot below, each tile represents a measure, and the size of each tile is proportional to how often the measure is used. The greater the number of small tiles, the more fragmented the field is. The fact that it looks like a pointillist painting is very bad news… What does this mean about the state of psychological science then? 1️⃣ We have way too many constructs and measures that are poorly defined. Researchers are very keen to come up with new constructs and measures when doing psychological research, but rarely go through the boring (but essential) work of defining the boundaries of their proposed constructs; or of studying the psychometric properties of their proposed measures. 2️⃣ It makes it very difficult to build cumulative knowledge. In a world in which they are dozens and dozens of different constructs describing phenomena that are, at face value, indistinguishable from each other; or dozens and dozens of different scales purporting to measure the same construct, it becomes very difficult to agree on what we know and do not know. Until journals stop rewarding novelty (at the expense of methodological rigor in construct definition and scale development), and researchers stop coming up with new (and often low-quality) constructs and measures, the fragmentation of the field will continue. As the authors point out, psychological measures aren’t supposed to be like toothbrushes: We must encourage researchers to reuse psychological constructs / measures that have been developed and used by others... as long as these constructs and measures were properly developed, of course. #Science #PsychologicalScience #Research

The (beautiful) graph below is not a modernist painting from a cerebral European artist: It shows how fragmented the field of psychological science has become! 🤔 Based on two large datasets from the American Psychology Association that track constructs, measures, and research in psychological science, a team of researchers investigated the degree of fragmentation in psychological science (and 5 sub-fields: Cognitive Psychology, Educational and Developmental Psychology, Health and Clinical Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology). By fragmentation, they mean “how many constructs and measures are there, and how often are they re-used across papers”? Their findings are sobering: ➡ There have been approximately 39000 novel constructs and 43000 novel measures published since 1993 in psychological science. ➡ 53% of these measures have never been used outside of the paper that introduced them. In I/O Psychology, and Personality & Social Psychology, this number goes up to 70% and 54% respectively. ➡ They observe a slow trend towards greater fragmentation, with I/O Psychology having the highest level of fragmentation since 2003. In the treemap plot below, each tile represents a measure, and the size of each tile is proportional to how often the measure is used. The greater the number of small tiles, the more fragmented the field is. The fact that it looks like a pointillist painting is very bad news… What does this mean about the state of psychological science then? 1️⃣ We have way too many constructs and measures that are poorly defined. Researchers are very keen to come up with new constructs and measures when doing psychological research, but rarely go through the boring (but essential) work of defining the boundaries of their proposed constructs; or of studying the psychometric properties of their proposed measures. 2️⃣ It makes it very difficult to build cumulative knowledge. In a world in which they are dozens and dozens of different constructs describing phenomena that are, at face value, indistinguishable from each other; or dozens and dozens of different scales purporting to measure the same construct, it becomes very difficult to agree on what we know and do not know. Until journals stop rewarding novelty (at the expense of methodological rigor in construct definition and scale development), and researchers stop coming up with new (and often low-quality) constructs and measures, the fragmentation of the field will continue. As the authors point out, psychological measures aren’t supposed to be like toothbrushes: We must encourage researchers to reuse psychological constructs / measures that have been developed and used by others... as long as these constructs and measures were properly developed, of course. #Science #PsychologicalScience #Research

The (beautiful) graph below is not a modernist painting from a cerebral European artist: It shows how fragmented the field of psychological science has become! 🤔 Based on two large datasets from the American Psychology Association that track constructs, measures, and research in psychological science, a team of researchers investigated the degree of fragmentation in psychological science (and 5 sub-fields: Cognitive Psychology, Educational and Developmental Psychology, Health and Clinical Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology). By fragmentation, they mean “how many constructs and measures are there, and how often are they re-used across papers”? Their findings are sobering: ➡ There have been approximately 39000 novel constructs and 43000 novel measures published since 1993 in psychological science. ➡ 53% of these measures have never been used outside of the paper that introduced them. In I/O Psychology, and Personality & Social Psychology, this number goes up to 70% and 54% respectively. ➡ They observe a slow trend towards greater fragmentation, with I/O Psychology having the highest level of fragmentation since 2003. In the treemap plot below, each tile represents a measure, and the size of each tile is proportional to how often the measure is used. The greater the number of small tiles, the more fragmented the field is. The fact that it looks like a pointillist painting is very bad news… What does this mean about the state of psychological science then? 1️⃣ We have way too many constructs and measures that are poorly defined. Researchers are very keen to come up with new constructs and measures when doing psychological research, but rarely go through the boring (but essential) work of defining the boundaries of their proposed constructs; or of studying the psychometric properties of their proposed measures. 2️⃣ It makes it very difficult to build cumulative knowledge. In a world in which they are dozens and dozens of different constructs describing phenomena that are, at face value, indistinguishable from each other; or dozens and dozens of different scales purporting to measure the same construct, it becomes very difficult to agree on what we know and do not know. Until journals stop rewarding novelty (at the expense of methodological rigor in construct definition and scale development), and researchers stop coming up with new (and often low-quality) constructs and measures, the fragmentation of the field will continue. As the authors point out, psychological measures aren’t supposed to be like toothbrushes: We must encourage researchers to reuse psychological constructs / measures that have been developed and used by others... as long as these constructs and measures were properly developed, of course. #Science #PsychologicalScience #Research

The (beautiful) graph below is not a modernist painting from a cerebral European artist: It shows how fragmented the field of psychological science has become! 🤔 Based on two large datasets from the American Psychology Association that track constructs, measures, and research in psychological science, a team of researchers investigated the degree of fragmentation in psychological science (and 5 sub-fields: Cognitive Psychology, Educational and Developmental Psychology, Health and Clinical Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology). By fragmentation, they mean “how many constructs and measures are there, and how often are they re-used across papers”? Their findings are sobering: ➡ There have been approximately 39000 novel constructs and 43000 novel measures published since 1993 in psychological science. ➡ 53% of these measures have never been used outside of the paper that introduced them. In I/O Psychology, and Personality & Social Psychology, this number goes up to 70% and 54% respectively. ➡ They observe a slow trend towards greater fragmentation, with I/O Psychology having the highest level of fragmentation since 2003. In the treemap plot below, each tile represents a measure, and the size of each tile is proportional to how often the measure is used. The greater the number of small tiles, the more fragmented the field is. The fact that it looks like a pointillist painting is very bad news… What does this mean about the state of psychological science then? 1️⃣ We have way too many constructs and measures that are poorly defined. Researchers are very keen to come up with new constructs and measures when doing psychological research, but rarely go through the boring (but essential) work of defining the boundaries of their proposed constructs; or of studying the psychometric properties of their proposed measures. 2️⃣ It makes it very difficult to build cumulative knowledge. In a world in which they are dozens and dozens of different constructs describing phenomena that are, at face value, indistinguishable from each other; or dozens and dozens of different scales purporting to measure the same construct, it becomes very difficult to agree on what we know and do not know. Until journals stop rewarding novelty (at the expense of methodological rigor in construct definition and scale development), and researchers stop coming up with new (and often low-quality) constructs and measures, the fragmentation of the field will continue. As the authors point out, psychological measures aren’t supposed to be like toothbrushes: We must encourage researchers to reuse psychological constructs / measures that have been developed and used by others... as long as these constructs and measures were properly developed, of course. #Science #PsychologicalScience #Research

The (beautiful) graph below is not a modernist painting from a cerebral European artist: It shows how fragmented the field of psychological science has become! 🤔 Based on two large datasets from the American Psychology Association that track constructs, measures, and research in psychological science, a team of researchers investigated the degree of fragmentation in psychological science (and 5 sub-fields: Cognitive Psychology, Educational and Developmental Psychology, Health and Clinical Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology). By fragmentation, they mean “how many constructs and measures are there, and how often are they re-used across papers”? Their findings are sobering: ➡ There have been approximately 39000 novel constructs and 43000 novel measures published since 1993 in psychological science. ➡ 53% of these measures have never been used outside of the paper that introduced them. In I/O Psychology, and Personality & Social Psychology, this number goes up to 70% and 54% respectively. ➡ They observe a slow trend towards greater fragmentation, with I/O Psychology having the highest level of fragmentation since 2003. In the treemap plot below, each tile represents a measure, and the size of each tile is proportional to how often the measure is used. The greater the number of small tiles, the more fragmented the field is. The fact that it looks like a pointillist painting is very bad news… What does this mean about the state of psychological science then? 1️⃣ We have way too many constructs and measures that are poorly defined. Researchers are very keen to come up with new constructs and measures when doing psychological research, but rarely go through the boring (but essential) work of defining the boundaries of their proposed constructs; or of studying the psychometric properties of their proposed measures. 2️⃣ It makes it very difficult to build cumulative knowledge. In a world in which they are dozens and dozens of different constructs describing phenomena that are, at face value, indistinguishable from each other; or dozens and dozens of different scales purporting to measure the same construct, it becomes very difficult to agree on what we know and do not know. Until journals stop rewarding novelty (at the expense of methodological rigor in construct definition and scale development), and researchers stop coming up with new (and often low-quality) constructs and measures, the fragmentation of the field will continue. As the authors point out, psychological measures aren’t supposed to be like toothbrushes: We must encourage researchers to reuse psychological constructs / measures that have been developed and used by others... as long as these constructs and measures were properly developed, of course. #Science #PsychologicalScience #Research

The (beautiful) graph below is not a modernist painting from a cerebral European artist: It shows how fragmented the field of psychological science has become! 🤔 Based on two large datasets from the American Psychology Association that track constructs, measures, and research in psychological science, a team of researchers investigated the degree of fragmentation in psychological science (and 5 sub-fields: Cognitive Psychology, Educational and Developmental Psychology, Health and Clinical Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology). By fragmentation, they mean “how many constructs and measures are there, and how often are they re-used across papers”? Their findings are sobering: ➡ There have been approximately 39000 novel constructs and 43000 novel measures published since 1993 in psychological science. ➡ 53% of these measures have never been used outside of the paper that introduced them. In I/O Psychology, and Personality & Social Psychology, this number goes up to 70% and 54% respectively. ➡ They observe a slow trend towards greater fragmentation, with I/O Psychology having the highest level of fragmentation since 2003. In the treemap plot below, each tile represents a measure, and the size of each tile is proportional to how often the measure is used. The greater the number of small tiles, the more fragmented the field is. The fact that it looks like a pointillist painting is very bad news… What does this mean about the state of psychological science then? 1️⃣ We have way too many constructs and measures that are poorly defined. Researchers are very keen to come up with new constructs and measures when doing psychological research, but rarely go through the boring (but essential) work of defining the boundaries of their proposed constructs; or of studying the psychometric properties of their proposed measures. 2️⃣ It makes it very difficult to build cumulative knowledge. In a world in which they are dozens and dozens of different constructs describing phenomena that are, at face value, indistinguishable from each other; or dozens and dozens of different scales purporting to measure the same construct, it becomes very difficult to agree on what we know and do not know. Until journals stop rewarding novelty (at the expense of methodological rigor in construct definition and scale development), and researchers stop coming up with new (and often low-quality) constructs and measures, the fragmentation of the field will continue. As the authors point out, psychological measures aren’t supposed to be like toothbrushes: We must encourage researchers to reuse psychological constructs / measures that have been developed and used by others... as long as these constructs and measures were properly developed, of course. #Science #PsychologicalScience #Research

The (beautiful) graph below is not a modernist painting from a cerebral European artist: It shows how fragmented the field of psychological science has become! 🤔 Based on two large datasets from the American Psychology Association that track constructs, measures, and research in psychological science, a team of researchers investigated the degree of fragmentation in psychological science (and 5 sub-fields: Cognitive Psychology, Educational and Developmental Psychology, Health and Clinical Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology). By fragmentation, they mean “how many constructs and measures are there, and how often are they re-used across papers”? Their findings are sobering: ➡ There have been approximately 39000 novel constructs and 43000 novel measures published since 1993 in psychological science. ➡ 53% of these measures have never been used outside of the paper that introduced them. In I/O Psychology, and Personality & Social Psychology, this number goes up to 70% and 54% respectively. ➡ They observe a slow trend towards greater fragmentation, with I/O Psychology having the highest level of fragmentation since 2003. In the treemap plot below, each tile represents a measure, and the size of each tile is proportional to how often the measure is used. The greater the number of small tiles, the more fragmented the field is. The fact that it looks like a pointillist painting is very bad news… What does this mean about the state of psychological science then? 1️⃣ We have way too many constructs and measures that are poorly defined. Researchers are very keen to come up with new constructs and measures when doing psychological research, but rarely go through the boring (but essential) work of defining the boundaries of their proposed constructs; or of studying the psychometric properties of their proposed measures. 2️⃣ It makes it very difficult to build cumulative knowledge. In a world in which they are dozens and dozens of different constructs describing phenomena that are, at face value, indistinguishable from each other; or dozens and dozens of different scales purporting to measure the same construct, it becomes very difficult to agree on what we know and do not know. Until journals stop rewarding novelty (at the expense of methodological rigor in construct definition and scale development), and researchers stop coming up with new (and often low-quality) constructs and measures, the fragmentation of the field will continue. As the authors point out, psychological measures aren’t supposed to be like toothbrushes: We must encourage researchers to reuse psychological constructs / measures that have been developed and used by others... as long as these constructs and measures were properly developed, of course. #Science #PsychologicalScience #Research