Practical implications of equating equivalence tests: Reply to Campbell and Gustafson (2022).

Linde et al. (2021) compared the "two one-sided tests" the "highest density interval-region of practical equivalence", and the "interval Bayes factor" approaches to establishing equivalence in terms of power and Type I error rate using typical decision thresholds. They found that the interval Bayes factor approach exhibited a higher power but also a higher Type I error rate than the other approaches. In response, Campbell and Gustafson (2022) showed that the performances of the three approaches can approximate one another when they are calibrated to have the same Type I error rate. In this article, we argue that these results have little bearing on how these approaches are used in practice; a concrete example is used to highlight this important point. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

One Psychology Profession, Many Standards: A Narrative Review of Training, Licensing, and Practice Standards and Their Implications for International Mobility.

This narrative review paper contrasts the professional prospects of psychologists in Japan and the U.S., discussing how divergent training, licensing, and practice standards appear to influence psychologists' profession in each country. Licensed psychologists in the U.S. practice with significant autonomy, which can be seen as a reflection of rigorous training requirements. In contrast, certified public psychologists in Japan complete a shorter-duration training regimen yet encounter more restrictive professional standards and greater financial challenges. These varying standards often create barriers to professional practice that impact psychologists on a global scale. Limited international mobility restricts opportunities for psychologists to learn abroad, exchange knowledge, and deliver culturally sensitive care to diverse populations, despite the need for such services among foreign individuals or immigrants in both countries. Furthermore, these disparities impede broader collaborative efforts to address global mental health challenges. Aligning training and licensing standards globally could enhance psychologists' international mobility, ensure consistent quality of care, and foster global collaboration. This alignment could improve access to culturally sensitive psychological services and help bridge the mental health care gap worldwide. This review emphasizes the necessity of further cross-cultural comparisons to understand the impact of training and licensing standards on clinical practice quality and accessibility. By presenting this comparative analysis, the study aims to inspire similar efforts, promoting global licensing reciprocity and the integration of professional psychology in an increasingly interconnected world.

The bias and precision of reporting the average age of human participants.

Most research papers in psychology study the behaviour of a sample of participants. To characterise this sample, authors report various characteristics, frequently including the mean age and the associated standard deviation. However, based on reports from authors who publish in Acta Psychologica and from respondents on X/Twitter, the present paper shows that some authors use rounded-down ages whereas others don't, which lead to an uncertainty of 0.5 year in the average age. The results furthermore show that the authors tend to report the average age with two decimals precision, irrespective of the uncertainty of this average. I recommend that publications should explicitly mention how the average age is determined and report its value using a number of decimals that reflects its uncertainty.

Provision of Telepsychological Care Via Email during COVID-19 Confinement: An Exploratory Study.

Within teletherapy, email interventions have been studied scarcely. For this reason, this exploratory study aims to characterize the assistance provided by email in a university telepsychology service and to compare the data with the assistance provided by telephone in the same service and period. For this purpose, the records of 81 users assisted via email during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Spain were analyzed. The data were compared with those of the 338 users assisted by telephone in the same period. Despite its many limitations, results indicate high satisfaction with the email modality. Users express that they prefer a preference for using email when they do not feel safe in other ways. We found a lot of variation between the number of emails exchanged and the days that each case was active. Additionally, differences were found with telephone users in aspects such as age (email users being younger) and in a depression screening (email users scoring more positively). This study concludes on the high potential of this channel for the application of certain techniques (e.g., psychoeducation) or for people with certain characteristics.

Contributions of African-centered (Africentric) psychology: A call for inclusion in APA-accredited graduate psychology program curriculum.

Over the past few years, there has been increased visibility of, and attention paid to, enduring issues such as racial discrimination toward Black Americans. Black psychologists have been called upon to explain various race-related mental health issues to the public, as well as their colleagues and students. Discussions about how to heal from persistent, intergenerational, oppressive attacks on the African psyche are important, but the theories and treatments in which most practitioners are trained and considered "best practices" are Eurocentric in nature. African-centered (or Africentric) psychology is a well-established school of thought, predating the philosophies often discussed in Western/American psychology's History and Systems curriculum, that provides an authentic understanding of the psychology of people of African descent from an African perspective. In this article, we present the historical contention about the lack of inclusion of an African perspective in conceptualizing and addressing the psychological needs of people of African descent, provide an overview of African-centered psychology including its underlying worldview and philosophy, development, and key contributors, and advocate for the inclusion of Africentric psychology in APA-accredited psychology graduate programs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

"The world looks like this from here": Kopano Ratele's African psychology.

This contribution engages the work of the contemporary South African Psychologist, Kopano Ratele, to illustrate the facets of sociopolitical and psychological dimensions of psychology from the Global South and its relevance for reimagining psychology across the continent and the global world. Ratele's African psychology framework offers us both a contemporary and critical analytic lens to reflect on the psychic life of power from the vantage point of Africa. This article explores two thematic contributions of Ratele's African psychology: (a) culture and tradition and (b) Black interiority. Ratele's African psychology presents a marked departure from much African psychology scholarship in its attention to the psychopolitics of Black life and Black death. Furthermore, by presenting African psychology as orientation, Ratele can engage both ontological and methodological dimensions of Black subjectivity as diverse, complex, and nonessentialist. In putting forward Ratele's scholarship as a key contribution to African and Black psychology, this article thus addresses the current epistemological impasse that seems to exist in psychology in Africa. This article concludes that Ratele's African psychology may provide us with a means of addressing this impasse toward making psychology in Africa relevant. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Inquiry in psychology.

When they discuss the Danish academic situation, Szulevicz, Lund and Lund (2021) address three questions about the academic training of psychology researchers: (a) why do Danish master's students in psychology more frequently choose the qualitative method for their research?; (b) what are psychology students working on?; and (c) what are they interested in? These three questions have led us to reflect on researcher training and the political and educational model universities adopt for psychology master's courses, not only in the Danish context, but also in other general contexts. In this commentary, we will discuss one strictly normative issue: what should the scientific ideal be for training researchers in psychology? Or more accurately: how can psychology contribute to discussions about the scientific ideal of researcher training in this knowledge area?

School-based autism evaluations in the COVID-19 era.

School psychologists play a critical role in school-based Autism (AU) evaluations. Evidence-based AU evaluations should be multimodal, include multiple informants, and assess functioning across several domains. In the current era of COVID-19, school-based AU evaluations have become increasingly complex with school psychologists having to significantly adapt face-to-face evaluation procedures and/or conduct evaluations via teleassessment approaches. This poses profound challenges for some families, many of whom are from vulnerable groups. In the current article, we outline school psychologists' traditional role in school-based AU evaluations and review best practice guidelines. We then discuss the impact of COVID-19 on these processes and provide a framework for school psychologists to use when conducting school-based AU evaluations during this unprecedented time. We also provide resources school psychologists may find useful as they conduct school-based AU evaluations during the COVID-19 pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Beyond Statistical Ritual: Theory in Psychological Science.

More than 40 years ago, Paul Meehl (1978) published a seminal critique of the state of theorizing in psychological science. According to Meehl, the quality of theories had diminished in the preceding decades, resulting in statistical methods standing in for theoretical rigor. In this introduction to the special issue Theory in Psychological Science, we apply Meehl's account to contemporary psychological science. We suggest that by the time of Meehl's writing, psychology found itself in the midst of a crisis that is typical of maturing sciences, in which the theories that had been guiding research were gradually cast into doubt. Psychologists were faced with the same general choice when worldviews fail: Face reality and pursue knowledge in the absence of certainty, or shift emphasis toward sources of synthetic certainty. We suggest that psychologists have too often chosen the latter option, substituting synthetic certainties for theory-guided research, in much the same manner as Scholastic scholars did centuries ago. Drawing from our contributors, we go on to make recommendations for how psychological science may fully reengage with theory-based science.

Models of remote professional supervision for psychologists in rural and remote locations: A systematic review.

INTRODUCTION: Psychology workforce shortages in geographically rural or remote contexts have highlighted the need to understand the supervisory experiences of psychologists practising in these locations, and the models of supervision employed to support their practice and improve client safety. OBJECTIVE: To review the models of remote professional supervision and the supervisory experiences of psychologists practising in rural and remote locations. DESIGN: Using the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for mixed-methods systematic review, 8 health and education databases were searched using keyword and subject heading searches. FINDINGS: The initial search identified 413 studies. A full-text review identified 4 papers that met the inclusion criteria and were subjected to a methodological appraisal by 2 reviewers. Three studies included qualitative data, with 2 using transcribed interviews. Two studies reported quantitative data, with only one study including a statistical analysis of the outcomes. DISCUSSION: The results for the efficacy of the current models of remote supervision being used within the allied health and psychology professions are limited, with methodological limitations cautioning generalisability of results. The experiences of psychologists engaged in remote supervision do not appear to have changed over the past decade despite technological advances. CONCLUSIONS: Quality professional supervision is critical for the sustainability of the psychology workforce in rural and remote locations, reducing professional isolation, and for improved patient outcomes. This review identified a need for improved evidence for remote supervision models for psychologists working in geographically rural and remote locations. Lessons can be learned from other health professions' models of remote supervision.

Decálogo de recomendaciones sobre psicología y deporte juvenil. Documento de consenso / Recommendations for psychology and youth sports. A consensus document

Las organizaciones deportivas involucradas en el deporte-base cuentan con entrenadores, directivos y árbitros cuya actitud, trabajo y dedicación permite deducir que la mayoría son ciudadanos voluntarios con escaso conocimiento sobre la psicología como método de trabajo. Este documento, impulsado por el Programa Talento Deportivo de la Universidad de Navarra y el Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Navarra, aborda el papel de la psicología en el deporte infanto-juvenil y los beneficios que puede aportar a deportistas, padres, entrenadores, árbitros o directivos. También establece un consenso en forma de decálogo y veintisiete recomendaciones con el objetivo de reconocer los beneficios de mejorar el conocimiento psicológico de los distintos perfiles implicados en el deporte-base con el fin de adquirir destrezas que beneficien tanto el rendimiento como el estado psicológico. Su objetivo es proveer unas directrices psicológicas para utilizarlas en el manejo y entrenamiento de los deportistas infanto-juveniles

Sports organisations involved in grassroots sports have trainers, managers and referees whose attitudes, work and dedication show that many of them are volunteers with little knowledge of psychology as a working method. This document, promoted by the Programa Talento Deportivo of the University of Navarra and the Official Association of Psychologists of Navarra, considers the role of psychology in children's and adolescents' sport and the benefits it can offer to sports players, parents, trainers, referees and managers. It also establishes a consensus in the form of a set of guidelines and twenty-seven recommendations. The aim of this consensus is to recognise the benefits of including psychology in the profiles involved in grassroots sport, to enable those involved to acquire skills that can help to improve performance and psychological states, promoting directives to be used when managing and training young sports players

Creating an antiracist psychology by addressing professional complicity in psychological assessment.

The acceptance of racist practices in psychological assessment, like the use of racist stimuli in testing material, has gone unchallenged for far too long. Such practices are emblematic of the entrenched systems of structural racism and pernicious presence of anti-Black oppression within psychology and beyond. This article brings into focus one glaring example: the inclusion of a noose as an item in one of the most widely used standardized tests in neuropsychology-the Boston Naming Test. The deeply offensive nature of this item has gone publicly unaddressed in the psychological literature for decades despite over 27,000 published articles with this test as a primary keyword. Herein, we review the history of the racialized weaponization of the noose in the United States; the potential psychological harm and test performance degradation imposed by including racist stimuli in assessment materials; and the ethical and cultural competency implications of exposing examinees to racist stimuli during psychological assessments. Finally, we call out the professional complicity underlying this item's persistence in psychology, urging psychologists, test publishers, and members of editorial boards to put an end to the complicit support and take clear corrective action in response to this offense. We also charge our colleagues and community to critically review other psychological assessment measures, language, and procedures in their respective subdisciplines to make the changes that will align professional practice with the antiracist values required to undo the effects of structural racism in psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Who is susceptible to online health misinformation? A test of four psychosocial hypotheses.

Objective: Health misinformation on social media threatens public health. One question that could lend insight into how and through whom misinformation spreads is whether certain people are susceptible to many types of health misinformation, regardless of the health topic at hand. This study provided an initial answer to this question and also tested four hypotheses concerning the psychosocial attributes of people who are susceptible to health misinformation: (1) deficits in knowledge or skill, (2) preexisting attitudes, (3) trust in health care and/or science, and (4) cognitive miserliness. Method: Participants in a national U.S. survey (N = 923) rated the perceived accuracy and influence of true and false social media posts about statin medications, cancer treatment, and the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine and then responded to individual difference and demographic questions. Results: Perceived accuracy of health misinformation was strongly correlated across statins, cancer, and the HPV vaccine (rs ≥ .70), indicating that individuals who are susceptible to misinformation about one of these topics are very likely to believe misinformation about the other topics as well. Misinformation susceptibility across all three topics was most strongly predicted by lower educational attainment and health literacy, distrust in the health care system, and positive attitudes toward alternative medicine. Conclusions: A person who is susceptible to online misinformation about one health topic may be susceptible to many types of health misinformation. Individuals who were more susceptible to health misinformation had less education and health literacy, less health care trust, and more positive attitudes toward alternative medicine. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Arrested Theory Development: The Misguided Distinction Between Exploratory and Confirmatory Research.

Science progresses by finding and correcting problems in theories. Good theories are those that help facilitate this process by being hard to vary: They explain what they are supposed to explain, they are consistent with other good theories, and they are not easily adaptable to explain anything. Here we argue that, rather than a lack of distinction between exploratory and confirmatory research, an abundance of flexible theories is a better explanation for the current replicability problems of psychology. We also explain why popular methods-oriented solutions fail to address the real problem of flexibility. Instead, we propose that a greater emphasis on theory criticism by argument might improve replicability.

Reconsidering statistical methods for assessing replication.

Recent empirical evaluations of replication in psychology have reported startlingly few successful replication attempts. At the same time, these programs have noted that the proper way to analyze replication studies is far from a settled matter and have analyzed their data in several different ways. This presents 2 challenges to interpreting the results of these programs. First, different analysis methods assess different operational definitions of replication. Second, the properties of these methods are not necessarily common knowledge; it is possible for a successful replication to be deemed a failure by nearly all of the metrics used, and it is not always immediately clear how likely such errors are to occur. In this article, we describe the methods commonly used in replication research and how they imply specific operational definitions of replication. We then compute the probability of false failure (i.e., a successful replication is concluded to have failed) and false success determinations. These are shown to be high (often over 50%) and in many cases uncontrolled. We then demonstrate that errors are probable in the data to which these methods have been applied in the literature. We show that the probability that some reported conclusions about replication are incorrect can be as high as 75-80%. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Psicología De Emergencias En España: Análisis Actual, Normativa Y Proposición Reguladora / Psychology Of Emergencies In Spain: Current Analysis, Norms And Regulatory Proposal

La psicología de emergencias en España ha tenido desde finales de los años noventa hasta la actualidad un desarrollo exponencial como nueva disciplina profesional del psicólogo. La demanda de psicólogos por parte de la sociedad en incidentes con múltiples víctimas, desastres, atentados terroristas, accidentes de tráfico, suicidios, etc., ha sido una constante en estos años. Por ello, se ha desarrollado numerosa normativa en la que se contempla la importancia de prestar esta asistencia a las personas afectadas por situaciones que, por su alto impacto, pueden resultar potencialmente traumáticas. En el presente trabajo, se realiza una revisión histórica de la evolución de la psicología de emergencias, la sintomatología más común presentada como consecuencia de estas vivencias, el impacto que ha supuesto a nuestra sociedad estos acontecimientos en cuanto a personas afectadas y la necesidad de prestar asistencia psicológica tanto en situaciones de emergencia cotidiana como en grandes catástrofes. Todo ello, nos lleva a la conclusión de la importancia de trabajar hacia una regulación de la psicología de emergencias que garantice la cualificación formativa de los profesionales de la psicología que van a ejercer esta actividad, así como su incorporación e integración en el sistema público asistencial. (AU)

Emergency psychology in Spain has experienced exponential development as a new professional discipline of the psychologist in the last decades. Society has shown a permanent demand for psychologists in mass casualty incidents, disasters, terrorist attacks, traffic accidents, suicides, etc. Consequently, numerous regulations have been developed regarding assistance in these situations which, due to their high impact, could be potentially traumatic. In the present work we present a historical review of the evolution of emergency psychology, the most common symptoms presented as a consequence of these experiences, the impact that these events have had on society, the people affected, and the necessity to provide psychological assistance, both in everyday emergency situations and in major catastrophes. We highlight the importance of emergency psychology regulation to guarantee the training qualification of the psychology professionals who will carry out this activity, as well as their incorporation and integration in the public healthcare system. (AU)

Psicología De Emergencias En España: Delimitación Conceptual, Ámbitos De Actuación Y Propuesta De Un Sistema Asistencial / Psychology Of Emergencies In Spain: Conceptual Delimitation, Action Areas And Healthcare System Proposal

La psicología de emergencias es un ámbito de aplicación de la psicología bastante reciente, lo que implica que no haya en laactualidad un consenso unificado sobre esta disciplina, su delimitación conceptual o campo de actuación. Tampoco queda reflejada su incursión en los itinerarios curriculares elaborados en nuestro país a partir del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior,ni en la estructura sanitaria o de protección civil de cara a que los psicólogos de emergencias puedan intervenir en las situaciones de crisis, emergencias o desastres que se producen. Partimos en este trabajo de esta dificultad en la vertebración de este ámbito disciplinar para realizar una propuesta de sistema de asistencia psicológica que contribuya a clarificar la labor ycompetencias de los distintos servicios psicológicos implicados en estas situaciones de manera que facilite un sistema coordinadode actuación. Pretendemos generar un debate profesional y académico que nos lleve a encontrar el consenso necesario que impulse la consolidación de este específico perfil profesional, así como el reconocimiento y regulación de la Psicología de Emergencias que contribuya a afianzarla como disciplina dentro de la Psicología que permita ofrecer a la sociedad una actuaciónprofesional de calidad y adaptada a los retos actuales y futuros. (AU)

Emergency psychology is a recent area of application for psychology, which means that there is currently no unified consensus onthis discipline, its conceptual delimitation, or its field of action. Also not delimited are the curricular itineraries adapted to the European Higher Education Area, in either the health or civil protection structure, in order for emergency psychologists to be able tointervene in crisis situations, emergencies, and disasters. In the present work, we offer a proposal for a system of psychologicalassistance that contributes to clarifying the work and competences of the different psychological services involved in these situations, in a way that facilitates a coordinated system of action. We intend to generate a professional and academic debate to leadus to reach the necessary consensus to make it possible to consolidate this specific professional profile, as well as to recognizeand regulate emergency psychology in order to strengthen it as a discipline of psychology that allows us to offer a professionalperformance of quality, adapted to current and future challenges. (AU)