TY - JOUR
T1 - The N-pact factor
T2 - Evaluating the quality of empirical journals with respect to sample size and statistical power
AU - Fraley, R. Chris
AU - Vazire, Simine
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Fraley, Vazire.
PY - 2014/10/8
Y1 - 2014/10/8
N2 - The authors evaluate the quality of research reported in major journals in social-personality psychology by ranking those journals with respect to their N-pact Factors (NF)-the statistical power of the empirical studies they publish to detect typical effect sizes. Power is a particularly important attribute for evaluating research quality because, relative to studies that have low power, studies that have high power are more likely to (a) to provide accurate estimates of effects, (b) to produce literatures with low false positive rates, and (c) to lead to replicable findings. The authors show that the average sample size in social-personality research is 104 and that the power to detect the typical effect size in the field is approximately 50%. Moreover, they show that there is considerable variation among journals in sample sizes and power of the studies they publish, with some journals consistently publishing higher power studies than others. The authors hope that these rankings will be of use to authors who are choosing where to submit their best work, provide hiring and promotion committees with a superior way of quantifying journal quality, and encourage competition among journals to improve their NF rankings.
AB - The authors evaluate the quality of research reported in major journals in social-personality psychology by ranking those journals with respect to their N-pact Factors (NF)-the statistical power of the empirical studies they publish to detect typical effect sizes. Power is a particularly important attribute for evaluating research quality because, relative to studies that have low power, studies that have high power are more likely to (a) to provide accurate estimates of effects, (b) to produce literatures with low false positive rates, and (c) to lead to replicable findings. The authors show that the average sample size in social-personality research is 104 and that the power to detect the typical effect size in the field is approximately 50%. Moreover, they show that there is considerable variation among journals in sample sizes and power of the studies they publish, with some journals consistently publishing higher power studies than others. The authors hope that these rankings will be of use to authors who are choosing where to submit their best work, provide hiring and promotion committees with a superior way of quantifying journal quality, and encourage competition among journals to improve their NF rankings.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0109019
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0109019
M3 - Article
C2 - 25296159
AN - SCOPUS:84907830999
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 9
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 10
M1 - e109019
ER -