Uncertainty undermines causal claims; however, the nature of causal claims decides what counts as relevant uncertainty. Empirical robustness is imperative in regularity theories of causality. Regularity theory features strongly in QCA, making its case sensitivity a weakness. Following qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) founder Charles Ragin's…

The field of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is witnessing a heated debate on which one of the QCA's main solution types should be at the center of substantive interpretation. This article argues that the different QCA solutions have complementary strengths. Therefore, researchers should interpret the three solution types in an integrated…

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is an empirical research method that has gained some popularity in the social sciences. At the same time, the literature has long been convinced that QCA is prone to committing causal fallacies when confronted with non-causal data. More specifically, beyond a certain case-to-factor ratio, the method is…

In the article "It's Just an Observation," Robinson and Wainer (Educational Psychology Review 35, Robinson, D., & Wainer, H. (2023). It's just an observation. Educational Psychology Review, 35(83), Published online: 14 August, 2023) lamented that educational psychology is moving toward the dark side of the quality continuum, with…

The use of structural equation models for causal inference from panel data is critiqued in the causal inference literature for unnecessarily relying on a large number of parametric assumptions, and alternative methods originating from the potential outcomes framework have been recommended, such as inverse probability weighting (IPW) estimation of…

Quasi-experiments are common in studies that estimate the effect of instructional interventions on student performance outcomes. In this type of research, the nature of the experimental design, the choice in assessment, the selection of comparison groups, and the statistical methods used to analyze the comparison data dictate the validity of…

Background: Observation Studies, Unmeasured Confounding, and Sensitivity Analysis: An important part of educational research is identifying important, potentially causal, factors that influence children's learning from observational studies. However, it is well-known that discovering such factors from observational studies can be biased due to…

In a recent contribution to "Sociological Methods & Research," Baumgartner and Epple (B&E) employ Coincidence Analysis (CNA) to explain the outcome of the vote on the Swiss minaret initiative of 2009. Although the authors also present a substantive argument, their principal objective is to prove the superiority of CNA over…

In this study I compared results of chained linear, Tucker, and Levine-observed score equatings under conditions where the new and old forms samples were similar in ability and also when they were different in ability. The length of the anchor test was also varied to examine its effect on the three different equating methods. The three equating…

This article compares Donald Campbell's and Donald Rubin's work on causal inference in field settings on issues of epistemology, theories of cause and effect, methodology, statistics, generalization, and terminology. The two approaches are quite different but compatible, differing mostly in matters of bandwidth versus fidelity. Campbell's work…

Karabatsos and Walker (2011) introduced a new Bayesian nonparametric (BNP) regression model. Through analyses of real and simulated data, they showed that the BNP regression model outperforms other parametric and nonparametric regression models of common use, in terms of predictive accuracy of the outcome (dependent) variable. The other,…

This study examined the average effects of schools' third through fifth grade gifted programming policy in mathematics and reading on overall school achievement, on gifted students' achievement and academic attitudes and on nongifted students' achievement and academic attitudes. Data and results represent a broad, national look at school…

Using student achievement data from British Columbia, Canada, this study is an exploration of the differences that lie within the private school sector using hierarchical linear modeling to analyze the data. The analysis showed that when controlling for language, parents' level of educational attainment, and prior achievement, the private school…

Background: Recent studies suggest that the association between maternal age at childbearing (MAC) and children's disruptive behaviors is the result of family factors that are confounded with both variables, rather than a casual effect of environmental factors specifically related to MAC. These studies, however, relied on restricted samples and…

In this article welfare systems and support networks are empirically analyzed to determine which generate the highest level of subjective well-being among retired persons. Propositions derived from support network theories and national welfare system typologies have been analyzed using causal models that indicate the influence of the various…