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…

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…

Consistency and coverage are two core parameters of model fit used by configurational comparative methods (CCMs) of causal inference. Among causal models that perform equally well in other respects (e.g., robustness or compliance with background theories), those with higher consistency and coverage are typically considered preferable. Finding the…

Mixed methods studies in social sciences are predominantly employed to explore broad, complex, and multifaceted issues and to evaluate policies and interventions. The integration of qualitative and quantitative methods in social sciences most often follows the Peircean pragmatic approach--abductive hypothesis formation followed by deductive and…

In recent years, proponents of configurational comparative methods (CCMs) have advanced various dimensions of robustness as instrumental to model selection. But these robustness considerations have not led to computable robustness measures, and they have typically been applied to the analysis of real-life data with unknown underlying causal…

This software review discusses the capabilities of Stata to conduct item response theory modeling. The commands needed for fitting the popular one-, two-, and three-parameter logistic models are initially discussed. The procedure for testing the discrimination parameter equality in the one-parameter model is then outlined. The commands for fitting…

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a relatively young method of causal inference that continues to diffuse across the social sciences. However, recent methodological research has found the conservative (QCA-CS) and the intermediate solution type (QCA-IS) of QCA to fail fundamental tests of correctness. Even under conditions otherwise ideal…

To date, hundreds of researchers have employed the method of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) for the purpose of causal inference. In a recent series of simulation studies, however, several authors have questioned the correctness of QCA in this connection. Some prominent representatives of the method have replied in turn that simulations…

Recent years have witnessed a host of innovations for conducting research with qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). Concurrently, important issues surrounding its uses have been highlighted. In this article, we seek to help users design QCA studies. We argue that establishing inference with QCA involves three intertwined design components:…

Predictive coding theories suggest that core symptoms in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may stem from atypical mechanisms of perceptual inference (i.e., inferring the hidden causes of sensations). Specifically, there would be an imbalance in the precision or weight ascribed to sensory inputs relative to prior expectations. Using three tactile…

The internal validity of observational study is often subject to debate. In this study, we define the counterfactuals as the unobserved sample and intend to quantify its relationship with the null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST). We propose the probability of a robust inference for internal validity, that is, the PIV, as a robustness index…

We systematically compared beliefs about animal (e.g., "lion"), artifactual (e.g., "hammer"), and institutional (e.g., "police officer") categories, aiming to identify whether people draw different inferences about which categories are subjective and which are socially constituted. We conducted two studies with 270…

This article provides a commentary within the special issue, Integration: The Keystone of Comprehension. According to most contemporary frameworks, a driving force in comprehension is the reader's ability to generate the links among the words and sentences (ideas) in the texts and between the ideas in the text and what the readers already know. As…

This study aimed to investigate the effects of judgment frames, cues, and test criteria on the accuracy of metacomprehension monitoring. The design was a 2 (rating comprehension vs. predicting performance) × 2 (memory cues vs. comprehension cues) × 2 (detailed questions test vs. inferential questions test) mixed design with judgment frames and…

As a research field geared toward understanding and improving learning, Learning Analytics (LA) must be able to provide empirical support for causal claims. However, as a highly applied field, tightly controlled randomized experiments are not always feasible nor desirable. Instead, researchers often rely on observational data, based on which they…