Seminar in Psychometrics
Turning psychometrics on its head: What if our constructs were networks?
Date and time: Monday, May 12, 2025 (16:00 PM CET)
Place On Zoom, streamed to ICS CAS room 318, Pod Vodárenskou věží 2, Prague 8.
In psychology, the relation between observables and theoretical constructs has traditionally been conceptualized in terms of measurement: observables (e.g., symptoms like self-reproach and suicidal ideation) are viewed as noisy measures of a latent construct that acts as their common cause (e.g., major depression). However, I will argue that, in many cases, this view does not hold up to scrutiny. Typically, what we think of as “observables” are properties that directly influence each other (e.g., self-reproach directly influences suicidal ideation). In fact, this is likely to hold across many subdomains of psychology: for instance, we should expect similar interactions between attitude elements (e.g., beliefs, feelings, and actions), cognitive abilities (e.g., memory, reading ability, knowledge), and components of personality (e.g., habits, self-representations). This puts standard psychometric logic on its head: instead of the observables reflecting a psychometric construct, the psychometric construct reflects interactions between observables. In the past decade, I have developed theoretical, statistical, and simulation-based approaches that allow researchers to evaluate the possibility that their constructs may be networks too. I will give a concise overview of some of these applications to argue that they offer genuine possibilities to get a better grip on the slippery scientific substance matter of psychology and the social sciences.
References:Borsboom, D., Deserno, M. K., Rhemtulla, M., Epskamp, S., Fried, E. I., McNally, R. J., Robinaugh, D. J., Perugini, M., Dalege, J., Costantini, G., Isvoranu, A.-M., Wysocki, A. C., van Borkulo, C. D., van Bork, R., & Waldorp, L. J. (2021). Network analysis of multivariate data in psychological science. Nature Reviews Methods Primers, 1, 58. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43586-021-00055-w
Borsboom, D. (2017). A network theory of mental disorders. World Psychiatry, 16, 5-13. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20375
Denny Borsboom
Denny Borsboom is Full Professor of Psychological Methods at the Psychology Department of the University of Amsterdam, and director of its Social and Behavioural Data Science Centre. His research focuses on the conceptual analysis of psychometric concepts, the development of new psychometric techniques, and the construction of formalized psychological theory. Borsboom's research on the use of complex systems and network models in the context of psychometrics and psychopathology research is concentrated in the Psychosystems Project. The Psychosystems team developed alternative representations of psychological constructs as networks of interacting variables, which has led to innovative methodologies to estimate such structures and to new theories of psychopathology. Recently, he has started developing methodology to promote formal theory construction in psychology, a research line that is concentrated in the Theory Methods Lab. Denny Borsboom is the current President of the Psychometric Society.