Andrew Maul
I am broadly interested in research methodology in the social sciences, and in particular the measurement of psychological attributes. I am particularly interested in the philosophical foundations of research methods and the history and sociology of research in the psychological sciences. I am also interested in the methods used to study positive psychological quantities of individuals (e.g., emotional intelligence, altruism, gratitude, and mindfulness).
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Papers by Andrew Maul
December 2014 has sparked a renewal of policies and programs
initiated during the ‘Decade of Education for Sustainable
Development’ (DESD, 2005–2014), aimed at promoting awareness,
understanding, and civic action for environmental sustainability
within learning communities all around the world. We present
findings from a dialogic, multimodal, and literacies-based
educational project designed to provide secondary students (N =
141) from four countries with the resources to read about and
discuss evidence regarding climate change from seminal studies
with peers and a core group of scientists (N = 7). Post-program
interviews revealed a significant increase in language use related
to evidence-based reasoning. Students also demonstrated an
increased propensity to recycle. These findings support the
hypothesis that providing opportunities for students to read and
discuss seminal scientific sources incites positive changes in
beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors related to climate change and
climate science, and understandings of the nature of scientific
evidence and argumentation.
engineering, and is considered by many to be a privileged method for acquiring information
about the world. It is thus unsurprising that the psychological sciences have also
attempted to develop methods for measurement. However, it is not clear how the ways
in which psychological scientists understand measurement accord with how the concept
is understood in other scientific disciplines, or by the professional and general publics. In
part this may be due to the ways in which several distinct strands of thinking about scientific
inquiry (and measurement in particular) have influenced the work of psychological
scientists over roughly the past hundred years. Given that such influences are often not
studied or even acknowledged, many psychological scientists may be unaware of the
resulting tensions in their conceptual vocabulary, and of the gaps between the nature of
their claims on psychological measurement and the substantiation for those claims. The
aim of this paper is to overview the major philosophical influences on thinking about psychological
measurement, and to note the pitfalls of some of the extreme positions that have
emerged. We hope that such an overview may help facilitate greater clarity concerning the
semantics of measurement claims made by psychological scientists.
child’s literacy development. Exactly how different home-environmental factors play out across different national contexts is not as well understood. Using data from the 2011 Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS), we tested for structural invariance in the relationship between early childhood home literacy practices and later fourth-grade achievement among students across 52 countries or regions within countries (N = 106,297–109,582), while controlling for background characteristics. Findings indicate that the effect of many aspects of the home environment prior to school age, including adult-child interactions and parental values and beliefs about reading, may interact with national factors, particularly factors relating to government-subsidised preschool programmes. Implications include that any early home reading intervention efforts should include thoughtful consideration of the national policies and funding for preschool learning.
December 2014 has sparked a renewal of policies and programs
initiated during the ‘Decade of Education for Sustainable
Development’ (DESD, 2005–2014), aimed at promoting awareness,
understanding, and civic action for environmental sustainability
within learning communities all around the world. We present
findings from a dialogic, multimodal, and literacies-based
educational project designed to provide secondary students (N =
141) from four countries with the resources to read about and
discuss evidence regarding climate change from seminal studies
with peers and a core group of scientists (N = 7). Post-program
interviews revealed a significant increase in language use related
to evidence-based reasoning. Students also demonstrated an
increased propensity to recycle. These findings support the
hypothesis that providing opportunities for students to read and
discuss seminal scientific sources incites positive changes in
beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors related to climate change and
climate science, and understandings of the nature of scientific
evidence and argumentation.
engineering, and is considered by many to be a privileged method for acquiring information
about the world. It is thus unsurprising that the psychological sciences have also
attempted to develop methods for measurement. However, it is not clear how the ways
in which psychological scientists understand measurement accord with how the concept
is understood in other scientific disciplines, or by the professional and general publics. In
part this may be due to the ways in which several distinct strands of thinking about scientific
inquiry (and measurement in particular) have influenced the work of psychological
scientists over roughly the past hundred years. Given that such influences are often not
studied or even acknowledged, many psychological scientists may be unaware of the
resulting tensions in their conceptual vocabulary, and of the gaps between the nature of
their claims on psychological measurement and the substantiation for those claims. The
aim of this paper is to overview the major philosophical influences on thinking about psychological
measurement, and to note the pitfalls of some of the extreme positions that have
emerged. We hope that such an overview may help facilitate greater clarity concerning the
semantics of measurement claims made by psychological scientists.
child’s literacy development. Exactly how different home-environmental factors play out across different national contexts is not as well understood. Using data from the 2011 Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS), we tested for structural invariance in the relationship between early childhood home literacy practices and later fourth-grade achievement among students across 52 countries or regions within countries (N = 106,297–109,582), while controlling for background characteristics. Findings indicate that the effect of many aspects of the home environment prior to school age, including adult-child interactions and parental values and beliefs about reading, may interact with national factors, particularly factors relating to government-subsidised preschool programmes. Implications include that any early home reading intervention efforts should include thoughtful consideration of the national policies and funding for preschool learning.