IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jorssc/v71y2022i5p1330-1355.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Specification analysis for technology use and teenager well‐being: Statistical validity and a Bayesian proposal

Author

Listed:
  • Christoph Semken
  • David Rossell

Abstract

A key issue in science is assessing robustness to data analysis choices, while avoiding selective reporting and providing valid inference. Specification Curve Analysis is a tool intended to prevent selective reporting. Alas, when used for inference it can create severe biases and false positives, due to wrongly adjusting for covariates, and mask important treatment effect heterogeneity. As our motivating application, it led an influential study to conclude there is no relevant association between technology use and teenager mental well‐being. We discuss these issues and propose a strategy for valid inference. Bayesian Specification Curve Analysis (BSCA) uses Bayesian Model Averaging to incorporate covariates and heterogeneous effects across treatments, outcomes and subpopulations. BSCA gives significantly different insights into teenager well‐being, revealing that the association with technology differs by device, gender and who assesses well‐being (teenagers or their parents).

Suggested Citation

  • Christoph Semken & David Rossell, 2022. "Specification analysis for technology use and teenager well‐being: Statistical validity and a Bayesian proposal," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 71(5), pages 1330-1355, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jorssc:v:71:y:2022:i:5:p:1330-1355
    DOI: 10.1111/rssc.12578
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/rssc.12578
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/rssc.12578?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jiahua Chen & Zehua Chen, 2008. "Extended Bayesian information criteria for model selection with large model spaces," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 95(3), pages 759-771.
    2. Garret Christensen & Edward Miguel, 2018. "Transparency, Reproducibility, and the Credibility of Economics Research," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 920-980, September.
    3. Daniel J. Benjamin & James O. Berger & Magnus Johannesson & Brian A. Nosek & E.-J. Wagenmakers & Richard Berk & Kenneth A. Bollen & Björn Brembs & Lawrence Brown & Colin Camerer & David Cesarini & Chr, 2018. "Redefine statistical significance," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 2(1), pages 6-10, January.
      • Daniel Benjamin & James Berger & Magnus Johannesson & Brian Nosek & E. Wagenmakers & Richard Berk & Kenneth Bollen & Bjorn Brembs & Lawrence Brown & Colin Camerer & David Cesarini & Christopher Chambe, 2017. "Redefine Statistical Significance," Artefactual Field Experiments 00612, The Field Experiments Website.
    4. C. Glenn Begley & Lee M. Ellis, 2012. "Raise standards for preclinical cancer research," Nature, Nature, vol. 483(7391), pages 531-533, March.
    5. Hunt Allcott & Luca Braghieri & Sarah Eichmeyer & Matthew Gentzkow, 2020. "The Welfare Effects of Social Media," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(3), pages 629-676, March.
    6. Cookson, J. Anthony, 2018. "When saving is gambling," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 24-45.
    7. David Rossell & Oriol Abril & Anirban Bhattacharya, 2021. "Approximate Laplace approximations for scalable model selection," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 83(4), pages 853-879, September.
    8. Ying-Yeh Chen & Suk-Yin Ho & Pei-Chen Lee & Chia-Kai Wu & Susan Shur-Fen Gau, 2017. "Parent-child discrepancies in the report of adolescent emotional and behavioral problems in Taiwan," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(6), pages 1-12, June.
    9. Uri Simonsohn & Joseph P. Simmons & Leif D. Nelson, 2020. "Specification curve analysis," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(11), pages 1208-1214, November.
    10. Valen E. Johnson & David Rossell, 2010. "On the use of non‐local prior densities in Bayesian hypothesis tests," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 72(2), pages 143-170, March.
    11. Nial Friel & Jason Wyse, 2012. "Estimating the evidence – a review," Statistica Neerlandica, Netherlands Society for Statistics and Operations Research, vol. 66(3), pages 288-308, August.
    12. Susan Athey & Guido Imbens, 2015. "A Measure of Robustness to Misspecification," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 476-480, May.
    13. Uri Simonsohn & Joseph P. Simmons & Leif D. Nelson, 2020. "Publisher Correction: Specification curve analysis," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(11), pages 1215-1215, November.
    14. Adam Slez, 2019. "The Difference Between Instability and Uncertainty: Comment on Young and Holsteen (2017)," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 48(2), pages 400-430, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cantone, Giulio Giacomo & Tomaselli, Venera, 2024. "On the Coherence of Composite Indexes: Multiversal Model and Specification Analysis for an Index of Well-Being," MetaArXiv d5y26, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dreber, Anna & Johannesson, Magnus, 2023. "A framework for evaluating reproducibility and replicability in economics," Ruhr Economic Papers 1055, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    2. Guillaume Coqueret, 2023. "Forking paths in financial economics," Papers 2401.08606, arXiv.org.
    3. Eibich, Peter & Goldzahl, Léontine, 2021. "Does retirement affect secondary preventive care use? Evidence from breast cancer screening," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    4. Semken, Christoph & Rossell, David, 2020. "Bayesian Specification Curve Analysis," OSF Preprints cahyq, Center for Open Science.
    5. Cantone, Giulio Giacomo & Tomaselli, Venera, 2024. "On the Coherence of Composite Indexes: Multiversal Model and Specification Analysis for an Index of Well-Being," MetaArXiv d5y26, Center for Open Science.
    6. Felix Holzmeister & Magnus Johannesson & Robert Böhm & Anna Dreber & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2023. "Heterogeneity in effect size estimates: Empirical evidence and practical implications," Working Papers 2023-17, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    7. Bensch, Gunther & Ankel-Peters, Jörg & Vance, Colin, 2023. "Spotlight on Researcher Decisions – Infrastructure Evaluation, Instrumental Variables, and Specification Screening," VfS Annual Conference 2023 (Regensburg): Growth and the "sociale Frage" 277703, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. Ankel-Peters, Jörg & Vance, Colin & Bensch, Gunther, 2022. "Spotlight on researcher decisions – Infrastructure evaluation, instrumental variables, and first-stage specification screening," OSF Preprints sw6kd, Center for Open Science.
    9. Sebastian Bachler & Armando Holzknecht & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2024. "From Individual Choices to the 4-Eyes-Principle: The Big Robber Game revisited among Financial Professionals and Students," Working Papers 2024-04, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    10. Eric-Jan Wagenmakers & Alexandra Sarafoglou & Sil Aarts & Casper Albers & Johannes Algermissen & Štěpán Bahník & Noah Dongen & Rink Hoekstra & David Moreau & Don Ravenzwaaij & Aljaž Sluga & Franziska , 2021. "Seven steps toward more transparency in statistical practice," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(11), pages 1473-1480, November.
    11. Colin F. Camerer & Anna Dreber & Felix Holzmeister & Teck-Hua Ho & Jürgen Huber & Magnus Johannesson & Michael Kirchler & Gideon Nave & Brian A. Nosek & Thomas Pfeiffer & Adam Altmejd & Nick Buttrick , 2018. "Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 2(9), pages 637-644, September.
    12. Rubin, Mark, 2023. "Type I error rates are not usually inflated," MetaArXiv 3kv2b, Center for Open Science.
    13. Mark F. J. Steel, 2020. "Model Averaging and Its Use in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(3), pages 644-719, September.
    14. Kelter, Riko, 2022. "Power analysis and type I and type II error rates of Bayesian nonparametric two-sample tests for location-shifts based on the Bayes factor under Cauchy priors," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    15. Rat für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsdaten RatSWD (ed.), 2023. "Erhebung und Nutzung unstrukturierter Daten in den Sozial-, Verhaltens- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften," RatSWD Output Series, German Data Forum (RatSWD), volume 7, number 7-2de.
    16. Dorison, Charles A & Lerner, Jennifer S & Heller, Blake H & Rothman, Alexander J & Kawachi, Ichiro I & Wang, Ke & Rees, Vaughan W & Gill, Brian P & Gibbs, Nancy & Ebersole, Charles R & Vally, Zahir & , 2022. "In COVID-19 health messaging, loss framing increases anxiety with little-to-no concomitant benefits : Experimental evidence from 84 countries," Other publications TiSEM 235f67b6-6be5-4061-8693-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    17. Gretton, Jeremy & Roemer, Tobias & Schlüter, Elmar, 2024. "Replication of Hamel & Wilcox-Archuleta (2022): "Black Workers in White Places: Daytime Racial Diversity and White Public Opinion"," I4R Discussion Paper Series 61, The Institute for Replication (I4R), revised 2024.
    18. Anna Dreber & Magnus Johannesson & Yifan Yang, 2024. "Selective reporting of placebo tests in top economics journals," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(3), pages 921-932, July.
    19. Fieberg, Christian & Günther, Steffen & Poddig, Thorsten & Zaremba, Adam, 2024. "Non-standard errors in the cryptocurrency world," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    20. Helmers, Viola & van der Werf, Edwin, 2022. "Did the German Aviation Tax Affect Passenger Numbers? New Evidence Employing Difference-in-differences," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264118, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jorssc:v:71:y:2022:i:5:p:1330-1355. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rssssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.