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Jay Jeffries, PhD

@jaybenjeff.bsky.social
68 followers 150 following 42 posts

Doodle dad, psychometrics fan, #rstats nerd, and assistant research professor the @unmc.bsky.social College of Public Health

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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Few statisticians know that Frank Yates, pioneer of experimental design, is responsible for the annoying practice of indicating 3 tiers of statistical significance by stars (*p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001). He soon regretted it and “vehemently opposed its unthinking use”. And here we are.
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 20/07/2026
New paper out now 🥳 When psychologists discuss generalisability, they often refer to vague notions of representativeness. We provide an accessible intro to the total survey error framework as a tool to reason about this more rigorously. w @taymalsalti.bsky.social @ruben.the100.ci >
Thinking Clearly About Sampling and Representation With the Total Survey Error Framework

Collecting a sample that represents the population of interest well constitutes a challenge across the social and behavioural sciences. Psychology in particular frequently relies on convenience samples—most notably students and, increasingly, online participants—with a tendency to either (implicitly) assume representativeness without substantive justification, or to acknowledge a lack of it only in passing. In contrast, researchers rarely engage with the actual implications for their inferences, which undermines the generalisability of psychological findings. Critically, representativeness must be defined with respect to variables relevant to the target of inference, rather than superficial demographic diversity. Here we present the Total Survey Error (TSE) framework as a methodological tool that systematically addresses the multifaceted sources of error—particularly those related to representation—that emerge throughout the research cycle. Although TSE originated in survey research, its principles are broadly applicable to any psychological study seeking inference from sample to population. We offer practical strategies for identifying, preventing, and mitigating representation errors to improve the credibility and generalisability of psychological research.

Illustration of the total survey error framework with the representation strand highlighted. It shows how coverage error, sampling error and non-response error arise during the sampling process.
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Useful table of theory-related terms by @philippmusfeld.bsky.social et al. www.researchgate.net/publication/...
Terminology Table 1 summarizes the core terms used in the checklist. We define a theory as a set of interrelated propositions about (aspects of) the world that aim to explain and predict certain phenomena (Guest & Martin, 2021; Van Dongen et al., 2025). Theories typically do so by specifying mechanisms— accounts of how the entities, processes, and their organization described by the theory give rise to the relevant phenomena. We define phenomena as stable features of the world that may constitute the targets of theoretical explanation. In psychology, such features are often inferred from robust patterns of empirical observations, that is, observations that can be made repeatedly and by using different procedures (Bogen & Woodward, 1988). Notably, the assumption of the existence of the phenomenon may be false (e.g., due to errors in measurement). Theories typically consist of concepts (i.e., abstract ideas used to describe, differentiate, think about, or reason about certain aspects of the world), relations among these concepts, and further assumptions. Together, we call these the elements of a theory. Our terminology further adapts a semantic view of scientific theories. We assume that a theory is always expressed in some verbal form (i.e., in natural language) to communicate it to others, but it may also be expressed in, for example, a formal model. A formal model represents a specific version of (parts of) a theory expressed through formal means such as mathematical equations, algorithms, or logical propositions (Glöckner & Fiedler, 2025; Guest & Martin, 2021; Robinaugh et al., 2021; Smaldino, 2020; Van Rooij & Blokpoel, 2020). If a theory is expressed in a formal model, then, the elements of the theory are typically represented in the formal model by variables, parameters, constants, and the functions and operators that connect them. Together with any auxiliary assumptions added during formalization, these form the elements of a formal model. The same verbal theo…
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Jay Jeffries, PhD @jaybenjeff.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Married my best friend @libbybrower.bsky.social this weekend at the @joslynartmuseum.bsky.social 🤍 The night itself felt like a part of the fine art around us!
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
I am begging people looking to make major donations to universities to either 1) care as much about academics as they do sports, or 2) make unrestricted gifts instead. Signed, A faculty member at a university with brand new athletic facilities and crumbling teaching and research infrastructure
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Zach Rabiroff @zachrabiroff.com · 19/04/2026
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Brady West @bradytwest.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
A simple post: Why?
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Last night with no warning, RFK Jr. cancelled up to $2 billion in funding for mental health and substance abuse research and programs administered through SAMHSA. He and his minions did so because “they no longer believe the defunded programs align with the Trump administration's priorities”.
npr.org
Trump administration sends letter wiping out addiction, mental health grants
The Trump administration sent hundreds of letters Tuesday terminating federal grants supporting mental health and drug addiction services.
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 24/09/2025
Read more about RCTs and why they’re so important: ourworldindata.org/randomized-c...
ourworldindata.org
Why randomized controlled trials matter and the procedures that strengthen them
Randomized controlled trials are a key tool to study cause and effect. Why do they matter and how do they work?
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Jin X. Goh | 吴晋勋 @jinxungoh.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
ManuscriptCentral Wrapped! In 2025, you submitted 5 papers AND all got rejected 🎉 You spent 💯 minutes in total trying to submit your papers! You reviewed for 10 journals that would never publish your papers ❤️
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Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
How much of “Mississippi’s education miracle” is an artifact of selection bias? statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/12/01/h...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
How much of “Mississippi’s education miracle” is an artifact of selection bias? | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
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Demetri @phdemetri.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
I believe eigen fly. I believe eigen touch the sky.
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
NSWERS @nswers.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
NSWERS has released a new research brief examining chronic absenteeism in Nebraska’s K–12 schools and its effect on student outcomes, including assessment scores, graduation rates, and college enrollment. View the full brief here: insights.nswers.org/briefs/2025-....
https://insights.nswers.org/briefs/2025-chronic-absenteeism
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Suiting Up Varsity @suitingupvarsity.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Grand Island linebacker Jim Jefferies celebrates in 1978.
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Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD @kmpanthagani.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
A short explanation of p-hacking and why it absolutely makes sense to ask HHS to release the study methods of their autism report in advance.
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Dr Mircea Zloteanu 🌺🌞🍃 @mzloteanu.bsky.social · 03/08/2025
A short weekend post on a pet peeve of mine: likert questions substack.com/@mzloteanu/n... #substack #likert #design #science #research
substack.com
“We used a Likert scale to measure…” — No, you didn’t!
Understanding Likert, Likert-type, and Ordinal questions
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Maarten van Smeden @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
I made one for stats papers
A joke about statistics papers
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Ian Hussey @ianhussey.mmmdata.io · 26/07/2025
If researchers find Cohen’s d = 8, no they didn’t. (probably.) Thoughts on the distribution of Cohen's d values in psychology and why we should think about their plausibility when reading articles.
mmmdata.io
If researchers find Cohen's d = 8, no they didn't
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the plausibility of standardized effect sizes in the last year. From a trustworthiness assessment perspective, (standardized) effect sizes have a great combinat...
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
tj mahr 🤘 @tjmahr.com · 24/07/2025
note to self: 83.5% CIs will just touch 💏 at p = .05 www.tjmahr.com/unenv/#p-val...
tjmahr.com
Unevaluated expressions
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Ben Marwick @benmarwick.bsky.social · 06/07/2025
Here is my checklist summarising a small set of some of the simplest tasks you can do that have high potential to improve the reproducibility of your analysis code. This is based on my year of reproducibility reviews for the J. of Archaeological Science: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lHjN_6yUM... 🧪🏺
Checklist of items researchers can do to improve the reproducibility of their code
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Joerg Lau @joerglau.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Love this
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Maarten van Smeden @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Let us start 2025 in a positive mood: here are 10 methods things researchers can worry *less* about in 2025
media.tenor.com
a countdown clock with the number 10 in the center
ALT: a countdown clock with the number 10 in the center
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Jill Barshay @jillbarshay.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Yesterday, June 2, was an interesting day at work. I was reporting a story about how the Education Department hadn't delivered a report to Congress on the Condition of Education, despite the June 1 deadline mandated by law. 🧵 (1/9)
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Lucien Hinderling @lhinderling.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Inkscape plugin to rescale figures without distorting the text, and other useful features! github.com/burghoff/Sci...
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
say it again: 4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities ROI for NIH and NSF for local economies is conservatively 4x, often close to 10x demolishing higher education is economic sabotage
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Kosta Derpanis @csprofkgd.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
A new use of the asterisk in the paper author list for credit assignment
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
ProPublica @propublica.org · 10/05/2025
By slashing teams that gather critical data, the Trump administration has left the federal government with no way of understanding if policies are working — and created a black hole of information whose consequences could ripple out for decades: propub.li/3RZzqHP 📽️: @josesepulveda.bsky.social
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moin syed @syeducation.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Recently did the annual walk through of our totally normal publishing system for my undergraduate research methods students. Never fails to boggle their minds.
a slide showing the ridiculous process of publishing a journal article, highlighting how universities both pay for the work to be done and then pay to access the work.
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Kelsey Hightower @kelseyhightower.com · 19/04/2025
Train your own model.
A medical illustration of the human brain.
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 25/03/2025
I asked DeepSeek to develop a scale to measure addiction to addiction scale development and of course it delivered.
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Senator Bernie Sanders @sanders.senate.gov · 11/03/2025
Let’s be clear: the Dept. of Ed. provides resources to 26 million children living in high-poverty school districts; Pell Grants to over 7 million students; & funding for millions of children with disabilities. Closing its doors would be a disaster for working class families.
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KiDLAB @kidlab.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
🟣 This is the eighth interview in the BOLD series on our special collection. Catrin Finkenauer explains why schools and educators need to earn students’ trust—especially in those from financially insecure backgrounds—to prevent school dropout. boldscience.org/why-schools-...
boldscience.org
Why schools need to earn students’ trust
Students who distrust institutions are more likely to drop out of school
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
A Guide to Multiverse Analyses "The large array of defensible options available for researchers to select along the workflow creates what is known as the ‘garden of forking paths’." Preprint: doi.org/10.31222/osf...
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 22/02/2025
I always shock my students a bit when I tell them that quantitative data is just qualitative data that has already been interpreted numerically.
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Reposted by Jay Jeffries, PhD
Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
let's see what DOGE has been cancelling at the department of education. @stuartbuck.bsky.social went through the list. will link to his post at the end of the thread. i will start with his 4th example: foundational research to understand how american kids are doing at school
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Tanya Shapiro @tanyashapiro.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
more and more i'm gravitating towards the title of "data generalist." i do a little bit of everything. some things better than others. and the rest we'll figure out as we go.
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We Are RLadies+ @weare.rladies.org · 03/02/2025
♓ Pisces (Feb 19 - Mar 20) → {quarto} Dreamy, adaptable, sentimental. Loves a good narrative, but sometimes gets lost in the details. Might spend hours formatting a document instead of finishing the analysis. 📖✨ (4/13)
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Alt CDC (they/them) @altcdc.altgov.info · 01/02/2025
The entire archive of CDC datasets can be found here. HUGE shoutout to data archivists- this work is important 👏🙌🏻 archive.org/details/2025...
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Cynthia Cox @cynthiaccox.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) -- which, since 1990, has tracked high school students' behaviors that can influence health and social outcomes (like smoking, drug use, and dietary habits) -- is now offline
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Melissa Kline Struhl @mekline.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
Hey if anyone is considering backing up any datasets for some reason today, the Open Science Framework has free storage up to 5G/private repository, and up to 50G/public repository. (The OSF is run by a 501c3 (Center for Open Science), so if you do this you might also consider making a donation.)
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Jill Barshay @jillbarshay.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
This chart encapsulates today's NAEP Score report. Only high achieving kids are making some catch up progress, the bottom is falling. Read my story: hechingerreport.org/naep-test-20...
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Demetri @phdemetri.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
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Neil Lewis, Jr. @neillewisjr.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
GitHub change logs make it possible to see how and where the government has been scrubbing web pages of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility content. www.404media.co/github-is-sh...
404media.co
GitHub Is Showing the Trump Administration Scrubbing Government Web Pages in Real Time
Watch the Trump administration play DEI whac-a-mole on this government agency's GitHub page.
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Prof Dynarski @dynarski.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
Reading grad school apps Why is any undergrad institution teaching stats with SPSS? Looking at you, psychology depts R is free and knowing it is a marketable skill
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Fred Oswald @foswald.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
and here I thought I had run out of Cronbach's alpha infographics :D one more is added to the collection - enjoy!
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Thùy Vy T Nguyễn @thuyvytnguyen.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
I don't know how common this is because I have only seen this discussed in a few EMA studies. When I analyze multilevel data, I have found it useful to look at multilevel correlations at between- and within-group levels. I use multilevel.cor in "misty" package. For example, it allows you to see if
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PHD Comics @phdcomics.com · 16/01/2025
Seminar Refreshments
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Johannes Zimmermann @jzpsych.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
@tkaiser.science et al. (2021). The distinction between psychometric and clinimetric approaches will not move the field forward. doi.org/10.31234/osf...
doi.org
OSF
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Jay Jeffries, PhD @jaybenjeff.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
Calling all #psychometricians & #researchers 📣 Does anybody have good resources/articles that compare & contrast psychometrics and “clinimetrics?” Is this a case where we’ve made up field-specific verbiage or is there a meaningful difference? Anything would help! @academic-chatter.bsky.social
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Giles @gdeejay.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
I'm obviously a big #rstats fan, but I wasn't taught it at university. Instead, I learned a random assortment of software depending on the class / textbook. Then I couldn't apply the techniques unless the company had the right software, which is what drove me to learn R. 👌🏼
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