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Author(s): Schmiedek, Florian
Title: Methods and designs
In: Strobach, Tilo; Karbach, Julia (Hrsg.): Cognitive training: An overview of features and applications, Cham: Springer, 2021 , S. 11-23
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-39292-5_2
URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-39292-5_2
Publication Type: 4. Beiträge in Sammelbänden; Sammelband (keine besondere Kategorie)
Language: Englisch
Abstract: Cognitive training research faces a number of methodological challenges.
Some of these are general to evaluation studies of behavioral interventions, like
selection effects that confound the comparison of treatment and control groups with
preexisting differences in participants' characteristics. Some challenges are also
specific to cognitive training research, like the difficulty to tell improvements in
general cognitive abilities from improvements in rather task-specific skills. Here, an
overview of the most important challenges is provided along an established typology of different kinds of validity (statistical conclusion, internal, external, and construct validity) that serve as the central criteria for evaluating intervention studies.
Besides standard approaches to ensure validity, like using randomized assignment to
experimental conditions, emphasis is put on design elements that can help to raise
the construct validity of the treatment (like adding active control groups) and of the
outcome measures (like using latent factors based on measurement models). These
considerations regarding study design are complemented with an overview of dataanalytical approaches based on structural equation modeling, which have a number
of advantages in comparison to the still predominant approaches based on analysis
of variance.
DIPF-Departments: Bildung und Entwicklung