Editorial: Critical debates on quantitative psychology and measurement: Revived and novel perspectives on fundamental problems

Abstract

This Research Topic presents novel and revived perspectives on the fundamental problems underlying psychology's crises in replicability, validity, generalisability and thus, confidence in its findings. Our 15 articles present critical analyses of established theories and practices that are widely used in quantitative psychology and psychological ‘measurement'. They show that, contrary to current beliefs, questionable research practices (QRPs) are just surface-level symptoms of much more profound issues that are still hardly discussed. [Uher et al.]() argue that psychology's crises are rooted in the Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs) of many of its theories, concepts, approaches and methods (e.g., of psychometrics)-and therefore cannot be tackled by just remedying Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) as currently believed. The authors emphasise that advancing psychology's theories and philosophies of science is essential for integrating its fragmented empirical database and lines of research. To give new impetus to the current debates, they provide a comprehensive multi-perspectival review of key problems in psychological measurement, highlighting diverse philosophies of science (ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies) that are used in quantitative psychology and pinpointing four major areas of development. [Luchetti]() explores psychological ‘measurement' from a philosophical viewpoint. He notes that, without independent ways for assessing whether a given procedure does, indeed, allow for measuring the intended target property, measurement inherently involves epistemic circularity. From both a modern and a historically-situated perspective, he analyses how Fechner tackled this problem in psychophysics. He shows that Fechner developed a first successful step of a longer-term quantification process. Nevertheless, findings about individuals' sensory perceptions of physical stimuli (e.g., sounds) cannot be generalised to perceptions of all psychical phenomena in lack of evident observable properties that can be related to the psychical phenomena of interest.