More Statistical and Methodological Myths and Urban Legends: Doctrine, Verity and Fable in Organizational and Social Sciences

This book provides an up-to-date review of commonly undertaken methodological and statistical practices that are based partially in sound scientific rationale and partially in unfounded lore. Some examples of these “methodological urban legends” are characterized by manuscript critiques such as: (a) “your self-report measures suffer from common method bias”; (b) “your item-to-subject ratios are too low”; (c) “you can’t generalize these findings to the real world”; or (d) “your effect sizes are too low.”

What do these critiques mean, and what is their historical basis? More Statistical and Methodological Myths and Urban Legends catalogs several of these quirky practices and outlines proper research techniques. Topics covered include sample size requirements, missing data bias in correlation matrices, negative wording in survey research, and much more.

Charles E. Lance is Principal, Organizational Research & Development and Professor Emeritus of Industrial/Organizational Psychology at the University of Georgia, USA.

Robert J. Vandenberg is the Robert O. Arnold Professor of Business in the Department of Management, Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, USA.