Back to Basics: The Importance of Conceptual Clarification in Psychological Science

Laura F. Bringmann*, Timon Elmer, Markus I. Eronen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

96 Citations (Scopus)
260 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Although the lack of conceptual clarity has been observed to be a widespread and fundamental problem in psychology, conceptual clarification plays a mostly marginal role in psychological research. In this article, we argue that better conceptualization of psychological phenomena is needed to move psychology forward as a science. We first show how conceptual unclarity seeps through all aspects of psychological research, from everyday concepts to statistical measures. We then turn to recommendations on how to improve conceptual clarity in psychology, emphasizing the importance of seeing research as an iterative process in which it is necessary to revisit the phenomena that are the foundations of theories and models, as well as how they are conceptualized and measured.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)340-346
Number of pages7
JournalCurrent Directions in Psychological Science
Volume31
Issue number4
Early online date14-Jun-2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug-2022

Keywords

  • concept
  • measurement
  • phenomena
  • philosophy of science
  • qualitative and quantitative methods

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