Spanking Lowers Child IQ | Correlation is not Causation

As I was waiting for a coffee this morning, I had a cursory glance at the paper and found The Herald Sun reporting on a study stating that:

"A SPANK on the bottom, long used by parents to discipline a naughty child, could cause more than tears... It's now thought the age-old disciplinary method may also lower a child's IQ, with those spanked up to three times a week having a lower IQ due to psychological stress."

Statistics for a Psychology Thesis

In 2007 I presented a talk to postgraduate psychology students at The University of Melbourne. As part of the talk I produced a handout which summarised many of the key points that I felt were relevant for such an audience who needed to complete a thesis involving quantitative analysis. Reading over it two years later, I still agree with the ideas, even if my understanding may be a little more nuanced. For example, I'd now see meta-analytic thinking as a simple version of Bayesian statistics. Anyway, I thought I'd post it on the blog.
The audio (17MB) for the talk is available online, as are the Slides, and a PDF version of the content below.

Carryover Effects in Repeated Measures Designs

This post discusses the issue of carryover effects in repeated measures designs. Ways of assessing and dealing with carryover effects are discussed. I then apply the concepts to an example from my own research looking at personality faking.

Causality and Mediation Analysis

This post discusses issues with causal inference in mediation analysis. It proposes a set of steps that researchers can use when analysing and reporting mediation analyses.

Getting Started with Mediation and Moderation: SPSS and R Resources

The following post sets out resources for getting started with mediation and moderation analysis.