2025

9/4/2025

"An Alternative Framework for Non-Experimental Cross Sectional Mediation Studies: Associational Variable Analysis" 

by Carl F. Weems

Discussion about the paper - reframing? No mentions of theory. The example?

9/18/2025

Sibling Models Can Test Causal Claims without Experiments: Applications for Psychology

Genetically informed designs- strengthen causal inference by controlling for major generic and environmental confounds in the absence of random assignment

analytic method to facilitate sibling comparisons: within-family variance vs. between family variance - controlling for all background variance linked to gene-and-environmental differences.

4 vignettes with individual differences and health outcomes

discordant-kinship model: shall we consider the familial influences in psychological research?

genetically-informed quasi-experimental designs: kin-comparison methods

1) undersppreciated issues of genetic and familial confounding

2) broader implementation of sibling comparison designs

3) discordant-kinship model: a parsimonious regression-based method for addressing familial confounding

The lack of guaranteed pre-treatment group equivalence of the quasi-experimental designs is a primary weakness as less compelling than experimental designs.

Using covariates is one of the most popular approaches to reducing threats to internal validity in psychology. 

Causal inferences from observational data

Nice about the examples - different results

between-family variance or family-level effects\

Bea: in-depth understanding protocol; CESD:

Dave: thought experiment

10/2/2025

Articles:

WOMAC Meaningful Within-patient Change: Results From 3 Studies of Tanezumab in Patients With Moderate-to-severe Osteoarthritis of the Hip or Knee

meaningful within-patient change (MWPC) in the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC)

We want to know the meaningful benefits clinically- minimal clinically important difference (MCID): smallest difference in score in the domain of interest which patients perceive as beneficial and would mandate a change in the patient's management without troublesome side effects and excessive costs. 

What is the difference between individual improvements and group differences?

How do we measure the importance from patient perspectives?