Evaluating quality of articles and scientific journals. Proposal of weighted impact factor and a quality index? The factor of impact and other bibliometric indices are currently used in several countries to evaluate the type and quality of scientific production. However, the impact factor (or prestige) rarely receives an accurate interpretation. Available impact factors display a number of shortcomings: they only refer to citations in the previous two or three years, and they do not take into account the impact or prestige of the periodicals where citations appear, so that every citation is given the same value, regardless of the periodical where it appears. In order to overcome these limitations, two indices are proposed: a mean impact factor of the journals where citations appear (FIMRC) and a weighted impact factor (FIP). Additionally, other useful indices are suggested for the analysis of interaction between periodicals: a percentage of partial interaction of citations (PIPC), and a percentage of mutual interaction among citations (PIMC). This paper explains their details a procedures for their calculation. Several problem areas are discussed, namely, peer review, the policy of publications, qualification of referees, and assessment criteria. It is also argued that quality of studies should not only be primarily evaluated in terms of the periodical where they are published. Finally, an alternative is offered for the assessment of quality of scientific articles and journals on three bases: what is to be evaluated, who is to be an evaluator, and possible criteria for evaluation. These considerations lead to a proposal for a quality index aside of impact or prestige.

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Evaluación de la calidad de los artículos y de las revistas científicas: Propuesta del factor de impacto ponderado y de un índice de calidad

Likert-type scales are one of the most commonly used instruments in social sciences and market research. Nonetheless, there is some debate regarding the format needed in these scales to obtain quality data. This study is a review of Likert-type scale formats and their association with data quality. To that effect, a systematic review was performed, along with a synthesis of content, to identify a series of topics that are relevant due to their methodological implications: response bias and styles, the optimal number of alternatives, reasons for choosing the intermediate response, and the effect of the “No Opinion” alternative. On the basis of an analysis and discussion of these topics, the study presents some recommendations for formatting in the conclusions.

/pdf/diseno-del-formato-de-escalas-tipo-likert-un-estado-de-la-43g6x2bidp.pdf

Diseño del formato de escalas tipo Likert: un estado de la cuestión

Our intention was to study the attitudes of educators in the context of the research project entitled «Integration of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) as teaching tools at University within the framework of the European Higher Education Area». To do this, a Likert-type scale of attitudes was created rigorously following all the steps indicated by the experts. The scale consists of 24 items along with their characteristics of discrimination (all the t values for each item when compared to the averages among extreme groups are highly significant); reliability (calculated through different procedures, provides us with values, all of which are above 0.95); and validity (factorial validity; criteria validity: a correlation of 0.92 between the scores of the scale regarding the criterion «behaviour») could be considered completely satisfactory.

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Medida de actitudes del profesorado universitario hacia la integración de las TIC

Development of pediatric sleep questionnaires as diagnostic or epidemiological tools: A brief review of Dos and Don’ts

Comparative study o f the Psychology journals with impa ct fa ctor written in Sp anish. This study presents a comparative analysis among four psycholog y journals published in Spanish that have an impact facto r (Psicothema, Revista Latinoamericana de Psicolog ia, Revista Mexicana de Psicologia, and Revista Interamericana de Psicologia). These journals are compared in terms of several bibliometric indices such as impact factor, weighted impact factor, mean impact factor of the periodicals where citations appear, immediate citation factor, and mean d uratio n of citations. Additionally, a con ten t analy sis is made of the fo ur period icals co nsidering the different academic fields o f psychology and the meth ods of the published studies. The analy sis shows that Psicothema obtains a better score in most bibliometric indices and that little interaction of citations among the fo ur periodicals takes place. Regarding the comparison of methods, and academic fields, this study offers the number of papers according to the method of application (theoretical, descriptive by surveys, descriptive by observation, case studies, experimental, quasi-experimental, single case studies, instrumental, and others) and field (Personality, Psychological Assesmen t and Treatment, Social Psy chology, Experimen tal Psychology, Psychobiology, Methodology, Developmental and Edu cation Psy chology, and Inter-field Psychology ). Final y, some co nsiderations are made on bibliometric ind ices, and the relationship between methods and academic fields.

Estudio comparativo de las revistas de Psicología en castellano con factor de impacto

Se estudiaron los cuantificadores linguisticos de frecuencia empleados en las escalas de categorias. El objetivo ultimo es lograr listados de cuantificadores consistentes, que garanticen el buen uso de las tecnicas parametricas. El trabajo consta de dos partes: la primera nos ha permitido fijar un listado previo de cuantificadores consistentes a traves del metodo de estimacion de magnitud, asi como evaluar las posibilidades de uso de este procedimiento; en la segunda, generalizamos los resultados obtenidos en la primera fase ampliando el estudio a diferentes comunidades autonomas espanolas.

Categorías de respuesta en escalas tipo likert

The judgment against null hypothesis. Many witnesses and a virtuous sentence. Null hypothesis significance testing has been a source of debate within the scientific community of behavioral researchers for years, since inadequate interpretations have resulted in incorrect use of this procedure. In this paper, we present a revision of the latest contributions of methodologists of different opinions, for and against, and we also set out the guidelines to research within behavioral science recently issued by the A.P.A. (American Psychological Association) Task Force in Statistical Inference (Wilkinson, 1999).

El juicio contra la hipótesis nula: muchos testigos y una sentencia virtuosa

Study of the Qualities of a Good University Lecturer of Health Sciences

The power of mean tests with two and three groups, with small effect size and under non-normality and homo-heteroscedaticity. The power of mean contrasts is studied in conditions of small effect size, with two and three samples, and using several parametric and non-parametric statistical tests (Student's test, Welch test and Mann-Withney-Wilcoxon's U with two groups; ANOVA, James second order test and Kruskal-Wallis with three groups), both complying with the parametric assumptions of normality and homocedasticity and violating those assumptions. The main result is that, when it is not possible to have big samples (which is very common when investigating in applied Psychology) these tests are not useful and different ways of investigating must be accomplished.

Estudio de la potencia de los contrastes de medias con dos y tres grupos con tamaño de efecto pequeño y en condiciones de no normalidad y homo-heterocedasticidad

Isabel Cañadas Osinski

Papers

Categorías de respuesta en escalas tipo likert

El juicio contra la hipótesis nula: muchos testigos y una sentencia virtuosa

Study of the Qualities of a Good University Lecturer of Health Sciences

Estudio de la potencia de los contrastes de medias con dos y tres grupos con tamaño de efecto pequeño y en condiciones de no normalidad y homo-heterocedasticidad

El diseño de un programa de intervención