Board of Scientific Affairs and Its Committees Review Science Policies
At its semiannual meeting in November, the Board of Scientific Affairs
(BSA) convened to review policies and take action on several issues of
importance to scientific psychology. The Committee on Animal Research and
Ethics (CARE) and the Committee on Psychological Tests and Assessment (CPTA)
met in late September, prior to the BSA meeting, to evaluate initiatives
specific to their mission areas.
The Board discussed the importance to the field of re-examining the use of
statistics in psychological research and, specifically, the issue of null
hypothesis significance testing. BSA members agreed that psychology's
perspective on statistics needs to be reconsidered and appointed a subgroup to
explore the issue further. The subgroup will collect information from a variety
of sources and devise a plan to present to the Board at the March 1996 meeting.
BSA members also discussed the archiving of scientific data. The Board
acknowledged that other social science groups have been archiving data
centrally for more than 30 years and considered the possibility of archiving
psychological research data in a central location. Board members agreed to
work with staff to explore this issue further. The Directorate will be
soliciting comments through the Science Leaders Network and collecting
information from other organizations that actually archive data. The material
collected will be presented to the Board at its March 1996 meeting for review
and discussion.
BSA also met with the Board of Directors to discuss ways that APA can retain
current science/academic members and attract new members. Both BSA and the
Board of Directors thought that this direct contact was a productive use of
time and agreed to make this an annual event.
CARE
CARE met in late September and reviewed sveral of its current projects: a
survey of animal use in psychological research, a book on the care and use of
animals in research at smaller institutions, and the development of a videotape
about the value of animal research for use in public schools. The survey on
animal use is near completion and will be printed and distributed to
departments of psychology early in 1996. The book is in the early stages of
development; it will be based on a science conference that took place last
year. The committee is exploring the idea of developing a series of 5- to
15-minute videotaped segments depicting animal research procedures and methods
for studying psychological phenomena. The tapes are intended for use by high
school teachers.
CPTA
At CPTA's meeting in September, Committee members met with the president of
the Association of Test Publishers, Lorin Letendre, to discuss issues of mutual
interest, such as test-user qualifications and the revision of the Standards
for Educational and Psychological Testing. CPTA devised a plan for coordinating
APA governance review and reactions to draft chapters of the Standards. The
Committee also developed comments for the Department of Education's proposed
regulations on pupil rights, addressing issues of informed consent when
conducting research with students.
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