Reactivity in social scientific experiments: what is it and how is it different (and worse) than a Placebo effect?

Jiménez‐Buedo, María

doi:10.1007/s13194-021-00350-z

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Covariates might have changed, or the participants may have developed comorbidities. Additionally, it is possible that participants altered their behavior because they were aware of wearing an accelerometer ('reactivity') (42). Differential misclassification of the exposure could lead to biased associations with the outcome.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Association between circadian physical activity patterns and mortality in the UK Biobank

Stein

Baurecht

Sedlmeier

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Importance The benefit of physical activity (PA) for increasing longevity is well–established, however, the impact of diurnal timing of PA on mortality remains poorly understood. Objective To derive PA patterns and investigate their associations with all–cause mortality. Design, Setting, and Participants This population-based prospective cohort study analyzed UK Biobank baseline data collected between 2006 and 2010 from adults aged 40 to 79 years in England, Scotland, and Wales. Participants were invited by email to participate in an additional accelerometer study from 2013 to 2015, 7 years (median) after baseline. Participants' vital status was assessed via linkage with mortality registries through September 2021 (England/Wales) and October 2021 (Scotland). Data analyses were performed in July 2022. Exposure Loading scores of functional principal components (fPCs) obtained from wrist accelerometer-measured activity metrics. The 'Euclidean norm minus one' was used as a summary metric of bodily acceleration aggregated to 24 hourly averages across seven days. These timeseries were used for functional principal component analysis (fPCA). Main Outcomes and Measures Examination of time–dependent PA patterns obtained using functional principal component analysis in relation to all–cause mortality estimated by multivariable Cox proportional hazard models. Results Among 96,361 participants (56% female), 2,849 deaths occurred during 6.9 (SD 0.9) years of follow–up. Four distinct functional principal components (fPCs) accounted for 96% of the variation of the accelerometry data. The association of fPC1 and mortality was non–linear (p<0.001). Using a loading score of zero as the reference, a fPC1 score of +2 (high overall PA) was associated with lower mortality (0.91; 95% CI: 0.84–0.99), whereas a score of +1 showed no relation (0.94; 95% CI: 0.89–1.00). A fPC1 score of –2 (low overall PA) was associated with higher mortality (1.71; 95% CI: 1.58–1.84), as was a score of –1 (1.20; 95% CI: 1.13–1.26). A 1–unit score increase on fPC2 (high early day PA) was not associated with mortality (0.97; 95% CI: 0.93–1.02). For fPC3, a 1–unit score increase (high midday PA) was associated with decreased mortality (0.88; 95% CI: 0.84–0.94). In contrast, a 1–unit score increase on fPC4 (high midday and nocturnal PA) was associated with higher mortality (1.14; 95% CI: 1.06–1.24). Conclusions and Relevance Higher risks of death were found for patterns denoting lower overall PA and higher late day and nocturnal PA. Conversely, higher levels of PA, distributed continuously, in one, or in two activity peaks during daytime, were inversely associated with lower mortality. Daily timing of PA may have public health implications, as our results suggest that some level of elevated PA during the day and a nighttime rest is associated with longevity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Association between circadian physical activity patterns and mortality in the UK Biobank

Stein

Baurecht

Sedlmeier

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…Reactivity problematizes prediction and explanation since the content of the measure changes from one measurement to the next. Therefore, it is common to try to mitigate for reactivity, since reactivity might make measurement results ‘unstable’, e.g., measure different things from one survey to the next (French and Sutton 2010; 2011; Jiménez-Buedo 2021; Webb et al 1966). Strategies that mitigate reactivity often center on finding some biological mechanisms that underly the phenomenon of interest (cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legitimate Reactivity in Measuring Social Phenomena: Race and the Census

Runhardt

2023

Philosophy of the Social Sciences

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As a result of being measured, individuals sometimes alter their behavior and attitudes to such extent that subsequent measurement results are affected. This ‘reactivity’ to measurement problematizes prediction and explanation, but some reactivity is nevertheless legitimate. Using the example of the measurement of race in the US Census, this article demonstrates that some forms of reactivity do not affect the accuracy of research. The article argues that legitimacy of reactivity depends on the metaphysical status of the phenomenon being measured. It is argued that reactivity’s legitimacy is affected by the arbitrariness of a measure and the voluntariness of measurement results.

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“…Scientific models can be performative: in addition to serving various epistemic purposes, they can also causally affect phenomena, such as when agents’ behaviors change in response to model predictions. In recent years, philosophers have made substantial progress in delineating different forms of performativity and characterizing the problems they can pose, such as when the forecasts researchers derive from models are self-defeating and compromise models’ epistemic functioning (Avery et al 2020b; Godman and Marchionni 2022; Jiménez-Buedo 2021; Northcott 2022; Tee 2019; van Basshuysen 2022; van Basshuysen et al 2021; Vergara-Fernández, Heilmann, and Szymanowska 2023; Winsberg and Harvard 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Performative Models

Khosrowi

2023

Philosophy of the Social Sciences

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Scientific models can be performative: they can causally affect the phenomena they are intended to represent. The existing literature offers two responses. The appraisal view emphasizes that performativity can sometimes be a good-making model attribute, e.g., when predictions steer the public’s behavior in desirable ways. The mitigation view seeks to endogenize agents’ behavioral response to model-issued forecasts to get rid of performativity instead. This paper argues that neither approach is fully compelling: the appraisal view encounters severe concerns about moral values illegitimately encroaching on how modelers construct and use models, while the mitigation view fails to acknowledge that endogenization is itself a choice that involves substantive value-judgments relating to the desirability of certain social outcomes.

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Reactivity in social scientific experiments: what is it and how is it different (and worse) than a Placebo effect?

Cited by 13 publications

References 24 publications

Association between circadian physical activity patterns and mortality in the UK Biobank

Association between circadian physical activity patterns and mortality in the UK Biobank

Legitimate Reactivity in Measuring Social Phenomena: Race and the Census

Managing Performative Models

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