Observer > 2000 > January
image description
132000Volume 13, Issue1January 2000

Presidential Column

Elizabeth D. Capaldi headshot
Elizabeth D. Capaldi
University of Buffalo
APS President 1999 - 2000
All columns

In this Issue:
What's Fair to Compare?

About the Observer

The Observer is the online magazine of the Association for Psychological Science and covers matters affecting the research, academic, and applied disciplines of psychology. The magazine reports on issues of interest to psychologist scientists worldwide and disseminates information about the activities, policies, and scientific values of APS.

APS members receive a monthly Observer newsletter that covers the latest content in the magazine. Members also may access the online archive of Observer articles going back to 1988.

Read more

Latest Under the Cortex Podcast

Trending Topics >

  • Thumbnail Image for Disaster Response and Recovery

    Disaster Response and Recovery

    Disasters like Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Mangkhut draw massive media coverage, trauma interventions, and financial donations to victims. But psychological research shows the efforts don’t always yield the intended benefits.

Up Front

  • What’s Fair to Compare?

    Who is Number 1? We are fascinated with this question. What is the best pizza, the best movie, the best TV show? In sports, winning and losing is part of the game and in most sports, a Number 1 team is usually unmistakable. In universities or psychology departments, the answer is not so clear, but still, we have endless single score rankings that set up a sports-like winner-loser competition. Many of these rankings are spurious, based on nothing but personal opinion, or on samples of opinion so small as to be ludicrous. Others claim to be based on data; most notable among these are U.S. News and World Report and the National Research Council's rankings of graduate programs. But even these rankings have significant problems. U.S. News changes their criteria and weighting every year, the cynical say, so that the rankings change and they sell magazines.