Gjalt-Jorn Ygram Peters

Relationships between concepts are often interpreted during qualitative analysis but may remain implicit within coding structures, thematic descriptions, or analytical narratives. This article introduces the Qualitative Network Approach (QNA), a methodological framework for representing qualitative codes as interconnected elements. Its associated method, QNA network coding, specifies interpreted connections between pairs of qualitative codes according to relationship type and, where relevant, directionality. A four-step tutorial demonstrates how researchers can identify two concepts in the data for relational interpretation, identify and specify their relationship using the codebook, assign the three codes to the data fragment, and document a QNA network code. A worked interview example illustrates how individual QNA network codes can form a wider QNA network code structure. QNA may be useful when relationships between concepts are analytically important. By making relational interpretations explicit and traceable to the underlying data, QNA aims to increase the transparency and inspectability of qualitative analysis.

Exposure to loud noise can cause hearing loss and tinnitus. Few adolescents and young adults do, however, engage in hearing protective behaviours (HPBs) to reduce noise exposure. To enable the development of behavioural interventions, the present study aimed to identify influential, modifiable, psychological factors of HPB. An online survey measured predefined psychological factors and three HPBs (i.e. earplug use, safe listening, hearing protection at work). Psychological factors' univariate distributions and their associations with the HPBs were assessed to identify their potential as intervention target. Persons 12 to 25 years of age living in the Netherlands (N = 1637, mean age = 18.6, 67.6% female). Less than one in three participants wore earplugs at music venues, and less than one in two kept a safe level of sound exposure during use of headphones and speakers. Anticipated regret, awareness, experiential attitude, capacity and social norms were the psychological factors most strongly associated with HPBs (r ≈ 0.45 to r ≈ 0.65, and d ≈ 0.9 to d ≈ 1.5) that simultaneously, had univariate distributions indicating room for improvement. Anticipated regret, awareness, experiential attitude, capacity and social norms are potentially promising intervention targets to increase HPBs in young persons.

Intervention Mapping (IM) is a theory- and evidence-based framework allowing to develop, implement, and evaluate an intervention in public health. The current paper presents a practical step-by-step guide of the second step of Intervention Mapping, which translates the needs assessment findings into specific objectives aiming at changing health behaviours and/or environmental conditions. This includes: (1) Stating the programme outcomes; (2) Listing the target behaviors and performance objectives; (3) Selecting the sub-determinants; and (4) Producing an overview of intervention targets: the matrix of change objectives. We provide practical guidelines for each of these tasks. In addition, intervention developers may benefit from the listed open tools that may be used in each stage to address the identified needs and achieve meaningful health outcomes.

Tools that can be used to collect behavioural data during pandemics are needed to inform policy and practice. The objective of this project was to develop the Your COVID-19 Risk tool in response to the global spread of COVID-19, aiming to promote health behaviour change. We developed an online resource based on key behavioural evidence-based risk factors related to contracting and spreading COVID-19. This tool allows for assessing risk and provides instant support to protect individuals from infection. The Risk Estimation Questions assessed users’ location, age, gender, work environment, day-to-day behaviours currently performed, and conditions under which these behaviours would change. Users were also asked to estimate how often they keep their distance from others in public and regularly wash their hands, and the procedures they follow to do so. A multidisciplinary research team of more than 150 international experts developed the tool. Over 60,000 users in more than 150 countries have assessed their risk and provided data. The majority of respondents reported that they almost always keep their distance from others in public places, and most participants reported washing their hands after touching public or shared surfaces or when entering buildings. The tool, data, and results were openly shared to support government and health agencies developing behaviour change interventions. This tool creates a blueprint for similar digital infrastructure that can be replicated and used in future pandemics.

Background: The recent increase in online health information–seeking has prompted extensive user appraisal of encountered content. Information consumption depends crucially on the quality of encountered information and the user’s ability to evaluate it; yet, within the context of web-based, organic search behavior, few studies take into account both these aspects simultaneously. Objective: We aimed to explore a method to bridge these two aspects and grant even consideration to both the stimulus (web page content) and the user (ability to appraise encountered content). We examined novices and experts in information retrieval and appraisal to demonstrate a novel approach to studying information foraging theory: stimulus-engagement alignment (SEA). Methods: We sampled from experts and novices in information retrieval and assessment, asking participants to conduct a 10-minute search task with a specific information goal. We used an observational and a retrospective think-aloud protocol to collect data within the framework of an interview. Data from 3 streams (think-aloud, human-computer interaction, and screen content) were manually coded in the Reproducible Open Coding Kit standard and subsequently aligned and represented in a tabularized format with the R package {rock}. SEA scores were derived from designated code co-occurrences in specific segments of data within the stimulus data stream versus the think-aloud and human-computer interaction data streams. Results: SEA scores represented a meaningful comparison of what participants encountered and what they engaged with. Operationalizing codes as either “present” or “absent” in a particular data stream allowed us to inspect not only which credibility cues participants engaged with with the most frequency, but also whether participants noticed the absence of cues. Code co-occurrence frequencies could thus indicate case-, time-, and context-sensitive information appraisal that also takes into account the quality of information encountered. Conclusions: Using SEA allowed us to retain epistemic access to idiosyncratic manifestations of both stimuli and engagement. In addition, by using the same coding scheme and designated co-occurrences across participants, we were able to pinpoint trends within our sample and subsamples. We believe our approach offers a powerful analysis encompassing the breadth and depth of data, both on par with each other in the feat of understanding organic, web-based search behavior.

Noise-induced hearing loss is both irreversible and preventable. However, only a minority of adolescents and young adults engage in hearing protective behaviors (HPBs) that reduce their exposure to noise, such as wearing earplugs at music venues. To promote HPBs it is imperative to know the most influential, and potentially modifiable, psychological factors that in this age group stimulate or hinder these protective behaviors. The present study aims to offer a systematic literature overview of psychological correlates of HPBs in persons aged 12 to 25 years, and identify the correlates with most potential as behavioral intervention targets. A total of 82 studies were included in the present review, of which data of 24 studies could be used to assess the strength of the association between one or more psychological factors and HPB. Heterogeneity between studies hindered synthesis. In particular, psychological constructs and HPBs were rarely defined and measured in a uniform manner. Studies were further characterized by a lack of research on psychological factors related to other HPBs than earplug use, such as sound volume control (e.g. the use of a volume limiter). Due to this relative absence of data, associations could not be assessed for specific HPB, and HPBs were aggregated in one variable. Taking into account both the strength of their associations with HPB and their univariate distributions, five psychological factors possessed the greatest potential as behavioral intervention targets: attitude toward recreational noise, perceived barriers, capacity, perceived norms, and perceived threat susceptibility. These results can help the development of new interventions. Additional research is however needed.

It is often useful to produce short, quasi-unique identifiers (SQUIDs) without the benefit of a central authority to prevent duplication. Although Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs) provide for this, these are also unwieldy; for example, the most used UUID, version 4, is 36 characters long. SQUIDs are short (8 characters) at the expense of having more collisions, which can be mitigated by combining them with human-produced suffixes, yielding relatively brief, half human-readable, almost-unique identifiers (see for example the identifiers used for Decentralized Construct Taxonomies; Peters & Crutzen, 2024 ). SQUIDs are the number of centiseconds elapsed since the beginning of 1970 converted to a base 30 system. This package contains functions to produce SQUIDs as well as convert them back into dates and times.

A theory crisis and measurement crisis have been argued to be root causes of psychology's replication crisis. In both, the lack of conceptual clarification and the jingle-jangle jungle at the construct definition level as well the measurement level play a central role. We introduce a conceptual tool that can address these issues: Decentralized Construct Taxonomy specifications (DCTs). These consist of comprehensive specifications of construct definitions, corresponding instructions for quantitative and qualitative research, and unique identifiers. We discuss how researchers can develop DCT specifications as well as how DCT specifications can be used in research, practice, and theory development. Finally, we discuss the implications and potential for future developments to answer the call for conceptual clarification and epistemic iteration. This contributes to the move towards a psychological science that progresses in a cumulative fashion through discussion and comparison.

This paper presents a generalized registration form for systematic reviews that can be used when currently available forms are not adequate. The form is designed to be applicable across disciplines (i.e., psychology, economics, law, physics, or any other field) and across review types (i.e., scoping review, review of qualitative studies, meta-analysis, or any other type of review). That means that the reviewed records may include research reports as well as archive documents, case law, books, poems, etc. Items were selected and formulated to optimize broad applicability instead of specificity, forgoing some benefits afforded by a tighter focus. This PRISMA 2020 compliant form is a fallback for more specialized forms and can be used if no specialized form or registration platform is available. When accessing this form on the Open Science Framework website, users will therefore first be guided to specialized forms when they exist. In addition to this use case, the form can also serve as a starting point for creating registration forms that cater to specific fields or review types.

When developing behavior change interventions in a systematic way, it is important to select determinants relevant to the target behavior. Data is needed to gain insight into the determinant structures (the relative strengths of associations between determinants and behavior) and their univariate distributions. This insight is crucial to select the most relevant determinants, but at the same time institutions tasked with behavior change (e.g. prevention organizations, municipal health services) often operate under prohibitive resource constraints, which also extend to how easily they can collect data from a sample. This paper introduces CIBERlite – an approach that furnishes the intervention developer with an idea of the relevance of a limited number of determinants using short measurements informed by theory. The first study (N = 401) in a series of three explores the convergent validity of short and full measurements of determinants derived from the Reasoned Action Approach. The short measurements are used in the main study (N = 415) that serves as a proof-of-concept for the CIBERlite plot, an efficient visualization combining data of determinant structures and their univariate distributions for eight behaviors. The unexpected patterns detected in the main study led to an expert estimation study (N = 45), which shows that individual experts have difficulty in predicting how people score on determinants. This stresses the importance of conducting determinant studies and CIBERlite is a valuable alternative to do so if resources are limited.