a new blog about . . .

Are you interested in issues of cause and effect? Do you use quasi-experimental methodology or correlational analyses for your own research? If so, I might just have the blog for you!

It's called . . . what else . . . Alan & Bo's Correlation and Causality Blog. It's brand spanking new too, with two posts so far. It looks pretty interesting though. I just found out about it yesterday through a social psychology listserv. Here's a little blurb describing the purpose of the blog:

"On this blog, we seek to raise and discuss various issues pertaining to correlation and causality, much like we did during our frequent conversations at Texas Tech. In fields that study human behavior in “real world” settings, many potentially interesting phenomena are off-limits to the traditional experimental desgin that would permit causal inferences, for practical and ethical reasons.

Does the birth of a child increase or decrease couples’ marital/relationship satisfaction? Does growing up with an alcohol-abusing parent damage children’s development of social skills? How does experiencing a natural disaster affect residents’ mental and physical health?

For none of these questions could researchers legitimately assign individuals (or couples) at random to either receive or not receive the presumed causal stimulus. Much of our discussion, therefore, will be aimed at formulating ideas for how to make as strong a causal inference as possible, for a given research question.

By raising issues of how researchers might approach a given research question from the standpoint of internal validity, we hope to fulfill a “seeding” process, where our initial commentaries will be generative of further discussion and suggestions. We are thus permitting (and encouraging!) comments on this blog, for this purpose. We hope to learn as much (or more) from you, as you might learn from us."

Seems pretty unique, a blog specifically devoted to the logic of causality. I'm looking forward to their future posts. Well, anyways, go check it out!