Vokey, John

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    Gambling fallacies: what are they and how are they best measured?
    (OMICS Publishing Group, 2015) Leonard, Carrie A.; Williams, Robert J.; Vokey, John
    Objective: Gambling fallacies are believed to be etiologically related to the development of problem gambling. However, this evidence is tenuous due to the lack of consensus on which things constitute gambling fallacies and the adequacy of instruments that ostensibly measure them. The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively identify the main gambling fallacies and examine the reliability and validity of the instruments designed to measure them. Methods: All known gambling fallacies and instruments measuring them were identified via a keyword search of social science, medical, and gambling-specific databases. The reliability and validity of each assessment instrument was then examined. Results: Six primary gambling fallacies were consistently reported in the literature. Eighteen instruments were found to measure one or more of these fallacies, with 9 assessing specific fallacies and 9 intended to be comprehensive instruments. Most instruments were found to have good internal consistency as well as adequate convergent and external validity. Relatively few demonstrated test-retest reliability and/or discriminant validity. However, the main area of concern was content validity. While instruments focusing on a particular fallacy tended to have adequate content validity, this was not true of the comprehensive instruments. In addition to insufficient coverage of the fallacies, most comprehensive instruments included questions pertaining to motivations for gambling, attitudes about gambling, and/or problem gambling symptomatology (e.g. chasing losses), which likely inflates their statistical association with problem gambling. Many of these comprehensive instruments also wrongly assume that no skill is involved in any form of gambling. Conclusion: The inadequate content validity of most comprehensive gambling fallacy instruments draws into question the strong etiological relationship gambling fallacies are presumed to have with problem gambling. This concern is compounded by the fact that all research reporting this association has been cross-sectional and correlational in nature. Re-examination of this relationship using improved instrumentation in a longitudinal context is required.
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    Psychological Sketches (7th Edition)
    (Psyence Ink, 2005) Vokey, John R.; Allen, Scott W.
    Each of the chapters in this book is a short sketch of a particular topic in psychology. They can be read in any order as each chapter is meant to be a self-contained story. By the end of the book, we hope you will have learned what experimental psychology is about, what experimental psychologists do, and more specifically, what experimental psychologists do in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge.
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    Psychological Sketches (8th Edition)
    (Psyence Ink, 2007) Vokey, John R.; Allen, Scott W.
    Each of the chapters in this book is a short sketch of a particular topic in psychology. They can be read in any order as each chapter is meant to be a self-contained story. By the end of the book, we hope you will have learned what experimental psychology is about, what experimental psychologists do, and more specifically, what experimental psychologists do in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge.
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    Thinking with data (4th Edition)
    (Psyence Ink, 2007) Vokey, John R.; Allen, Scott W.
    This book comprises a collection of lecture notes for the statistics component of the course Psychology 2030: Methods and Statistics from the Department of Psychology at the University of Lethbridge. In addition to basic statistical methods, the book includes discussion of many other useful topics. For example, it has a section on writing in APA format (see Chapter 17), and another on how to read the professional psychological literature (see Chapter 16). We even provide a subsection on the secret to living to be 100 years of age (see section A.2.2)- although the solution may not be fully satisfactory! Despite this volume comprising the fourth edition of the book, it is still very much a work in progress, and is by no means complete. However, despite its current limitations, we expect that students will find it to be a useful adjunct to the lectures. We welcome any suggestions on additions and improvements to the book, and, of course, the report of any typos and other errors. Please email any such errors or corrections to: vokey@uleth.ca or allens@uleth.ca.