ArticleBehavior research methods2023
Common, uncommon, and novel applications of random forest in psychological research.
Article in Behavior research methods, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- The role of gender and child sexual abuse history in treatment response in two treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder.Journal of anxiety disorders · 2026Trial
- Family Engagement in an Early Childhood Preventive Parenting Program: Innovative Methods for Examining Sociodemographic, Psychosocial, and Contextual Predictors.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2026Trial
- Associations of childhood maltreatment types and timing with oxidative stress in formerly out-of-home placed young adults.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2026Article
- Leveraging Machine Learning to Uncover Ethnic-Specific Predictors of Maternal Postpartum Depression.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2026Article
- Evaluating the Beck Depression Inventory-II Fast Screen in middle-aged and older adults using random forests and factor analytic methods.Psychological assessment · 2026Article
- Social determinants of mid-life mental health decline: a life-course analysis from the 1970 British Cohort Study.European journal of public health · 2026Article
- Influencing factors on seroma formation following mastectomy: a retrospective cohort study.World journal of surgical oncology · 2026Article
- Cognitive structure and progression in Parkinson's disease: insights from a tablet-based assessment.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Tutorial: Using Random Forest Analysis to Identify Auxiliary Variables of Missing Data.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2026Article
- Lower Striatal and Cortical Calretinin Interneuron Density Associated With Altered Social Behavior in Cntnap2 Knockout Mice.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Predicting heterosexual reactions to coming out in China.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- A Two-Stage Interpretable Fault Diagnosis Approach for Bearings Based on EBM.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Machine learning and probabilistic approaches for forecasting infectious disease transmission and cases.International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases · 2026Article
- Laser-induced hyperspectral fluorescence for spatio-chemical detection of sunscreen contaminants in food-grade sea salt using sparse PCA-SVM analysis.Environmental geochemistry and health · 2026Article
- A Machine Learning Study of Predictors of Homophobia Across the Globe.Archives of sexual behavior · 2026Article
- Development and Validation of Machine Learning-Based Models for Predicting Postoperative Depression Risk in Patients With Ovarian Cancer.Actas espanolas de psiquiatria · 2026Article
- Unveiling molecular signatures for precision drug design: machine learning insights from trypanothione reductase, PKC-θ, and CB1.Molecular diversity · 2026Article
- Dietary patterns influence the in silico GABA production capacity of Bifidobacterium adolescentis HD17T2H and other human gut bacteria.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Comparing machine learning and artificial neural network models in psychological research: a ROC-based analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent reform efforts have pushed toward a better understanding of the distinction between exploratory and confirmatory research, and appropriate use of each. As some utilize more exploratory tools, it may be tempting to employ multiple linear regression models. In this paper, we advocate for the use of random forest (RF) models. RF is able to obtain better predictive performance than traditional regression, while also inherently protecting against overfitting as well as detecting nonlinear effects and interactions among predictors. Given the advantages of RF compared to other statistical procedures, it is a tool commonly used within a plethora of industries, including stock trading, banking, pharmaceuticals, and patient healthcare planning. However, we find RF is used within the field of psychology comparatively less frequently. In the current paper, we advocate for RF as an important statistical tool within the context of behavioral and psychological research. In hopes of increasing the use of RF in the field of psychology, we provide information pertaining to the limitations one might confront in using RF and how to overcome such limitations. Moreover, we discuss various methods for how to optimally utilize RF with psychological data, such as nonparametric modeling, interaction and nonlinearity detection, variable selection, prediction and classification modeling, and assessing parameters of Monte Carlo simulations. Throughout, we illustrate the use of RF with visualization strategies, aimed to make RF models more comprehensible and intuitive.
Indexed as
Identifiers
35915361What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.