Jacob Cohen (statistician)

Jacob Cohen (* 1923, † January 20, 1998 ) was an American psychologist and university lecturer. He made ​​a decisive contribution to the statistics in the behavioral sciences. One of the metrics most commonly used for the effect size, Cohen's d, goes back to him. The common measure of diagnostic agreement, Cohen's kappa, was introduced among other things from him.

Life and work

Cohen received his high school degree at the Townsend Harris High School in New York and came up with 15 years on the City College of New York. There, he was initially not very active (except for the ping-pong ), applied to the intelligence service of the U.S. Army and spent the last year of the 2nd World War in France. However, after his return to the United States, he continued his study psychology away, made in 1947 his degree, and received his doctorate in 1950 at New York University in clinical psychology. His doctoral thesis was the factor structure of the Wechsler intelligence tests in patients and comparison groups. Initial research he conducted at the Department of Veterans Affairs of the United States, where he was initially Staff Psychologist and later research director. During this time he developed and Cohen's kappa was employed part-time in teaching.

From 1959 he was professor at the Psychology Department at New York University, where he worked until his retirement in 1993. He was 1969 president of the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology, and was honored in 1997 by the American Psychological Association for his life's work.

His most influential contribution was the development of gross standards for small, medium and large effect sizes, as well as easy -to-use methods to estimate the statistical power needed for planned studies. His book Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences became a classic in this field.

Another important contribution was the introduction of new techniques for application of multiple regression analysis as a general method for the variance explained. In his last years he has the tradition of testing the null hypothesis in question, and suggested more modern techniques before to avoid the weaknesses of significance testing.

Works

  • Jacob Cohen: The statistical power of abnormal -social psychological research: A review. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 65, 1962, pp. 145-153.
  • Jacob Cohen: Multiple regression as a general dataanalytic System. Psychological Bulletin 70 (6 ), 1968, pp. 426-443.
  • Jacob Cohen, Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. 1969, 1988, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Jacob Cohen & Patricia Cohen: Applied multiple regression / correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences. 2nd edition 1983 Hillsdale, NJ:. Erlbaum.
  • Jacob Cohen: Things I Have Learned ( So Far ). American Psychologist 45 (12 ), 1990, pp. 1304-1312.
  • Jacob Cohen: A power primer. Psychological Bulletin 112 (1 ), 1992, pp. 155-159.
  • Jacob Cohen: The earth is round (p < .05). American Psychologist 49 (12 ), 1994, pp. 997-1003.

Literature on Jacob Cohen

  • Patrick E. Shrout: Jacob Cohen ( 1923-1998 ). American Psychologist 56 (2 ), 2001, pp. 166
Cohen's kappa Digital Object Identifier Integrated Authority File
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