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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Psychological methodology
ESSENTIALS OF STATISTICS FOR THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, 10th Edition delivers straightforward instruction, hands-on learning tools and real-world examples to help you go beyond memorizing formulas to truly understanding the hows and whys of statistics. Giving extra focus to the topics students typically struggle with most, the authors take time to fully explain statistical concepts. Integrated applications reinforce concepts, offering further support to ensure that even those with a weak background in mathematics can fully grasp statistics. The authors also illustrate how an understanding of statistical procedures will help you comprehend published findings -- ultimately leading you to become a savvy consumer of information.
Assessment is an important part of any psychologist's role and the outcome can have consequences, positive and negative, for the person being assessed. The principles and practice of psychological assessment is a guide to drawing up, administering and interpreting assessment procedures, and judging whether the techniques used are theoretically and procedurally sound. It also takes a special look at assessment from an organisational perspective, because although many of the technical and scientific issues with respect to psychological assessment are common to all areas of applied psychology, there are numerous issues and applications that are unique to the organisational context. The principles and practice of psychological assessment is more of a "how to" than a critical text, but includes some background information and in-depth theorising for more problematic issues. A glossary of terms and a unique cognitive map of psychological tests are provided. Changes in this third edition include a new chapter on the history of assessment in South Africa, and the dominant narrative in some quarters that industrial psychologists set out deliberately to ensure the failure of some segments of the workforce. The principles and practice of psychological assessment is aimed at third year and honours students of psychology and industrial psychology as well as practitioners.
Research today demands the application of sophisticated and powerful research tools. Fulfilling this need, The Oxford Handbook of Quantitative Methods in Psychology is the complete tool box to deliver the most valid and generalizable answers to today's complex research questions. It is a one-stop source for learning and reviewing current best-practices in quantitative methods as practiced in the social, behavioral, and educational sciences. Comprising two volumes, this handbook covers a wealth of topics related to quantitative research methods. It begins with essential philosophical and ethical issues related to science and quantitative research. It then addresses core measurement topics before delving into the design of studies. Principal issues related to modern estimation and mathematical modeling are also detailed. Topics in the handbook then segway into the realm of statistical inference and modeling with chapters dedicated to classical approaches as well as modern latent variable approaches. Numerous chapters associated with longitudinal data and more specialized techniques round out this broad selection of topics. Comprehensive, authoritative, and user-friendly, this two-volume set will be an indispensable resource for serious researchers across the social, behavioral, and educational sciences.
Evidence-based practice has become the benchmark for quality in healthcare and builds on rules of evidence that have been developed in psychology and other health-care disciplines over many decades. This volume aims to provide clinical neuropsychologists with a practical and approachable reference for skills in evidence-based practice to improve the scientific status of patient care. The core skills involve techniques in critical appraisal of published diagnostic-validity or treatment studies. Critical appraisal skills assist any clinician to evaluate the scientific status of any published study, to identify the patient-relevance of studies with good scientific status, and to calculate individual patient-probability estimates of diagnosis or treatment outcome to guide practice. Initial chapters in this volume review fundamental concepts of construct validity relevant to the assessment of psychopathology and cognitive abilities in neuropsychological populations. These chapters also summarize exciting contemporary development in the theories of personality and psychopathology, and cognitive ability, showing a convergence of theoretical and clinical research to guide clinical practice. Conceptual skills in interpreting construct validity of neuropsychological tests are described in detail in this volume. In addition, a non-mathematical description of the concepts of test score reliability and the neglected topic of interval estimation for individual assessment is provided. As an extension of the concepts of reliability, reliable change indexes are reviewed and the implication of impact on evidence-based practice of test scores reliability and reliable change are described to guide clinicians in their interpretation of test results on single or repeated assessments. Written by some of the foremost experts in the field of clinical neuropsychology and with practical and concrete examples throughout, this volume shows how evidence-based practice is enhanced by reference to good theory, strong construct validity, and better test score reliability.
Psychological assessment is practiced in wide-ranging settings to
address the varied clinical and administrative needs of veteran
populations. Such assessment blends record review, clinical
interviews of the veteran and collateral sources of information,
behavioral observations, and psychological testing.
Research is finding a way to measure the problem. This seminal 2-volume book contains hundreds of the most useful measurement tools for use in clinical practice and in research. All measures are critiqued by the editors, who provide guidance on how to select and score them and the actual measures are wholly reproduced. This second volume, focusing on measures for use with adults, whose conditions of concerns are not focused on family relationships or couple relationships, includes an introduction to the basic principles of measurement, an overview of different types of measures, and an overview of the Rapid Assessment Inventories included herein. Volume II also contains descriptions and reviews of each instrument, as well as information on how they were selected and how to administer and score them. This book is designed as the definitive reference volume on assessment measures for both practice and research in clinical mental health. This fifth edition of Corcoran and Fischer's Measures for Clinical Practice and Research is updated with a new preface, new scales, and updated information for existing instruments, expanding and cementing its utility for members of all the helping professions, including psychology, social work, psychiatry, counseling, nursing, and medicine. Alone or as a set, these classic compendiums are powerful tools that clinicians and researchers alike will find an invaluable addition to - or update of - their libraries.
Comprehensive yet accessible, this text provides a practical introduction to the skills, attitudes, and methods required to assess the worth and value of human services offered in public and private organizations in a wide range of fields. Students are introduced to the need for such activities, the methods for carrying out evaluations, and the essential steps in organizing findings into reports. The text focuses on the work of people who are closely associated with the service to be evaluated, and is designed to help program planners, developers, and evaluators to work with program staff members who might be threatened by program evaluation.
Qualitative interviewing is among the most widely used methods in the social sciences, but it is arguably the least understood. In The Science and Art of Interviewing, Kathleen Gerson and Sarah Damaske offer clear, theoretically informed and empirically rich strategies for conducting interview studies. They present both a rationale and guide to the science-and art-of in-depth interviewing to take readers through all the steps in the research process, from the initial stage of formulating a question to the final one of presenting the results. Gerson and Damaske show readers how to develop a research design for interviewing, decide on and find an appropriate sample, construct a questionnaire, conduct probing interviews, and analyze the data they collect. At each stage, they also provide practical tips about how to address the ever-present, but rarely discussed challenges that qualitative researchers routinely encounter, particularly emphasizing the relationship between conducting well-crafted research and building powerful social theories. With an engaging, accessible style, The Science and Art of Interviewing targets a wide range of audiences, from upper-level undergraduates and graduate methods courses to students embarking on their dissertations to seasoned researchers at all stages of their careers.
Wise Use of Null Hypothesis Tests is a user-friendly handbook meant for practitioners. Rather than overwhelming the reader with endless mathematical operations that are rarely performed by hand, the author emphasizes concepts and reasoning. In Wise Use of Null Hypothesis Tests, the author explains what is accomplished by testing null hypotheses-and what is not. The author explains the misconceptions that concern null hypothesis testing. He explains why confidence intervals show the results of null hypothesis tests. Most importantly, the author explains the Big Secret. Many-some say all-null hypotheses must be false. But authorities tell us we should test false null hypotheses anyway to determine the direction of a difference that we know must be there (a topic unrelated to so-called one-tailed tests). In Wise Use of Null Hypothesis Tests, the author explains how to control how often we get the direction wrong (it is not half of alpha) and commit a Type III (or Type S) error.
This book will be written primarily for graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and professionals in the fields of school psychology, special education, and other areas of education, as well as the health professions. We see the book as being a viable textbook for courses in research design, applied statistics, applied behavioral analysis, and practicum, among others. We would not assume of the readers any prior knowledge about single subjects designs, nor any prior statistical experience. We will provide an introductory chapter devoted to basic statistical concepts, including measures of central tendency (e.g., mean, median, mode), measures of variation (e.g., variance, standard deviation, range, inter-quartile range), correlation, frequency distributions, and effect sizes. In addition, given that the book will rely heavily on R software, the introductory chapter will also devote attention to the basics of using the software for organizing data, conducting basic statistical analyses, and for graphics. The R commands used to carry out these analyses will be largely automated so that users will only need to define the range for their data, and then enter it into the R spreadsheet. We envision these tools being available on the book website, with instructions for using them available in the book itself. We envision the book as being useful either as a primary text for a course in educational research designs, school psychology practicum, applied behavioral analysis, special education, or applied statistics. We also anticipate that individuals working in schools, school districts, mental health facilities, hospitals, applied behavioral analysis clinics, and evaluation organizations, as well as faculty members needing a practical resource for single subject design research, will all serve as a market for the book. In short, the readership would include graduate students, faculty members, teachers, psychologists, social workers, counselors, medical professionals, applied behavioral analysis professionals, program evaluators, and others whose work focuses on monitoring changes in individuals, particularly as the result of specific treatment conditions. We believe that this book could be marketed through professional organizations such as the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Association of Special Education Teachers, the Association for Professional Behavior Analysis, the American Psychological Association (APA), the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Evaluation Association. Within AERA, the following special interest groups would have particular interest in this book: Action Research, Classroom Observation, Disability Studies in Education, Mixed Methods Research, Qualitative Research, and Special Education Research. The book could also be marketed to state departments of education and their special education and school psychology divisions. Currently, many state departments of education require documentation for Response to Intervention (RtI) and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) procedures for individual students. The method taught in this proposed book would allow educators and student support personnel to document the effectiveness of interventions systematically and accurately.
This book presents procedures and research techniques that are based on critical perspectives of Psychology and Education. The content is characterized by innovations on the relationship between the researcher and the investigated context, and it problematizes different perspectives and approaches to the psychological phenomenon proposing new understandings of the subject, the world, the social and the field of investigation itself as a permanent dialectical movement. The book reports to Marxist-based perspectives - especially to Vygotsky's ideas and concepts. Therefore, it assumes the comprehension that in order to understand the phenomenon in its historical dimension it is necessary to put it into motion seeking to access the genesis of the manifestations evidenced at the moment of the investigation. That is, the historicity that characterizes the process of constitution of the human psyche can only be apprehended in its movement, thus, what matters is the process and not the product of its development. Nevertheless, apprehending phenomena in movement is a challenge for researchers interested in human processes within the scope of relationships or practices of professionals and/or subjects of various scenarios, which leads to the need to problematize the different moments of research and their dimension in the theoretical and practical fields. Which methodological techniques or procedures allow the apprehension of the meaning movement produced by the subjects in the investigated scenarios? To what extent does dialectical materialism derived from Marxism support the apprehension and analysis of research information of this nature? What other theoretical-methodological perspectives, related to Cultural-Historical Psychology, offer subsidies to these investigations? The theoretical perspectives based on the Social and Cultural analysis focus on the understandings of collective contexts precisely because of the subject view constituted in the inter-subjective relations that it undertakes - which adds even more complexity to the investigative processes. From this perspective, both the subject and other participants transform themselves during the investigation, such transformation needs to be permanently reflected and included in the research objectives and purposes, in order to follow the movement of the meanings in the expressed phenomenon.
The book is designed primarily for graduate students (or advanced undergraduates) who are learning psychometrics, as well as professionals in the field who need a reference for use in their practice. We would assume that users have some basic knowledge of using SAS to read data and conduct basic analyses (e.g., descriptive statistics, frequency distributions). In addition, the reader should be familiar with basic statistical concepts such as descriptive statistics (e.g., mean, median, variance, standard deviation), percentiles and the rudiments of hypothesis testing. They should also have a passing familiarity with issues in psychometrics such as reliability, validity and test/survey scoring. The authors do not assume any more than basic familiarity with these issues, and devote a portion of each chapter (as well as the entire first chapter) to reviewing many of these basic ideas for those not familiar with them. This book will be useful either as a primary text for a course on applied measurement where SAS is the main platform for instruction, or as a supplement to a more theoretical text. The readership will include graduate students, faculty members, data analysts and psychometricians responsible for analysis of survey response data, as well as educational and psychological assessments. This book aims to provide readers with the tools necessary for assessing the psychometric qualities of educational and psychological measures as well as surveys and questionnaires. Each chapter covers an issue pertinent to psychometric and measurement practice, with an emphasis on application. Topics are briefly discussed from a theoretical/technical perspective in order to provide the reader with the background necessary to correctly use and interpret the statistical analyses that is presented subsequently. Readers are then presented with examples illustrating a particular concept (e.g., reliability). These examples include a discussion of the particular analysis, along with the SAS code necessary to conduct them. The resulting output is then discussed in detail, focusing on the interpretation of the results. Finally, examples of how these results might be written up is also included in the text. This mixture of theory with examples of actual practice will serve the reader both as a pedagogical tool and as a reference work.
Mastering the Semi-Structured Interview and Beyondoffers an in-depth and captivating step-by-step guide to the use of semi-structured interviews in qualitative research. By tracing the life of an actual research project-an exploration of a school district's effort over 40 years to address racial equality-as a consistent example threaded across the volume, Anne Galletta shows in concrete terms how readers can approach the planning and execution of their own new research endeavor, and illuminates unexpected real-life challenges they may confront and how to address them.The volume offers a close look at the inductive nature of qualitative research, the use of researcher reflexivity, and the systematic and iterative steps involved in data collection, analysis, and interpretation. It offers guidance on how to develop an interview protocol, including the arrangement of questions and ways to evoke analytically rich data.Particularly useful for those who may be familiar with qualitative research but have not yet conducted a qualitative study, Mastering the Semi-Structured Interview and Beyondwill serve both undergraduate and graduate students as well as more advanced scholars seeking to incorporate this key methodological approach into their repertoire.Anne Gallettais Associate Professor at the College of Education and Human Services at Cleveland State University.William E. Cross, Jr.is the author of Shades of Black: Diversity in African-American Identity.In theQualitative Studies in Psychologyseries
Social (psychological and sociological) systems present considerable difficulties for modellers due to their complexity, multidimensionality, uncertainty and irreducibility. The book proposes that response functions (MRF) be used as a method of constructing purposeful, credible and integrated social systems' models from data and prior knowledge or information. For case studies the authors have selected the problems usually studied by psychologists and sociologists with statistical procedures, such as investigation of variance and discriminant analysis based on the general linear model or one of its multivariate generalisations (structural equation models, etc.); disordered eating and obesity; subjective well-being and alexithymia. An accompanying CD-ROM contains the demonstration versions of three models that are discussed in the various chapters. The Method of Response Functions in Psychology and Sociology is aimed at Mathematical Psychologists; Mathematical Sociologists; Applied Psychologists; Sociologists and Social Practitioners. It will also be suitable for use on undergraduate as well as graduate and postgraduate courses specializing in these areas.
This book summarizes information on adaptive behavior and skills as
well as general issues in adaptive behavior assessment with the
goal of promoting sound assessment practice during uses,
interpretations, and applications of the Adaptive Behavior
Assessment System-II.
The concept of the Self has a long history that dates back from the ancient Greeks such as Aristotle to more contemporary thinkers such as Wundt, James, Mead, Cooley, Freud, Rogers, and Erikson (Tesser & Felson, 2000). Research on the Self relates to a range of phenomena including self-esteem, self-concept, self-protection, self-verification, self-awareness, identity, self-efficacy, self-determination etc. that could be sharply different or very similar. Despite this long tradition of thinkers and the numerous studies conducted on the Self, this concept is still not very well defined. More precisely, it is not a precise object of study, but rather a collection of loosely related subtopics (Baumesiter, 1998). Also, in the philosophical literature, the legitimacy of the concept of "self" has been brought into question. Some authors have argued that the self is not a psychological entity per se, but rather an illusion created by the complex interplay between cognitive and neurological subsystems (Zahavi, 2005). Although no definitive consensus has been reached regarding the Self, we emphasis in this volume that the Self and its related phenomena including self-concept, motivation, and identity are crucial for understanding consciousness and therefore important to understand human behavior. Self-Concept, Motivation and Identity: Underpinning Success with Research and Practice provides thus a unique insight into self-concept and its relationship to motivation and identity from varied theoretical and empirical perspectives. This volume is intended to develop both theoretical and methodological ideas and to present empirical evidence demonstrating the importance of theory and research to effective practice. |
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