The Children's Court is one of society's most important social institutions. At the same time, it is steeped in controversy. This is in large measure due to the persistence and complexity of the problems with which it deals, namely, juvenile crime and child abuse and neglect. Despite the importance of the Children's Court as a means of holding young people accountable for their anti-social behaviour and parents for the care of their children, it has not been the subject of close study. Certainly it has not been previously studied nationally. This book, an edited collection, is based on the findings of study that spanned the six States and two Territories of Australia. The study sought to examine the current challenges faced by the Children's Court and to identify desirable and feasible directions for reform in each State and Territory. A further unique feature of this study is that it canvassed the views of judges and magistrates who preside over this court.

This is a book about communication behavior: how we conceptualize it, observe it, measure it, and analyze it. The 1970s and 1980s were times when communication behavior was a primary interest of many communication scholars. The aim of this book is to reignite some interest in and passion about how human communication behavior should be studied. It presents the best advice, techniques, cautions, and controversies from the 1970s and 1980s and then updates them. Several chapters also introduce statistical methods and procedures to allow readers to analyze behavioral data. This book is a useful resource for communication scholars and graduate students to guide their study of communication behavior.

The book covers the topic of experimental instrumentation at the turn of the 20th century. The authors introduce the role of instruments in the process of establishing psychology as a science. They concentrate on identifying historical devices and problems with rediscovering their functionality. The core of the book consists of a categorized list of instruments with a description of their purpose and mechanical design. The categorization covers recording and time measuring devices, instruments designated for the research of human senses, memory and learning, and devices for physiological measurement. The publication also includes a companion website with short videos demonstrating selected instruments in action.

This book presents original, empirical data from quantitative and qualitative research studies in the field of language learning aptitude, ability, and individual differences. It does so from the perspectives of Second Language Acquisition, psychology, neuroscience and sociolinguistics. All studies included in the book use a similar and uniform layout and methodology. Each chapter contains a study examining factors such as memory, personality, self-concept, bilingualism and multilingualism, education, musicality or gender. The chapters investigate the influence of these concepts on language learning aptitude and ability. Several of these chapters analyse hypotheses which have never been tested before and therefore provide novel research results. The book contributes to the field both by verifying and contesting existent findings and by exploring novel approaches to devising research in the subject area.

Learn How to Use Growth Curve Analysis with Your Time Course Data An increasingly prominent statistical tool in the behavioral sciences, multilevel regression offers a statistical framework for analyzing longitudinal or time course data. It also provides a way to quantify and analyze individual differences, such as developmental and neuropsychological, in the context of a model of the overall group effects. To harness the practical aspects of this useful tool, behavioral science researchers need a concise, accessible resource that explains how to implement these analysis methods. Growth Curve Analysis and Visualization Using R provides a practical, easy-to-understand guide to carrying out multilevel regression/growth curve analysis (GCA) of time course or longitudinal data in the behavioral sciences, particularly cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, and psychology. With a minimum of statistical theory and technical jargon, the author focuses on the concrete issue of applying GCA to behavioral science data and individual differences. The book begins with discussing problems encountered when analyzing time course data, how to visualize time course data using the ggplot2 package, and how to format data for GCA and plotting. It then presents a conceptual overview of GCA and the core analysis syntax using the lme4 package and demonstrates how to plot model fits. The book describes how to deal with change over time that is not linear, how to structure random effects, how GCA and regression use categorical predictors, and how to conduct multiple simultaneous comparisons among different levels of a factor. It also compares the advantages and disadvantages of approaches to implementing logistic and quasi-logistic GCA and discusses how to use GCA to analyze individual differences as both fixed and random effects. The final chapter presents the code for all of the key examples along with samples demonstrating how to report GCA results. Throughout the book, R code illustrates how to implement the analyses and generate the graphs. Each chapter ends with exercises to test your understanding. The example datasets, code for solutions to the exercises, and supplemental code and examples are available on the author's website.

This book is an interdisciplinary guide to empirical research on nonverbal behaviour. It focuses on tools and procedures to investigate body movement and gesture and the relation to cognitive, emotional, and interactive processes. NEUROGES is an objective and reliable coding system for movement behaviour and gesture. Its combination with the multi-media annotation tool ELAN results in an effective movement analysis. Rater training and rating procedures constitute an important component in movement behaviour studies. A novel algorithm assesses interrater agreement for the segmentation of the ongoing flow of behaviour. Recommendations for study designs and statistical data evaluation are given, including innovative procedures for the analysis of interactive partners' body movements.

How Can You Improve Your Learning Capabilites? How Can You Enhance Your Potential for Change and Personal Growth? Most of us accept that education does not meet the needs of learners today, or their employers. This mismatch is a key reason why a high level of demotivated youth, as well as workers and managers remain unable to develop themselves. They have been other-organised and are unprepared for the world of work and the challenges of life. First published in 1991, this title offers a radical approach to human learning and personal change. Based on the reflective procedures of Learning Conversations, it enables a deep exploration of the learning process and allows individuals, teams and even whole organisations to create dynamic learning cultures capable of adaptive, constructive and continuing growth. Available again after some years this book is as relevant, if not of greater value, in our ever-changing society than when originally published.

This book presents the conceptual and mathematical basis and the implementation of both electroencephalogram (EEG) and EEG signal processing in a comprehensive, simple, and easy-to-understand manner. EEG records the electrical activity generated by the firing of neurons within human brain at the scalp. They are widely used in clinical neuroscience, psychology, and neural engineering, and a series of EEG signal-processing techniques have been developed. Intended for cognitive neuroscientists, psychologists and other interested readers, the book discusses a range of current mainstream EEG signal-processing and feature-extraction techniques in depth, and includes chapters on the principles and implementation strategies.

In this collection, international contributors come together to discuss how qualitative and quantitative methods can be used in psychotherapy research. The book considers the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, and recognises how each method can enhance our understanding of psychotherapy. Divided into two parts, the book begins with an examination of quantitative research and discusses how we can transfer observations into numbers and statistical findings. Chapters on quantitative methods cover the development of new findings and the improvement of existing findings, identifying and analysing change, and using meta-analysis. The second half of the book comprises chapters considering how qualitative and mixed methods can be used in psychotherapy research. Chapters on qualitative and mixed methods identify various ways to strengthen the trustworthiness of qualitative findings via rigorous data collection and analysis techniques. Adapted from a special issue of Psychotherapy Research, this volume will be key reading for researchers, academics, and professionals who want a greater understanding of how a particular area of research methods can be used in psychotherapy.

Designed for a graduate course in applied statistics, Nonparametric Methods in Statistics with SAS Applications teaches students how to apply nonparametric techniques to statistical data. It starts with the tests of hypotheses and moves on to regression modeling, time-to-event analysis, density estimation, and resampling methods. The text begins with classical nonparametric hypotheses testing, including the sign, Wilcoxon sign-rank and rank-sum, Ansari-Bradley, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Friedman rank, Kruskal-Wallis H, Spearman rank correlation coefficient, and Fisher exact tests. It then discusses smoothing techniques (loess and thin-plate splines) for classical nonparametric regression as well as binary logistic and Poisson models. The author also describes time-to-event nonparametric estimation methods, such as the Kaplan-Meier survival curve and Cox proportional hazards model, and presents histogram and kernel density estimation methods. The book concludes with the basics of jackknife and bootstrap interval estimation. Drawing on data sets from the author's many consulting projects, this classroom-tested book includes various examples from psychology, education, clinical trials, and other areas. It also presents a set of exercises at the end of each chapter. All examples and exercises require the use of SAS 9.3 software. Complete SAS codes for all examples are given in the text. Large data sets for the exercises are available on the author's website.

Aeromedical psychology is that branch of psychology pertaining to the assessment, selection and evaluation of aviation personnel. This book, Aeromedical Psychology, is designed to provide the means for a variety of clinicians to carry out sound assessment and selection procedures, perform informed evaluations and make subsequent recommendations regarding flight status and treatment strategies geared to the aviation environment. To facilitate a dynamic understanding of the field, the book emphasizes an integration of applications and theory, case examples and research. The book is divided into three parts. The first presents assessment and selection procedures for aviation personnel (i.e. air traffic controllers, flight officers and pilots) and astronauts and the many ways in which both psychologists and psychiatrists are involved in these roles. In the second part, the waiver standards put forth by both the FAA and the various branches of the military are presented, as well as the waiver decision process. Clinical issues unique to aviation - notably fear of flying, motivation to fly and airsickness - are addressed, as well as possible courses of intervention, treatment and disposition. In the final part, more specialized issues pertaining to aeromedical psychology are dealt with, namely the psychopharmacological research and regulations applicable to recreational pilots and aviation personnel, managing the aftermath of aviation mishaps and the psychologist's role in accident investigations.

This is the first book of its kind to include the personal accounts of people who have survived injury to the brain, along with professional therapists' reports of their progress through rehabilitation. The paintings and stories of survivors combine with experts' discussions of the theory and practice of brain injury rehabilitation to illustrate the ups and downs that survivors encounter in their journey from pre-injury status to insult and post-injury rehabilitation. Wilson, Winegardner and Ashworth's focus on the survivors' perspective shows how rehabilitation is an interactive process between people with brain injury, health care staff, and others, and gives the survivors the chance to tell their own stories of life before their injury, the nature of the insult, their early treatment, and subsequent rehabilitation. Presenting practical approaches to help survivors of brain injury achieve functionally relevant and meaningful goals, Life After Brain Injury: Survivors' Stories will help all those working in rehabilitation understand the principles involved in holistic brain injury rehabilitation and how these principles, combined with theory and models, translate into clinical practice. This book will be of great interest to anyone who wishes to extend their knowledge of the latest theories and practices involved in making life more manageable for people who have suffered damage to the brain. Life After Brain Injury: Survivors' Stories will also be essential for clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists, and anybody dealing with acquired brain injury whether they be a survivor of a brain injury themselves, a relative, a friend or a carer.

Assessing Adolescents with the MACI is an interpretive guide for using the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory—the most widely used personality assessment test for adolescents. The first book devoted exclusively to the MACI, this resource will prove a helpful guide for understanding the test, interpreting the results in clinical evaluation, and making appropriate recommendations for treatment and care management.

Unlike other assessment tests developed for adults and adapted for adolescents, the MACI was created to address the unique concerns, pressures, and situations of adolescents. The MACI is also constructed using an underlying theory of personality and psychopathology. The MACI is a 160-item, 31-scale self report inventory that was designed to assess personality styles, significant problems or concerns, and clinical symptoms in adolescents. Using a true false format, the MACI surveys a wide range of personality characteristics and clinical symptoms that tend to be a focus in psychological evaluations of teenagers that either have or are suspected of having emotional or behavioral difficulties.

While multi-scale personality inventories such as the MACI are useful for improving the clinician's understanding of an adolescent's personality and clinical symptoms, there are other reasons for using such instruments. The MACI can be used to formulate diagnostic hypotheses, confirm clinical diagnoses, formulate treatment plans, or assist in decision making surrounding case management and disposition planning. The MACI can be used as an outcome measure to evaluate changes in an adolescent's functioning as a result of treatment and intervention. Of course, the MACI can also be used in research studies to investigate a range of issues that pertain to adolescent psychopathology, personality, and treatment response.

Drawing on a broad range of sources, including data in the MACI manual, published research studies, unpublished research, theoretical literature, and his own experience with the test, Joseph McCann lays the groundwork for the basis of the test and then offers an exhaustive exploration of all facets of the test. Recognizing both the strengths and weaknesses of the MACI, McCann offers a balanced and comprehensive resource on this vital assessment tool.

"This book fills an important gap in the clinical literature . . . Joseph McCann, author of this first full text on the MACI, is the best known workshop presenter on the topic. Assessment with the MACI will enable the student and the clinician to develop a sophisticated basis for disentangling the many variations among youngsters, to assess both their assets and liabilities, to determine the presence of clinical disorders, and, most importantly, to provide a full picture that can serve as the basis for making decisions regarding each adolescent's welfare, that is, to be able to outline a logical course of treatment which may prove more optimally efficacious. It will guide the reader to transform the raw MACI test data, coordinate these data with the history of the youngster's experience, as well as with observational and interview information, facilitating interpretive syntheses and providing thereby a basis to help link assessment to psychotherapy. This text is insightful and comprehensive, a work of inestimable value to both practicing clinicians and students." —Theodore Millon, from the Foreword.

This book addresses issues related with researching sensitive topics in social work, focusing on marginalized, vulnerable and hard to reach people. It covers the definition, characteristics, challenges and opportunities of sensitive research, its philosophical roots and methodological debates, and the skills and values that are required along with the ethical, political and legal issues involved in conducting social work research. This book will cover innovative research methods appropriate for research on sensitive topics involving vulnerable people. It shines light on how to use traditional research methods sensitively, and how to generate data while minimizing the harm that can potentially be caused to research participants and researchers.

The Generic Qualitative Approach to a Dissertation in the Social Sciences: A Step by Step Guide is a practical guide for the graduate students and faculty planning and executing a generic qualitative dissertation in the social sciences. Generic qualitative research is a methodology that seeks to understand human experience by taking a qualitative stance and using qualitative procedures. Based on Sandra Kostere and Kim Kostere's experiences of serving on dissertation committees, this book aims to demystify both the nuances and the procedures of qualitative research, with the aim of empowering students to conduct meaningful dissertation research and present findings that are rigorous, credible, and trustworthy. It examines the fundamental principles and assumptions underlying the generic qualitative method, then covers each stage of the research process including creation of research questions, interviews, and then offers three ways of analyzing the data gathered and presenting the results. With examples of the generic qualitative method in practice to show students how to conduct their research confidently, and chapters designed to walk the researcher through each step of the dissertation process, this book is specifically tailored for the accessible generic method, and will be useful for graduate students and faculty developing dissertations in Psychology, Education, Nursing and the social sciences.

This book reviews the latest techniques in exploratory data mining (EDM) for the analysis of data in the social and behavioral sciences to help researchers assess the predictive value of different combinations of variables in large data sets. Methodological findings and conceptual models that explain reliable EDM techniques for predicting and understanding various risk mechanisms are integrated throughout. Numerous examples illustrate the use of these techniques in practice. Contributors provide insight through hands-on experiences with their own use of EDM techniques in various settings. Readers are also introduced to the most popular EDM software programs. A related website at http://mephisto.unige.ch/pub/edm-book-supplement/offers color versions of the book's figures, a supplemental paper to chapter 3, and R commands for some chapters. The results of EDM analyses can be perilous - they are often taken as predictions with little regard for cross-validating the results. This carelessness can be catastrophic in terms of money lost or patients misdiagnosed. This book addresses these concerns and advocates for the development of checks and balances for EDM analyses. Both the promises and the perils of EDM are addressed. Editors McArdle and Ritschard taught the "Exploratory Data Mining" Advanced Training Institute of the American Psychological Association (APA). All contributors are top researchers from the US and Europe. Organized into two parts--methodology and applications, the techniques covered include decision, regression, and SEM tree models, growth mixture modeling, and time based categorical sequential analysis. Some of the applications of EDM (and the corresponding data) explored include: selection to college based on risky prior academic profiles the decline of cognitive abilities in older persons global perceptions of stress in adulthood predicting mortality from demographics and cognitive abilities risk factors during pregnancy and the impact on neonatal development Intended as a reference for researchers, methodologists, and advanced students in the social and behavioral sciences including psychology, sociology, business, econometrics, and medicine, interested in learning to apply the latest exploratory data mining techniques. Prerequisites include a basic class in statistics.

YIS has been thought as an annual series of volumes collecting contributes aimed at developing the integration of idiographic and nomothetic approaches in psychological and more in general social science. At the beginning, 3 years ago, we got an agreement with an Italian publisher (FGP - Firera Publishing Group) interested in the scientific project and therefore willing to help the start up of this scientific enterprise. After publishing the first volume (YIS 2008- yet published in 2009 - the Volume is freely available on the FPG's website) we have had many positive feedbacks and signals of interests, as well as several submissions, from many parts of the world . This has provided an acceleration of the following issues - Above all, this led us to realize that it was time to give an editorial collocation to YIS that can be more consistent with the interest it has raised and that can ulteriorly raise. FPG does not put constraint on this perspective, being aware and agreed of the necessity of a worldwide context for the YIS's development. Moreover, there are no constraints in the possibility of going on in using the label "YIS," starting from Volume 4 The Series addresses a quite large potential public - students and researchers interested to theoretical and methodological development of psychology and, more in general, social science. Persons engaged with qualitative, dynamic informed models of analysis will find YIS a precious tool as well as a context enabling to develop a worlwide network of practices and cultures of research. The first three volumes' TOC witness how large and constantly increasing is the interest around the scientific project.

Since its creation more than eighty years ago, the famous Rorschach inkblot test has become an icon of clinical psychology and popular culture. Administered over one million times world-wide each year, the Rorschach is used to assess personality and mental illness across a wide range of circumstances: child custody disputes, educational placement decisions, employment and termination proceedings, parole determinations, and even investigations of child abuse allegations. The test's enormous power shapes the lives of hundreds of thousands of people -- often without their knowledge. In the 1970s, this notoriously subjective test was supposedly systematized and improved. But is the Rorschach more than a modern variant on tea leaf reading?

"What's Wrong With the Rorschach?" challenges the validity and utility of the Rorschach and explains why psychologists continue to judge people by their reactions to ink blots, in spite of a half century of largely negative scientific evidence.

"What's Wrong With the Rorschach?" offers a provocative critique of one of the most widely applied and influential - and still intensely controversial - psychological tests in the world today. Surveying more than fifty years of clinical and scholarly research, the authors provide compelling scientific evidence that the Rorschach has relatively little value for diagnosing mental illness, assessing personality, predicting behavior, or uncovering sexual abuse or other trauma. In this highly engaging, novelistic account of the Rorschach's origins and history, the authors detail the wealth of scientific evidence that the test is of questionable utility for real-world decision making.

"What's Wrong With the Rorschach?" presents a powerfully reasoned case against using the test in the courtroom or consulting room - and reveals the strong psychological, economic, and political forces that continue to support the Rorschach despite the research that has exposed its shortcomings and dangers.

Single Case Research in Schools addresses and examines the variety of cutting-edge issues in single case research (SCR) in educational settings. Featuring simple and practical techniques for aggregating data for evidence-based practices, the book delves into methods of selecting behaviors of interest and measuring them reliably. The latter part of Single Case Research in Schools is devoted to a step-by-step model of using SCR to evaluate practices in schools. This includes considerations such as measurement, date collection, length of phases, design consideratoins, calculating effect size and reliability of measures.

This edited volume features cutting-edge topics from the leading researchers in the areas of latent variable modeling. Content highlights include coverage of approaches dealing with missing values, semi-parametric estimation, robust analysis, hierarchical data, factor scores, multi-group analysis, and model testing. New methodological topics are illustrated with real applications. The material presented brings together two traditions: psychometrics and structural equation modeling. Latent Variable and Latent Structure Models' thought-provoking chapters from the leading researchers in the area will help to stimulate ideas for further research for many years to come. This volume will be of interest to researchers and practitioners from a wide variety of disciplines, including biology, business, economics, education, medicine, psychology, sociology, and other social and behavioral sciences. A working knowledge of basic multivariate statistics and measurement theory is assumed.

Single Case Research in Schools addresses and examines the variety of cutting-edge issues in single case research (SCR) in educational settings. Featuring simple and practical techniques for aggregating data for evidence-based practices, the book delves into methods of selecting behaviors of interest and measuring them reliably. The latter part of Single Case Research in Schools is devoted to a step-by-step model of using SCR to evaluate practices in schools. This includes considerations such as measurement, date collection, length of phases, design consideratoins, calculating effect size and reliability of measures.

Contemporary Psychometrics features cutting edge chapters organized in four sections: test theory, factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and multivariate analysis. The section on test theory includes topics such as multidimensional item response theory (IRT), the relationship between IRT and factor analysis, estimation and testing of these models, and basic measurement issues that are often neglected. The factor analysis section reviews the history and development of the model, factorial invariance and factor analysis indeterminacy, and Bayesian inference for factor scores and parameter estimates. The section on structural equation modeling (SEM) includes the general algebraic-graphic rules for latent variable SEM, a survey of goodness of fit assessment, SEM resampling methods, a discussion of how to compare correlations between and within independent samples, dynamic factor models based on ARMA time series models, and multi-level factor analysis models for continuous and discrete data. The final section on multivariate analysis includes topics such as dual scaling of ordinal data, model specification and missing data problems in time series models, and a discussion of the themes that run through all multivariate methods. This tour de force through contemporary psychometrics will appeal to advanced students and researchers in the social and behavioral sciences and education, as well as methodologists from other disciplines.

Built around a problem solving theme, this book extends the intermediate and advanced student's expertise to more challenging situations that involve applying statistical methods to real-world problems. Data relevant to these problems are collected and analyzed to provide useful answers. Building on its central problem-solving theme, a large number of data sets arising from real problems are contained in the text and in the exercises provided at the end of each chapter. Answers, or hints to providing answers, are provided in an appendix. Concentrating largely on the established SPSS and the newer S-Plus statistical packages, the author provides a short, end-of-chapter section entitled Computer Hints that helps the student undertake the analyses reported in the chapter using these statistical packages.

This volume presents the first wide-ranging critical review of validity generalization (VG)--a method that has dominated the field since the publication of Schmidt and Hunter's (1977) paper "Development of a General Solution to the Problem of Validity Generalization." This paper and the work that followed had a profound impact on the science and practice of applied psychology. The research suggests that fundamental relationships among tests and criteria, and the constructs they represent are simpler and more regular than they appear. Looking at the history of the VG model and its impact on personnel psychology, top scholars and leading researchers of the field review the accomplishments of the model, as well as the continuing controversies. Several chapters significantly extend the maximum likelihood estimation with existing models for meta analysis and VG. Reviewing 25 years of progress in the field, this volume shows how the model can be extended and applied to new problems and domains. This book will be important to researchers and graduate students in the areas of industrial organizational psychology and statistics.