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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Psychological methodology
This book describes the evolution of the Washington University
Sentence Completion Test (SCT), a major measure of ego development,
from an intuitive rating scale to an empirically derived reliable
and valid personality test. The authors recount the complete
history of the SCT, which begins with the Family Problems Scale, an
objective test of mothers' attitudes. Work with that test led to a
concept of ego development, testable by the SCT, which was
elaborated and refined in further work.
There have been many important changes in the participation of
women and men in American society over the past quarter-century.
Tests play a role in those changes by providing evidence of the
diverse achievement and proficiency of women and men. They aid the
learning process and reflect inequalities in opportunity to learn
and participate. In addition, they provide useful information in
considering what alternatives in education and work make most sense
for individuals and influence views about groups of students,
educational programs, and a wide range of issues. For all of these
reasons, it is important that tests assess fairly and reflect
accurately the ways young people are and are not achieving as well
as desired.
This book offers clinicians a long-awaited comprehensive paradigm
for assessing object relations functioning in disturbed younger and
older adolescents. It gives a clear sense of how object relations
functioning is manifest in different disorders, and illuminates how
scores on object relations measures are converted into a
therapeutically relevant diagnostic matrix and formulation.
Appreciation of the beauty and complexity of the human mind when
perceiving an ambiguous stimulus led Dr. Hermann Rorschach to
develop his scientific method eighty years ago. Full of gratitude
for his brief life and work, the editors hope this volume will
stand as an idiographic testament to his brilliance for the
Rorschach students of the future. The contributors are clearly the
most notable Rorschach clinicians in practice, and their work
integrates the Comprehensive System and psychoanalytic methods.
Psychodiagnosis in Schizophrenia is a reprint of a classic volume
in assessment psychology that first appeared in 1966. The book
concerns the use of psychodiagnostic techniques in the differential
diagnosis of schizophrenia. The author first presents a conceptual
analysis of schizophrenic disturbance in terms of impaired ego
functioning and extrapolates from schizophrenic ego impairments to
psychodiagnostic indices that have been demonstrated to assess
them. In particular, Weiner refers to the Wechsler Adult
Intelligence Scale, the Rorschach Inkblot Method, and the
Draw-A-Person test. Clinical and research data delineating the
nature of psychological deficits in schizophrenia are reviewed, and
practical guidelines for the clinical assessment of these deficits
are presented.
Pain is an unfortunate daily experience for many individuals. Chronic pain -- lasting six or more months -- is suffered by approximately 30% of the population in the United States. These individuals wake up, function during the day and go to sleep, trying to keep pain at a minimum while, at the same time, maintaining some quality of life. They may make frequent visits to the doctor and the pharmacy. When they find relief, it is usually short-lived and comes at a cost such as dependence on narcotic medications or complete limitation of activity. Pain often becomes the central point of their existence. This practice guide describes an approach to psychological evaluation of the chronic pain patient who is being considered for surgery. A large body of research is accumulating which demonstrates that the outcome of surgical procedures aimed at chronic pain relief can be strongly influenced by psychological and emotional factors. This approach, termed "presurgical psychological screening" (PPS) uses interview and testing techniques to identify emotional, behavioral, and psychosocial difficulties which have been demonstrated to negatively impact surgical outcome. Studies show that even patients with clearly identifiable pathophysiology may respond poorly to surgery, due to issues such as pain sensitivity, medication dependence, rewards for pain behavior and personality style. Thus, some insurance carriers, rehabilitation nurses and state worker's compensation systems are encouraging, or even requiring, presurgical psychological screening in cases of surgery designed to relieve chronic pain. The first to present a comprehensive, unified approach to PPS in chronic pain syndromes, this text is designed to provide the behavioral health practitioner, as well as the trainee, with all the tools and information necessary to conduct PPS evaluations. It identifies a multitude of risk factors for poor surgical outcome and reviews research associated with each risk factor. Hands-on techniques for eliciting information from the patient about risk factors is also detailed. Toward this end, the practice guide also contains a number of forms and session outlines which can be directly utilized, or which can be altered to fit readers' needs. Models for weighing and combining surgical outcome risk factors are also provided. Thus, practitioners are able to reach valid and reliable predictions of surgical results. Finally, the text provides outlines of psychological interventions which can facilitate surgical outcome as well as surgical treatment alternatives. Upon completion of this practice guide, readers should be able to begin providing PPS evaluations which are scientifically valid, clinically sound, and which result in significant overall improvement in the treatment of chronic pain syndromes.
The Handbook of Research Methods in Human Memory presents a collection of chapters on methodology used by researchers in investigating human memory. Understanding the basic cognitive function of human memory is critical in a wide variety of fields, such as clinical psychology, developmental psychology, education, neuroscience, and gerontology, and studying memory has become particularly urgent in recent years due to the prominence of a number of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's. However, choosing the most appropriate method of research is a daunting task for most scholars. This book explores the methods that are currently available in various areas of human memory research and serves as a reference manual to help guide readers' own research. Each chapter is written by prominent researchers and features cutting-edge research on human memory and cognition, with topics ranging from basic memory processes to cognitive neuroscience to further applications. The focus here is not on the "what," but the "how"-how research is best conducted on human memory.
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI, MMPI-2, and
MMPI-A) and the Rorschach are the two tests used most widely in
clinical personality assessment to evaluate personality
functioning, current emotional state, and the presence, nature, and
severity of psychopathology, as well as to formulate treatment
interventions. Psychologists' vigorous interest in and intense
loyalty to the Rorschach and MMPI are reflected in the large and
still growing theoretical and empirical literature concerning these
tests. Given the enduring popularity of these two tests, it is
surprising to find that only a small percentage of these numerous
studies have examined the relationships between the two.
Pain is an unfortunate daily experience for many individuals.
Chronic pain -- lasting six or more months -- is suffered by
approximately 30% of the population in the United States. These
individuals wake up, function during the day and go to sleep,
trying to keep pain at a minimum while, at the same time,
maintaining some quality of life. They may make frequent visits to
the doctor and the pharmacy. When they find relief, it is usually
short-lived and comes at a cost such as dependence on narcotic
medications or complete limitation of activity. Pain often becomes
the central point of their existence.
Signal detection theory--as developed in electrical engineering and
based on statistical decision theory--was first applied to human
sensory discrimination 40 years ago. The theoretical intent was to
provide a valid model of the discrimination process; the
methodological intent was to provide reliable measures of
discrimination acuity in specific sensory tasks. An analytic method
of detection theory, called the relative operating characteristic
(ROC), can isolate the effect of the placement of the decision
criterion, which may be variable and idiosyncratic, so that a pure
measure of intrinsic discrimination acuity is obtained. For the
past 20 years, ROC analysis has also been used to measure the
discrimination acuity or inherent accuracy of a broad range of
practical diagnostic systems. It was widely adopted by
methodologists in the field of information retrieval, is
increasingly used in weather forecasting, and is the generally
preferred method in clinical medicine, primarily in radiology. This
book attends to both themes, ROC analysis in the psychology
laboratory and in practical diagnostic settings, and to their
essential unity.
Written for social science scholars who want to learn more about
the qualitative way of thinking, this book addresses the full
continuum of issues about the qualitative methodologies. At one end
of that continuum are the deeply philosophical concerns of ontology
and epistemology. At the other -- concrete -- end of that continuum
are the practical issues of what is considered evidence: How does
one go about gathering evidence? Where, when, and how does one
analyze evidence? What are the alternative ways of dealing with
tone and voice in writing qualitative research? The attention to
practical, concrete issues makes this book useful as a handbook
providing a great deal of vital information to scholars who want a
guide to making decisions as they navigate their research questions
through the qualitative realm.
The model of therapy described in this book places the client firmly at the centre of the therapeutic process. Adjusted to the developmental life-pattern of the client, it shows how structured agreements related to both the duration and focus of a particular therapeutic relationship can be adapted to the client's needs at any one time. It offers clients the possibility of a flexible range of encounters with different practitioners and therapists, an ethical solution to contemporary dilemmas about short-term treatment. Including an insert card outlining key stage agreements, and linked case scenarios illustrating the personal development of nine characters. The book is intended for practitioners of all psychological therapies who are looking for a rigorous but flexible approach to empowering their clients.
See How to Use Statistics for New Testament Interpretation The Synoptic Problem and Statistics lays the foundations for a new area of interdisciplinary research that uses statistical techniques to investigate the synoptic problem in New Testament studies, which concerns the relationships between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. There are potential applications of the techniques to study other sets of similar documents. Explore Hidden Markov Models for Textual Data The book provides an introductory account of the synoptic problem and relevant theories, literature, and research at a level suitable for academic and professional statisticians. For those with no special interest in biblical studies or textual analysis, the book presents core statistical material on the use of hidden Markov models to analyze binary time series. Biblical scholars interested in the synoptic problem or in the use of statistical methods for textual analysis can omit the more technical/mathematical aspects of the book. The binary time series data sets and R code used are available on the author's website.
Any research that involves the use of the Rorschach or focuses on
the nature of the Rorschach must be framed in the context of the
basic principles that mark any scientific investigation. However,
most texts concerning research design or data analysis do not deal
directly with many of the unusual issues that confront
investigators who use the Rorschach in their research. The nature
of the test and test procedures are somewhat different than for
most psychological tests, and, often, these special characteristics
become critical when research designs are formulated. Similarly,
some of the data of the tests are quite different from the
customary distributions yielded by other psychological tests. Thus
special care must be exercised when considering the variety of
tactics that might might be used in analyzing the test data.
Starting a research project, however large or small can be a daunting prospect. New researchers can be confronted with a huge number of options not only of topic, but of conceptual underpinning. It is quite possible to conduct research into say, memory, from a number of research traditions. Psychology also has links with several other disciplines and it is possible to utilise their techniques; the difficulty is quite simply the wide variety of methodological approaches that psychological research embraces. In this collection, authors have been recruited to explain a wide range of different research strategies and theories with examples from their own work. Their successes as well as the problems they encountered are explained to provide a comprehensive and practical guide for all new researchers. The collection will be a great help to undergraduates about to start final year projects and should be required reading for all those thinking of graduate level research.
Half a century after the collapse of the Nazi regime and the Third
Reich, scholars from a range of fields continue to examine the
causes of Nazi Germany. An increasing number of young Americans are
attempting to understand the circumstances that led to the rise of
the Nazi party and the subsequent Holocaust, as well as the
implication such events may have for today as the world faces a
resurgence of neo-Nazism, ethnic warfare, and genocide.
Distribution-free statistical methods enable users to make statistical inferences with minimum assumptions about the population in question. They are widely used, especially in the areas of medical and psychological research.
During the past two or three decades, research in cognitive science
and psychology has yielded an improved understanding of the
fundamental psychological nature of knowledge and cognitive skills
that psychological testing attempts to measure. These theories have
reached sufficient maturity, making it reasonable to look upon them
to provide a sound theoretical foundation for assessment,
particulary for the content of assessments. This fact, combined
with much discontentedness over current testing practices, has
inspired efforts to bring testing and cognitive theory together to
create a new theoretical framework for psychological testing -- a
framework developed for diagnosing learners' differences rather
than for ranking learners based on their differences.
During the past two or three decades, research in cognitive science
and psychology has yielded an improved understanding of the
fundamental psychological nature of knowledge and cognitive skills
that psychological testing attempts to measure. These theories have
reached sufficient maturity, making it reasonable to look upon them
to provide a sound theoretical foundation for assessment,
particulary for the content of assessments. This fact, combined
with much discontentedness over current testing practices, has
inspired efforts to bring testing and cognitive theory together to
create a new theoretical framework for psychological testing -- a
framework developed for diagnosing learners' differences rather
than for ranking learners based on their differences.
"When a Child Has Been Murdered: Ways You Can Help the Grieving Parents" is a concise, easy- to-read guide that begins with a general discussion of the types of grief that result from death and non-death losses. Then, using statements made by parents whose children were murdered, it discusses the specifics of murdered-child grief including: the complex emotions felt by the grieving parents, how the necessity of interacting with the criminal justice system can alter and enhance these emotions, short- and long-term methods these parents employ to work through the grieving process and to reconstruct their shattered lives, and how anyone who comes in contact with the parents can help them survive their grief.
Compositional Data Analysis in Practice is a user-oriented practical guide to the analysis of data with the property of a constant sum, for example percentages adding up to 100%. Compositional data can give misleading results if regular statistical methods are applied, and are best analysed by first transforming them to logarithms of ratios. This book explains how this transformation affects the analysis, results and interpretation of this very special type of data. All aspects of compositional data analysis are considered: visualization, modelling, dimension-reduction, clustering and variable selection, with many examples in the fields of food science, archaeology, sociology and biochemistry, and a final chapter containing a complete case study using fatty acid compositions in ecology. The applicability of these methods extends to other fields such as linguistics, geochemistry, marketing, economics and finance. R Software The following repository contains data files and R scripts from the book https://github.com/michaelgreenacre/CODAinPractice. The R package easyCODA, which accompanies this book, is available on CRAN -- note that you should have version 0.25 or higher. The latest version of the package will always be available on R-Forge and can be installed from R with this instruction: install.packages("easyCODA", repos="http://R-Forge.R-project.org").
Few applied disciplines are more sensitive to cross-cultural issues
than marketing and consumer psychology. The chapters prepared for
this volume reflect awareness of both similarities and differences
within and across cultures. They include analyses of methodological
issues, theoretical investigations of cultural and social values
and their implications for marketing specialists, studies of
gender- and sub-culture specific advertising, and investigations of
advertising efforts in several different international markets. The
scholars and advertising professionals who contributed these
chapters will have much to say to consumer psychologists and
marketing specialists alike.
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