Human sexuality researchers often find themselves faced with questions that entail conceptual, methodological, or ethical issues for which their professional training or prior experience may not have prepared them. The goal of this handbook is to provide that guidance to students and professionals interested in the empirical study of human sexuality from behavioral and social scientific perspectives. It provides practical and concrete advice about conducting human sexuality research and addresses issues inherent to both general social scientific and specific human sexuality research.
This comprehensive resource offers a unique multidisciplinary examination of the specific methodological issues inherent in conducting human sexuality research. The methodological techniques and advances that are familiar to researchers trained in one discipline are often unfamiliar to researchers from other disciplines. This book is intended to help enrich the communication between the various disciplines involved in human sexuality research. Each of the 21 self-standing chapters provides an expert overview of a particular area of research methodology from a variety of academic disciplines. It addresses those issues unique to human sexuality research, such as:
* how to measure sexuality variables;
* how to design studies, recruit participants, and collect data;
* how to consider cultural and ethical issues; and
* how to perform and interpret statistical analyses.
This book is intended as a reference tool for researchers and students interested in human sexuality from a variety of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, family science, health communication, nursing, medicine, and anthropology.

Have you been especially troubled by your relationship with a parent? Have you struggled to understand the difficulties in that relationship? Despite your efforts, has this relationship failed to improve? It may be that your parent has a "personality disorder." Personality disorders are long-standing in nature, undergo little change, and end up hurting others, particularly family members. This damage may occur through a self-centered approach to life as well poor decisions (such as addictions, problematic spending, and selecting poor relationship partners). People with personality disorders also harm through their inability to be honest (factually and emotionally), as well as their emotional or physical overreactions to situations. In this book, you'll begin to understand the essential nature of a personality disorder and how it applies to your parent. As examples, the authors describe two in-depth cases. Each case illustrates one of two personality disorder styles that appear to be relatively common: the intrusive personality style and the distant-hostile personality style. The authors offer a number of practical tactics for transcending, both psychologically and spiritually, the problematic past of having been raised by a parent with a personality disorder. This book is designed to offer supportive guidance in the murky terrain of toxic parent-child relationships. It's a must-read for everyone trying to understand and resolve difficulties in their relationships with their parents.

Should I go to graduate school? How do I choose where to apply? Are my grades and accomplishments good enough to get in? Who should I ask to write recommendation letters for me, and how should I approach these people? How do I write my "personal statement?" When will I hear my fate, and how should I make my final decision? These are just a few of the many questions to which this well-researched, thorough, and extremely user-friendly book offers answers. Students who are contemplating graduate training in psychology, counseling, and related fields are often apprehensive and confused about applying to graduate school, but this book takes the guesswork and anxiety out of the process.
The tone and features (such as the Q&A format, timeline for application-related tasks and activities, and special advice for special populations) that made the first edition so successful, eliciting hundreds of thank-you notes and e-mail messages to the author, are just as evident in this new edition. The book has been thoroughly updated to include coverage of new topics such as use of the internet and e-mail, as well as changing trends in the professions. The most obvious difference is that the book is now significantly shorter as a result of meticulous rewriting, making it even easier to use.
There have been attempts since the publication of the first edition to copy the format of this book, but none of the others have successfully duplicated the depth of research-based advice and the supportive style that make this book the guide of choice for thousands of graduate-school bound students and their advisors.