This book reviews methods of conceptualizing, measuring, and analyzing interdependent data in developmental and behavioral sciences. Quantitative and developmental experts describe best practices for modeling interdependent data that stem from interactions within families, relationships, and peer groups, for example. Complex models for analyzing longitudinal data, such as growth curves and time series, are also presented. Many contributors are innovators of the techniques and all are able to clearly explain the methodologies and their practical problems including issues of measurement, missing data, power and sample size, and the specific limitations of each method. Featuring a balance between analytic strategies and applications, the book addresses: The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model for analyzing influence between two individuals The Intraclass Correlational Approach for analyzing distinguishable roles (parent-child) or exchangeable (same-sex) dyadic data The Social Relations Model for analyzing group interdependency Social Network Analysis approaches for relationships between individuals This book is intended for graduate students and researchers across the developmental, social, behavioral, and educational sciences. It is an excellent research guide and a valuable resource for advanced methods courses.

Appropriate for use in developmental research methods or analysis of change courses, this is the first methods handbook specifically designed to meet the needs of those studying development. Leading developmental methodologists present cutting-edge analytic tools and describe how and when to use them, in accessible, nontechnical language. They also provide valuable guidance for strengthening developmental research with designs that anticipate potential sources of bias. Throughout the chapters, research examples demonstrate the procedures in action and give readers a better understanding of how to match research questions to developmental methods. The companion website (www.guilford.com/laursen-materials) supplies data and program syntax files for many of the chapter examples.

Research is vital in moving the field of family therapy forward, but the myriad of possibilities inherent in working with systems and individuals can overwhelm even the most seasoned researcher. Advanced Methods in Family Therapy Research is the best resource to address the day-to-day questions that researchers have as they investigate couples and families, and the best source for learning long-term theory and methodology. The contributors of this volume share their wisdom on a wide variety of topics including validity concerns, measuring interpersonal process and relational change, dyadic data analysis (demonstrated through a sample research study), mixed methods studies, and recruitment and retention. The volume contains one of the most detailed descriptions of data collections and covers interviewing, using questionnaires, and observing brain activity. Also addressed are suggestions to meaningfully reduce cultural bias, to conduct ethical research, and, in the Health Services Research chapter, to examine interventions for clients in various income brackets. A separate, ground-breaking chapter also addresses psychophysiological research in a couple and family therapeutic context. As an added benefit, readers will learn how to become informed consumers of journal articles and studies, how to produce quality, publishable research, and how to write fundable grant proposals. Each chapter provides a clear and detailed guide for students, researchers, and professionals, and as a whole Advanced Methods in Family Therapy Research advances the field by teaching readers how to provide evidence that marriage and family therapy not only relieves symptoms, but also effects behavioral change in all family members.

Social Relations Modeling of Behavior in Dyads and Groups covers software, interpersonal perception (adult and children), the SRM with roles (e.g. in families), and applications to non-human research. Written in an accessible way, and for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers, author Thomas E. Malloy strives to make inherently abstract material and unusual statistics understandable. As the social relations model provides a straightforward conceptual model of the components that make up behaviors in dyads and groups, this book will provide a powerful conceptual and methodological toolbox to analyze behaviors in dyads and groups across the sciences. This book is specifically designed to make this toolbox accessible - beyond interpersonal perception phenomena. It helps identify the relevant phenomena and dynamics surrounding behaviors in dyads and groups, and goes on to assess and analyze them empirically. - Captures essential conceptual and methodological topics around the scientific analyses of behaviors in groups and dyads - Situates the SRM in the history of dyadic research - Offers detailed guidance on research design and measurement operations - Organizes models and empirical results into easily read figures and tables - Demonstrates how SRM variances and covariances can be used as dependent measures in experiments - Conceptualizes novel phenomena in personality psychology using the SRM

This volume presents contributions on handling data in which the postulate of independence in the data matrix is violated. When this postulate is violated and when the methods assuming independence are still applied, the estimated parameters are likely to be biased, and statistical decisions are very likely to be incorrect. Problems associated with dependence in data have been known for a long time, and led to the development of tailored methods for the analysis of dependent data in various areas of statistical analysis. These methods include, for example, methods for the analysis of longitudinal data, corrections for dependency, and corrections for degrees of freedom. This volume contains the following five sections: growth curve modeling, directional dependence, dyadic data modeling, item response modeling (IRT), and other methods for the analysis of dependent data (e.g., approaches for modeling cross-section dependence, multidimensional scaling techniques, and mixed models). Researchers and graduate students in the social and behavioral sciences, education, econometrics, and medicine will find this up-to-date overview of modern statistical approaches for dealing with problems related to dependent data particularly useful.

The Handbook of Personality Dynamics and Processes is a primer to the basic and most important concepts, theories, methods, empirical findings, and applications of personality dynamics and processes. This book details how personality psychology has evolved from descriptive research to a more explanatory and dynamic science of personality, thus bridging structure- and process-based approaches, and it also reflects personality psychology's interest in the dynamic organization and interplay of thoughts, feelings, desires, and actions within persons who are always embedded into social, cultural and historic contexts. The Handbook of Personality Dynamics and Processes tackles each topic with a range of methods geared towards assessing and analyzing their dynamic nature, such as ecological momentary sampling of personality manifestations in real-life; dynamic modeling of time-series or longitudinal personality data; network modeling and simulation; and systems-theoretical models of dynamic processes. - Ties topics and methods together for a more dynamic understanding of personality - Summarizes existing knowledge and insights of personality dynamics and processes - Covers a broad compilation of cutting-edge insights - Addresses the biophysiological and social mechanisms underlying the expression and effects of personality - Examines within-person consistency and variability

The examination of personality and individual differences is a major field of research in the modern discipline of psychology. Concerned with the ways humans develop an organised set of characteristics to shape themselves and the world around them, it is a study of how people come to be ‘different’ and ‘similar’ to others, on both an individual and a cultural level. The SAGE Handbook of Personality and Individual Difference is the broadest and most comprehensive overview of the field to date. With outstanding contributions from leading scholars across the world, this is an invaluable resource for researchers and graduate students. Its three volumes cover all of the central concepts, domains and debates of this globally-expanding discipline, including the core theoretical perspectives, research strategies, as well as the origins, applications, and measurement of personality and individual difference.

The family can be a model of loving support, a crucible of pathology, or some blend of the two. Across disciplines, it is also the basic unit for studying human relationships, patterns of behavior, and influence on individuals and society. As family structures evolve and challenge previous societal norms, new means are required for understanding their dynamics, and for improving family interventions and policies. Emerging Methods in Family Research details innovative approaches designed to keep researchers apace with the diversity and complexities of today's families. This versatile idea-book offers meaningful new ways to represent multiple forms of diversity in family structure and process, cutting-edge updates to family systems models and measurement methods, and guidance on the research process, from designing projects to analyzing findings. These chapters provide not only new frameworks for basic research on families, but also prime examples of their practical use in intervention and policy studies. Contributors also consider the similarities and differences between the study of individuals and the study of family relationships and systems. Included in the coverage: Use of nonlinear dynamic models to study families as coordinated symbiotic systems. Use of network models for understanding change and diversity in the formal structure of American families. Representing trends and moment-to-moment variability in dyadic and family processes using state-space modeling techniques. Why qualitative and ethnographic methods are essential for understanding family life. Methods in multi-site trials of family-based interventions. Implementing the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) to analyze the effects of family interventions. Researchers in human development, family studies, clinical and developmental psychology, social psychology, sociology, anthropology, and social welfare as well as public policy researchers will welcome Emerging Methods in Family Research as a resource to inspire novel approaches to studying families.

The importance that practitioners are placing on longitudinal designs and analyses signals a critical shift toward methods that enable a better understanding of developmental processes thought to underlie many human attributes and behaviors. A simple scan of one’s own applied literature reveals evidence of this trend through the increasing number of articles adopting longitudinal methods as their primary analytic tools. Advances in Longitudinal Methods in the Social and Behavioral Sciences is a resource intended for advanced graduate students, faculty, and applied researchers interested in longitudinal data analysis, especially in the social and behavioral sciences. The chapters are written by established methodological researchers from diverse research domains such as psychology, biostatistics, educational statistics, psychometrics, and family sciences. Each chapter exposes the reader to some of the latest methodological developments and perspectives in the analysis of longitudinal data, and is written in a didactic tone that makes the content accessible to the broader research community. This volume will be particularly appealing to researchers in domains including, but not limited to: human development, clinical psychology, educational psychology, school psychology, special education, epidemiology, family science, kinesiology, communication disorders, and education policy and administration. The book will also be attractive to members of several professional organizations such as the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Psychological Association (APA), the American Psychological Society (APS), the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA), the Society of Research in Child Development (SRCD), Society for Research in Adult Development (SRAD), British Psychological Society (BPS), Canadian Psychological Association (CPA), and other related organizations.