32 The Methods in Practice: The Authors at Work
Every method in this book is a real tool, and the clearest proof of that is that the people who wrote the book have spent their careers using these tools on real problems: measuring pain, depression, and curiosity, running clinical trials, working through missing data, and debating what a number even means. This closing chapter is a guide with references attached. For each family of methods, it points to where the book teaches it and to published work where you can see it do real scientific work. Think of it as both a map and an invitation: read ours, then go make your own.
A note on completeness and honesty: the list below is selected, not exhaustive, and it favors publications whose citation details we could verify. A few relevant pieces (a Monte-Carlo study of CFA fit statistics; an IRT calibration paper) are still in preparation and are omitted here rather than cited as finished. That is the same discipline the case studies showed: claim only what you can stand behind.
32.1 Measurement: Reliability, Validity, and What a Number Means
Taught in Reliability and Validity. Measurement theory is the authors’ signature territory - the argument that a measure is a claim to be defended, not a column of numbers to be trusted.
- Sechrest, McKnight, & McKnight (Sechrest et al. 1996) - Calibration of measures for psychotherapy outcome studies (American Psychologist). The foundational statement: scores mean nothing until they are calibrated against something real.
- Coan, Allen, & McKnight (Coan et al. 2006) - a capability model of frontal EEG asymmetry (Biological Psychology): reconceiving what an individual-differences measure is measuring.
- Schnyer et al. (Schnyer et al. 2005) - building a Chinese-medicine assessment with the Delphi method and inter-rater reliability (J. Alternative & Complementary Medicine).
- McKnight & Sechrest (McKnight and Sechrest 2003) - The use and misuse of the term “experience” (Philosophical Psychology): what happens when a construct is never properly measured.
32.2 IRT, Rasch, and Generalizability Theory
Taught in Measuring Like Ben Wright. The authors’ item-response work runs unusually deep for a statistics-textbook author - and one paper was co-written with Ben Wright himself.
- Conrad, Wright, McKnight, et al. (Conrad et al. 2004) - Comparing traditional and Rasch analyses of the Mississippi PTSD Scale (J. Applied Measurement). The same Wright from the Rasch chapter: reverse-scored items behave badly, and Rasch reveals why.
- McKnight & Babcock-Parziale (McKnight and Babcock-Parziale 2007) - Rasch plus generalizability theory in one study of a vision-rehabilitation outcome (Optometry and Vision Science).
- Babcock-Parziale, McKnight, & Head (Babcock-Parziale et al. 2005) - psychometric equating of two blind-rehabilitation measures (JRRD).
- Stroud, McKnight, & Jensen (Stroud et al. 2004) - using IRT to shorten a disability scale without losing information (The Journal of Pain).
32.3 Factor Analysis, SEM, and Growth Curves
Taught in Building a Measure (EFA → CFA → invariance). The authors’ factor-analytic work leans confirmatory and simulation-flavored.
- Voelkle & McKnight (Voelkle and McKnight 2012) - One size fits all? (Methodology): a Monte-Carlo comparison of repeated-measures (M)ANOVA and latent curve modeling - exactly the ANOVA-is-a-GLM idea, extended into structural models.
32.4 Latent Class and Mixture Models
Taught (as configural profiles/antitypes) in When the Total Score Hides the Story.
- Kashdan, McKnight, Richey, & Hofmann (Kashdan et al. 2009) - latent class analysis uncovering a neglected, risk-prone subtype of social-anxiety disorder in the National Comorbidity Survey (Behaviour Research and Therapy). A hidden subgroup a sum score would never find.
32.5 Missing Data
Taught in Data Cleaning and The Data You Didn’t Get. This is home ground for us - one of us wrote the book.
- McKnight, McKnight, Sidani, & Figueredo (McKnight et al. 2007) - Missing Data: A Gentle Introduction (Guilford Press). The book behind the missing-data case study.
- McKnight & McKnight (McKnight and McKnight 2013) - Missing data in psychological science, in the Oxford Handbook of Research Strategies for Clinical Psychology.
32.6 Mediation and Moderation
Taught alongside Multiple Regression and the modern-methods chapter (bootstrapped indirect effects).
- McKnight, Afram, Kashdan, Kasle, & Zautra (McKnight, Afram, et al. 2010) - a bootstrapped mixed-effects mediation model: coping self-efficacy as the mechanism between catastrophizing and physical functioning (J. Behavioral Medicine). The exact bootstrap-the-indirect-effect logic from Beyond the Normal Curve.
- Hofmann, Richey, Kashdan, & McKnight (Hofmann et al. 2009) - anxiety disorders moderate the externalizing–substance-use link (J. Anxiety Disorders).
32.7 Longitudinal, Multilevel, and the Applied GLM
Taught across the GLM chapters and Power. The authors’ clinical-trial and diary work is where the linear model earns its living.
- McKnight, Kasle, Going, et al. (McKnight, Kasle, et al. 2010) - a 24-month randomized controlled trial of strength training for knee osteoarthritis (Arthritis Care & Research).
- Kasle, Wilhelm, McKnight, et al. (Kasle et al. 2010) - a prospective study of mutuality and inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis (Arthritis Care & Research).
- Doorley, Kashdan, Alexander, Blalock, & McKnight (Doorley et al. 2019) - a daily-diary / multilevel design on distress tolerance (Motivation and Emotion).
- Baer, Kivlahan, Blume, McKnight, & Marlatt (Baer et al. 2001) - a 4-year longitudinal follow-up of a brief-intervention trial (American Journal of Public Health).
- Foroughi, Monfort, Paczynski, McKnight, & Greenwood (Foroughi et al. 2016) - placebo effects in cognitive training (PNAS): a design lesson about what a “control” group must control.
32.8 Theory Worth Measuring
Taught implicitly throughout - because the whole point of good measurement is a question worth answering.
- McKnight & Kashdan (McKnight and Kashdan 2009b) - the case for functional impairment as the real outcome in depression research (Clinical Psychology Review).
- McKnight & Kashdan (McKnight and Kashdan 2009a) - Purpose in life as a system that creates and sustains health and well-being (Review of General Psychology) - the construct behind the purpose-and-happiness case study.
- Kashdan & McKnight (Kashdan and McKnight 2010) - The darker side of social anxiety (Current Directions in Psychological Science).
32.9 Go Make Your Own
That is the map: every method in this book has done real work in the world, and now you know where to go read it. But the larger invitation is the one this whole book has been making since the first page. The tools matter, but they are in service of something larger: a career’s worth of honest questions, carefully measured, modeled, and reported, including the ones you get wrong and say so. Read ours. Then go build your own body of work, and someday write a chapter like this one with your own studies in it.