Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.

Using and Interpreting Statistics in the Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences is designed to be paired with any undergraduate introduction to research methods text used by students in a variety of disciplines. It introduces students to statistics at the conceptual level—examining the meaning of statistics, and why researchers use a particular statistical technique, rather than computational skills. Focusing on descriptive statistics, and some more advanced topics such as tests of significance, measures of association, and regression analysis, this brief, inexpensive text is the perfect companion to help students who have not yet taken an introductory statistics course or are confused by the statistics used in the articles they are reading.

When it comes to sizing up America’s public schools, test scores are the go-to metric of state policy makers and anxious parents looking to place their children in the “best” schools. Yet ample research indicates that standardized tests are a poor way to measure a school’s performance. It is time—indeed past time—to rethink this system, Jack Schneider says. Beyond Test Scores reframes current debates over school quality by offering new approaches to educational data that can push us past our unproductive fixation on test scores. Using the highly diverse urban school district of Somerville, Massachusetts, as a case study, Schneider and his research team developed a new framework to more fairly and comprehensively assess educational effectiveness. And by adopting a wide range of measures aligned with that framework, they were able to more accurately capture a broader array of school strengths and weaknesses. Their new data not only provided parents, educators, and administrators with a clearer picture of school performance, but also challenged misconceptions about what makes a good school. With better data, Schneider shows, stakeholders at the federal, state, and local levels can undo the damage of present accountability systems and build greater capacity in our schools. Policy makers, administrators, and school leaders can better identify where assistance is needed. Educators can engage in more evidence-based decision making. And parents can make better-informed choices for their children. Perhaps most importantly, better data can facilitate communication among all these groups, allowing them to take collective action toward shared, concrete goals.

The Handbook of Personality Assessment provides comprehensive guidance on the administration, scoring, and interpretation of the most widely-used instruments. Written by two of the field's foremost authorities, this well-balanced guide blends theory and application to provide a foundational reference for both graduate students and professionals. Updated to reflect the most current advances, this second edition includes new chapters on the Minnesota Personality Inventory-Restructured Form and the Rorschach Performance Assessment System, along with in-depth coverage of the MMPI-2, MMPI-2-A, MCMI-IV, PAI, NEO-PI-R, Rorschach Comprehensive System, TAT, and Figure Drawing and Sentence Completion Methods. Each instrument is discussed in terms of its history, administration, scoring, validity, assessment, interpretation, applications, and psychometric foundations, and other chapters address ethical considerations and provide general guidelines in the assessment process. Personality assessments guide recommendations in a broad range of clinical, health care, forensic, educational, and organizational settings. This book delves deeply into the nature and appropriate use of the major assessment instruments, with authoritative insight and practical guidance. Review the latest concepts, research, and practices Administer, score, and interpret the most widely-used instruments Understand the psychometric foundations of personality assessment Access downloadable sample reports that illustrate software interpretation An individual's nature and disposition can be assessed in several ways. This book focuses on standardized psychological tests that assess personality characteristics and indicate how a person is likely to think, feel, and act. The results can only be as accurate as the process, from assessment selection and administration, to scoring, interpretation, and beyond. The Handbook of Personality Assessment is an invaluable resource for every stage of the process, with a practical focus and advice from two leading experts.

In an era of increasingly patient-centered healthcare, understanding how health and illness play out in social context is vital. This volume opens a unique window on the role of play in health and wellbeing in widely varied contexts, from the work of Patch Adams as a hospital clown, to an Australian facility for dementia treatment, to a New Zealand preschool after an earthquake, to a housing complex where Irish children play near home. Across these and other featured studies, play is shown to be shaman-like in its transformative dynamics, marshaling symbolic resources to re-align how patients construe and experience illness. Even when illness is not an issue, play promotes wellbeing by its power to reimagine, invigorate, enliven and renew through sensory engagement, physical activity, and symbolism. Play levels social barriers and increases flexible response, facilitating both shared social support and creative reassessment. This book challenges assumptions that play is inefficient and unproductive, with highly relevant evidence that playful processes actually work hard to dislodge unproductive approaches and thereby aid resilience. Solid research evidence in this book charts the course and opens the agenda for taking play seriously, for the sake of health. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Play.

On October 16 and 17, 2000, we hosted an international workshop entitled "Statistical Design, Measurement, and Analysis of Health Related Quality of Life." The workshop was held in the beautiful city of Arradon, South Brittany, France with the main goal of fostering an interdisciplinary forum for discussion of theoretical and applied statistical issues arising in studies of health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Included were biostatisticians, psychometricians and public health professionals (e.g., physicians, sociologists, psychologists) active in the study ofHRQoL. In assembling this volume, we invited each conference participant to contribute a paper based on his or her presentation and the ensuing and very interesting discussions that took place in Arradon. All papers were peer-reviewed, by anonymous reviewers, and revised before final editing and acceptance. Although this process was quite time consuming, we believe that it greatly improved the volume as a whole, making this book a valuable contribution to the field ofHRQoL research. The volume presents a broad spectrum of papers presented at the Workshop, and thus illustrates the range of current research related to the theory, methods and applications of HRQoL, as well as the interdisciplinary nature ofthis work. Following an introduction written by Sir David Cox, it includes 27 articles organized into the following chapters.