Psychological Sciences 

Quantitative psychology is the study of methods and techniques for the measurement of human attributes, the statistical and mathematical modeling of psychological processes, the design of research studies, and the analysis of psychological data. Quantitative psychology is central to all aspects of psychology: science, education, public interest, and practice. This essential role of quantitative psychology is reflected in the fact that Division 5 - Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics - is one of the Charter Divisions of the APA.

Quantitative psychology includes research and development in a number of broad areas: measurement, research design, and statistical analysis (see Aiken, West, Sechrest, & Reno, 1990), as well as mathematical and statistical modeling of psychological processes. Within each of these areas, quantitative psychologists develop new methodologies; they also evaluate existing methodologies to examine their behavior under conditions that exist in psychological data (e.g., with small samples). This work supports the substantive research of all areas within psychology.

At UC Merced, the Quantitative Psychology faculty have strengths in a wide array of topics, including experimental and quasi-experimental design, meta-analysis, propensity score analysis, psychometric theory, structural equation modeling, hierarchical linear modeling, item response theory, statistics that are robust to violations of assumption, and the modeling of cognitive decision making. Courses in these and related areas are available. The faculty range in interests from the applied statistics to basic mathematical statistics.

Quantitative Psychology Faculty:

• William R. Shadish
• Jack Vevea