Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology.

Edited by Harry T. Reis and Charles M. Judd. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 558 pages. Cloth, $95.00; paper, $34.95.

Sexual scientists come from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Not surprisingly, then, they are, collectively, trained in a wide variety of research methods (see Wiederman & Whitley, 2002). However, methodological training in one discipline may omit research tools that are taught in other disciplines. Psychologists, for example, are more likely to be trained in experimental methods than are sociologists and sociologists are more likely to be trained in survey research than are psychologists. Therefore, a work describing the breadth of social science research methodologies from observational through passive (correlational) to experimental provides a means for researchers to review recent developments in familiar research techniques and to learn about new techniques that could be useful to their research programs. This book provides that kind of overview.

Although this volume was written for social psychologists, it is also useful to sexual scientists whose research is grounded in the behavioral sciences, for, like sexual scientists, social psychologists utilize a wide range of research methods and data analytic techniques. The book is divided into three parts: The first four chapters address broad issues in designing and drawing valid conclusions from research, the next eight chapters address specific research methods, and the final seven chapters address problems of data analysis. Because of the wide-ranging nature of the book I will not attempt to review it in detail, but rather highlight the features that seem most useful to sexuality researchers and point out some of the shortcomings I saw in it.

Part 1 of the book provides a review of the ways in which research design affects the validity of the conclusions that can be drawn from the research. These chapters focus almost exclusively on experimental and quasi-experimental designs; nonexperimental research is virtually ignored. Although as Smith (Chapter 2) notes, experimental designs are a major part of social psychological research, including field research, there are many topics in social psychology and sexuality, such as attitude-behavior relationships, that cannot be addressed experimentally. Although Part 2 of the book includes discussions of data collection techniques used in nonexperimental research and Part 3 addresses the analysis of nonexperimental data, a chapter dedicated to design issues would have been extremely useful. However, the absence of such a chapter does not detract from the strength of the existing chapters. For example, in his chapter on research design, Smith makes important points about fitting the design of a study to the goals of the research rather than using a particular design because research has always been conducted that way or because of a technique's popularity, and West, Biesanz, and Pitts provide excellent summaries of the uses, advantages, and limitations of various quasi-experimental designs.

A somewhat surprising omission from Part 1 was a chapter on research ethics. Perhaps the editors saw this topic as too basic for a book designed for experienced researchers; as they note, it was not their goal "to provide yet another research methods textbook" (p. xi). However, research ethics is an integral part of research design (e.g., Sieber 1992), especially in fields such as social psychology and human sexuality that often deal with issues that are sensitive both in terms of their personal meanings to research participants and their relevance to controversial social issues.

Another issue that I expected to find addressed in Part 1, and which would have fit nicely into Brewer's chapter (Chapter 1) on research design and validity, is that of theoretical validity. As Cook, Gruder, Hennigan, and Flay (1979) pointed out, theories often specify conditions that must be met for their predictions to be fulfilled; research purporting to test such theories without meeting the conditions lack theoretical validity. Cook et al. provide a classic example of the problem in social psychology and I have noticed it in manuscripts I have reviewed for both social psychology and sexuality journals. Theoretical validity is an issue to which researchers must attend.

Finally, although Part 1 is titled "Design and Inference Considerations," there is no chapter on the problems and pitfalls of interpreting research results, especially the sticky problem of null results. Perhaps, as I suspect happened with research ethics, the editors considered this topic to be too basic to fit in with their goals for the book. However, errors in drawing conclusions are frequently noted by manuscript reviewers (e.g., Daft, 1985), so even experienced researchers sometimes need reminders about the sources of these problems.

Part 2 of the book reviews a number of methods of collecting data. In contrast to Part 1, the emphasis here is on techniques associated with nonexperimental research. There are, for example, chapters on behavioral observation, event sampling, survey research, interviewing, and content analysis. As the editors intended, these chapters both illustrate the variety of methods available to researchers and provide ideas for new approaches to old research topics. Two chapters may be of special interest to sexuality researchers. Although focused on mental measurement rather than sexual response, Blascovich's chapter (Chapter 5) on psychophysiological methods lucidly discusses the epistemological and technological issues that are essential to a complete understanding and appreciation of the results of research that uses physiological measures. In their chapter Reis and Gable (Chapter 8) discuss the use and design of event-sampling research, which is geared toward collecting data about everyday experiences as they occur. Such techniques have the potential to enhance the ecological validity of research findings, but are rarely used. The other chapters in this part provide excellent reviews of the basic principles of their topics and overviews of recent developments.

A useful addition to this part of the book would have been a chapter on using the Internet to collect data. Although the Internet raises new technical and ethical issues for researchers (Whitley, 2002, pp. 411-421), it permits both experimental and nonexperimental research and can provide data of a quality equal to that of laboratory-based research (e.g., Birnbaum, 2000).

Part 3 of the book addresses that part of the research process that many people approach with fear and trepidation: the statistical analysis of data. However, these chapters are predominantly nonmathematical and include concrete examples illustrating the principles they discuss. The topics of the chapters appear to have been selected specifically to go beyond those covered in the basic social science statistics curriculum; the topics covered include multiple regression analysis, factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and meta-analysis. However, group-comparison designs (e.g., analysis of variance designs) are virtually ignored despite their widespread use (although Smith covers some important issues in chapter 2). Certainly, such designs are familiar to most researchers, but that familiarity can be a drawback, leading to errors caused by overconfidence in one's knowledge, so a review of the basic issues in group-comparison research would have been useful.

Three chapters in Part 3 may be of special interest to sexuality researchers. McClelland (Chapter 15) provides an informative guide to dealing with what he calls nasty data: data that are "more unruly, ill-mannered, and irascible than the well-behaved, cooperative data found in textbook examples" (p. 393). Sexuality researchers may be especially prone to encountering such data given the nonexperimental and field-based nature of much of their research. Kashy and Kenny (Chapter 17) describe techniques for analyzing data collected from the members of dyads and groups. Although most sexual behaviors involve more than one person, sexuality researchers typically analyze data from only one of the participants. Although there can be many reasons for this approach, to the extent that researchers are uncertain how to handle data provided by both members of a couple (or larger group), Kashy and Kenny provide some suggestions. Finally, although people change over time, much social science and sexuality research is cross-sectional rather than longitudinal in nature. Collins and Sayer (Chapter 18) discuss modem methods for the study of growth and change processes, the use of which hold great promise for understanding psychosexual development.

Overall, this is an excellent book that deserves a place on the reference shelf of every sexuality researcher. The authors of the chapters assume that readers have had at least introductory graduate courses in research methods and statistics; consequently, as the editors note, the book is not appropriate for use as a textbook even in a graduate research methods course. In addition, because it is a handbook of research methods in social psychology, some of the examples and classic studies from that field that the chapter authors refer to may not be familiar to readers with other backgrounds. Nonetheless, a careful reading of the chapters in this book is a must for anyone whose last courses in research methods and statistics were taken more than a few years ago.

REFERENCES

Birnbaum, M. H. (Ed.). (2000). Psychological experiments on the Internet. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Cook, T. D., Gruder, C. L., Hennigan, K. M., & Flay, B. R. (1979). History of the sleeper effect: Some logical pitfalls in accepting the null hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 662-679.

Daft, R. L. (1985). Why I recommended that your manuscript be rejected and what you can do about it. In L. L. Cummings & P. J. Frost (Eds.), Publishing in the organizational sciences (pp. 193-209). Homewood, IL: Irwin.

Sieber, J. E. (1992). Planning ethically responsible research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Whitley, B. E., Jr. (2002). Principles of research in behavioral science (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Wiederman, M. W., & Whitley, B. E., Jr. (Eds.). (2002). The handbook for conducting research on human sexuality. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates.

Reviewed by Bernard E. Whitley, Jr., Ph.D., Ball State University, Department of Psychological Science, Muncie, IN 47306; e-mail: [e-mail].