Psychology

Course Description: The plan for this seminar is to read and discuss classic articles in psychometrics / quantitative psychology / statistics in psychology, reading selections of papers published since 1900 on topics of current and continuing interest. Each week, students will read 2-4 papers and then discuss the papers and their current importance. Frequently, students understand current trends in an area of quantitative methods or they know how to compute and cite particular statistics, but they do not know the history of the ideas. The intent of this seminar is to interweave classic papers with some newer articles to understand better the history of psychometrics / quantitative psychology and how historically important, classic articles set the foundation for many current issues in the quantitative analysis of psychological data.

Grading in the seminar will be based primarily on attendance and participation in weekly discussions. Each student will also select one article from a preliminary set of readings I have compiled (or one that they choose, in consultation with me) and make a short presentation (20-30 minutes) of the ideas in this paper.

If you have any questions about this seminar, please contact me.

Keith F. Widaman 

Phone:  530-754-8288

FAX:     530-752-2087

e-mail:  kfwidaman@ucdavis.edu