Judgment Studies: Design, Analysis, and Meta-Analysis

Because of the complexity of human behavior a great many research variables must be constructed from the building blocks of human judgment. A teacher’s warmth, a psychotherapist’s ability to create rapport, a patient’s inner state - these all tend ultimately to be defined by the judgments of others. The purpose of this book is to describe the design, the analysis, and the meta-analysis of studies employing judgments in sufficient detail that readers can conduct such studies, and more wisely evaluate them. While the author’s examples are drawn primarily from research on nonverbal behavior, the book is designed for any investigators employing judges, observers, raters, coders, or decoders, whether or not the behavior being assessed is nonverbal. Judgment Studies: Design, Analysis, and Meta-Analysis constitutes a unique resource for advanced students and researchers in the behavioral and social sciences. It offers the first integrated summary of methodological issues in judgment studies, and the first guide to their planning and analysis.