Chapter 2: Advances in Research Methods: What Have We Neglected?

My purpose in this paper is twofold. First I trace and describe the phenomenal development of quantitative analyses methods over the past couple of decades. Then I make the case that our progress in measurement, research design, and estimating the practical significance of our research has not kept pace with the development of analytic techniques and that more attention should be directed to these critical aspects of our research endeavors.

In the 1960s, quantitative methods courses included correlation and regression analyses, analysis of variance and an advanced course on factor analysis (this was exploratory factor analysis; confirmatory factor analyses did not arrive on the scene till the early 1980s). At this time, too, item response theory (IRT) had been described theoretically but software packages that would allow for evaluating items, particularly polytomous models were really not available till the 1970s and 80s.