Quantitative psychology

Quantitative psychologists develop and analyze a wide variety of research methods, including those of psychometrics, a field concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement.

Doctoral degrees are awarded in this field in a number of universities in Europe and North America, and quantitative psychologists have been in high demand in industry, government, and academia.

Their training in both social science and quantitative methodology provides a unique skill set for solving both applied and theoretical problems in a variety of areas.

Notable contributions included E. H. Weber's studies of tactile sensitivity (1830s), Fechner's development and use of psychophysical methods (1850–1860), and Helmholtz's research on vision and audition beginning after 1850.

[2] The work of these individuals and many others dispelled the assertion, by theorists such as Immanuel Kant, that psychology could not become a science because precise experiments on the human mind were impossible.

The nineteenth-century English statistician Francis Galton, a pioneer in psychometrics, was the first to create a standardized test of intelligence, and he was among the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and their inheritance.

[7] In 1946, psychologist Stanley Smith Stevens organized levels of measurement into four scales, Nominal, Ordinal, Ratio, and Interval, in a paper that is still often cited.

Mastery of an object-oriented programming language or learning to write code in R, SAS, or SPSS is useful for the type of data analysis performed in graduate school.

Due to its interdisciplinary nature and depending on the research focus of the university, these programs may be housed in a school's college of education or in their psychology department.

[citation needed] In 1990, an influential paper titled "Graduate Training in Statistics, Methodology, and Measurement in Psychology" was published in the American Psychologist journal.

This article discussed the need for increased and up-to-date training in quantitative methods for psychology graduate programs in the United States.

[17] Due to a lack of applicants in the field, the APA created a Task Force to study the state of quantitative psychology and predict its future.