Validity and Social Experimentation

Leonard Bickman, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Public Policy. He is director of the Center for Evaluation and Program Improvement and Associate Dean for Research at Peabody College. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology (social) from the City University of New York, his master′s degree in experimental psychopathology from Columbia University and his bachelor′s from the City College of New York. Professor Bickman is a nationally recognized leader in program evaluation and mental healthservices research on children and adolescents. He has published more than 15 books and monographs and 180 articles and chapters and has been principal investigator on over 25 major grants from several agencies. He is co-editor of the Applied Research Methods Series published by Sage Publications since 1980. He is also co-editor of the Handbook of Applied Social Research and is collaborating on a new International Handbook of Social Research. He is the co-author of the very popular book Applied Research Design: A Practical Guide.

• PART ONE: VALIDITY ISSUESTowards a Practical Theory of External Validity - Thomas D CookPaul Wortman, Elvira Elek-Fisk and Lanette RaymondValidity Applied to Meta-Analyses and Research SynthesesDiscriminative Validity - Norman Miller, William C Pedersen and Vicki E PollockStatistical Conclusion Validity for Intervention Research - Mark LipseyA Significant (p 05) ProblemEffect Sizes in Behavioral and Biomedical Research - Robert RosenthalEstimation and InterpretatioRealism, Validity and the Experimenting Society - Melvin MarkPART TWO: SOCIAL EXPERIMENTSToward the Dream of the Experimenting Society - Robert G St Pierre and Michael J PumaThe Honestly Experimenting Society - Robert Boruch and Ellen FoleySites and Other Entities as the Unit of Allocation and AnalysisRival Explanations as an Alternative to Reforms as ′Experiments′ - Robert K YinDonald T Campbell′s Contributions to Practical ′In the Trenches′ Program Evaluation - Burt PerrinThe Experimenting Society in a Political World - Carol H Weiss