Professor of Psychology
Social

Research

How can we learn about the causes and modifiers of human suffering when strong experimental methods are not ethical or feasible? One approach is to collect systematic observational data, and to attempt to identify structural relations among the variables. This approach is greatly aided by the development of sophisticated multivariate statistical methods that allow variables to be controlled statistically in mathematical models of the human suffering and coping. However, such models are never perfect. They need constant scrutiny, critical appraisal, and further development. My research is on the interface of developing methodology and substantive psychological questions in social psychology, specifically social support in intimate relationships.

My methodologic research has been primarily in psychometrics, sampling, and multilevel models for analysis of growth and change. Current interests include problems of model specification in logistic regression, the design of longitudinal studies, and mediation analysis. I am also particularly interested in statistical approaches to studies of dependent processes in social relationships. Finally, I am interested in the social psychology of response effects in surveys.

My current social psychology research is on coping and support processes that are available to stressed persons who have intimate relatinships. We are trying to understand why well intented support efforts by intimate partners sometimes have short term negative consequences.  I retain interests in mental health epidemiology, particularly as applied to Latino populations. 

I am a past President of the American Psychopathological Association, and I organized the 2008 meeting around the theme of "Causal thinking and psychopathology research".  I am also past President of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology, a small research society that publishes the jounal, Multivariate Behavioral Research.  I am currently an Associate Editor of Psychological Methods, which is published by the American Psychological Association.

At NYU I run the NYU Couples Research Lab in the Social Psychology area. We are carrying out a series of studies of the costs and benefits of social support during stressful times using diary methods. In several of the studies, we convinced both partners in intimate relationships to tell us about their coping, support and functioning on a daily basis for a month or more. We are pursuing both substantive and methodological research questions with these data.  Our lab collaborates with the lab of Niall Bolger at Columbia University.

Our current study, the Exam Preparation Study asks college students to report on their lives while they prepare for challenging academic tests.

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Biography

• A.B. St Louis (Philosophy) 1972
• Ph.D. Chicago (Quantitative Psychology) 1976

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Selected Publications

Representative Methodologic Publications

Shrout, P. E., & Fleiss, J. L. (1979). Intraclass correlations: Uses in assessing rater reliability. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 420-428.

Shrout, P. E., & Newman, S. (1989). Design of two-phase prevalence surveys of rare disorders. Biometrics, 45, 549-555.

Shrout, P. E., & Parides, M. (1992). Conventional factor analysis as an approximation to latent trait models for dichotomous data. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 2: 55-65.

Shrout, P. E. (1993). Analyzing consensus in personality judgments: A variance components approach. Journal of Personality, 61:769-788.

Shrout, P. E. (1995). Measuring the degree of consensus in personality judgments. In P. E. Shrout & S. T. Fiske (Eds.), Advances in personality research, methods and theory: A festschrift honoring Donald W. Fiske, (pp. 79-92). Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Shrout, P. E. (1997). Should significance tests be banned? Psychological Science., 8, 1-2.

Shrout, P. E., & Link, B. G. (1998). Mathematical modeling and simulation in studies of stress and adversity. In B. P. Dohrenwend (Ed.), Adversity, stress and psychopathology. (pp.427-437) New York: Oxford University Press.

Shrout, P. E. (1998). Measurement reliability and agreement in psychiatry. Statistical Methods in Medical Research, 7, 301-317.

Shrout, P. E., & Bolger, N. (2002). Mediation in experimental and nonexperimental studies: New procedures and recommendations. Psychological Methods, 7(4), 422-445.

Cranford, J. A., Shrout, P. E., Iida, M., Rafaeli, E., Yip, T., & Bolger, N. (2006). A procedure for evaluating sensitivity to within-person change: Can mood measures in diary studies detect change reliably? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(7), 917-929.

Green, A. S., Rafaeli, E., Bolger, N., Shrout, P. E. & Reis, H.T. (2006).  Paper or plastic? Data equivalence in paper and electronic diaries.  Psychological Methods, 11(1), 87-105.

Bolger, N. & Shrout, P.E. (2007). Accounting for statistical dependency in longitudinal data on Dyads.  In Little, T. D., Bovaird, J. A. & Card, N. A. (Eds.). Modeling ecological and contextual effects in longitudinal studies of human development (pp. 285-298). Mahwah, NJ: LEA.

Shrout, P.E., Alegria, M., Canino, G., Guarnaccia, P., Vega, W.A., Duan, N., & Cao, Z. (2008).  Testing language effects in psychiatric epidemiology surveys with randomized experiments: Results from NLAAS.  American Journal of Epidemiology, 168(3), 345-352.

Shrout, P. E., & Napier, J. L. (2011). Analyzing survey data with complex sampling designs. In K. H. Trzesniewski, M. B. Donnellan & R. E. Lucas (Eds.), Secondary data analysis: An introduction for psychologists. (pp. 63-81). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association.

Shrout, P. E. (2011).  Integrating causal analysis into psychopathology research.  In P.E. Shrout, K. Keyes, & K. Ornstein, (Eds.),  Causality and psychopathology: Finding the determinants of disorders and their cures. (pp. 3-24), New York: Oxford University Press.

Ledgerwood, A., & Shrout, P. E. (2011). The trade-off between accuracy and precision in latent variable models of mediation processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, doi:10.1037/a0024776.

Shrout, P. E. & Lane, S. P. (in press). Reliability. In (Cooper et. al., Eds). Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.


 
Representative Substantive Publications

Shrout, P. E., Link, B. G., Dohrenwend, B. P., Skodol, A. E., Stueve, A., & Mirotznik, J. (1989). Characterizing life events as risk factors for depression: The role of fateful loss events. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 98, 460-467.

Dohrenwend, B. P., Levav, I., Shrout, P. E., Schwartz, S., Naveh, G., Link, B. G., Skodal, A. E., & Stueve, A. (1992). Socioeconomic status and psychiatric disorders: A test of the social causation-social selection issue. Science, 255: 946-952.

Canino, G., Shrout, P.E., Alegria, M., Rubio Stipec, M., Chavez, L., Ribera, J., Bravo, M., Bauermeister, J. J., Fabregas, L., Horwath, S., & Martinez-Taboas, A. (2002). Methodological challenges in assessing children's mental health services utilization. Mental Health Services Research, 4(2), 97-107.

Kennedy, J.K., Bolger, N. & Shrout, P.E. (2002). Witnessing interparental psychological aggression in childhood: Implications for daily conflict in adult intimate relationships. Journal of Personality, 70(6), 1051-1077.

Gleason, M. E. J., Iida, M., Bolger, N. & Shrout, P.E. (2003). Daily supportive equity in close relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(6), 1036-1045.

Canino, G., Shrout, P.E., Rubio-Stipec, M., Bird, H.R., Bravo,M., Ramírez, R., Chavez,L., Alegría, M., Bauermeister, J.J., Hohmann, A., Ribera,J., García, P., Martínez-Taboas, A . (2004) DSM-IV Rates of Child and Adolescent Disorders in Puerto Rico: Prevalence, Correlates, Service Use and the Effects of Impairment. Archives of General Psychiatry, 61(1), 85-93.

Seidman, G., Shrout, P. E. & Bolger, N. (2006).  Why is Enacted Social Support Associated with Increased Distress? Using Simulation to Test Two Possible Sources of Spuriousness.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(1): 52-65.

Shrout, P. E., Herman, C. & Bolger, N. (2006).  The Costs and Benefits of Practical and Emotional Support on Adjustment: A Daily Diary Study of Couples Experiencing Acute Stress.  Personal Relationships, 13(1): 115-134.

Bird, H. R., Shrout, P. E., Davies, M., Canino, G., Duarte, C. S., & Shen, S. et al. (2007). Longitudinal development of antisocial behaviors in young and early adolescent Puerto Rican children at two sites. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 46(1), 5-14.

Gleason, M. E. J., Iida, M., Shrout, P. E., & Bolger, N. (2008). Receiving support as a mixed blessing: Evidence for dual effects of support on psychological outcomes.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 824-838.

Iida, M., Seidman, G., Shrout, P.E., Fujita, K. & Bolger, N. (2008).  Modeling support provision in intimate relationships.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(3): 460-478.

Shrout, P.E., Bolger, N., Iida, M., Burke, C., Gleason, M.E.J., & Lane, S.P. (2010). The Effects of Daily Support Transactions During Acute Stress: Results From a Diary Study of Bar Exam Preparation.  In K. T. Sullivan and J. Davila (Eds.), Support Processes in Intimate Relationships (pp. 175-199), New York: Oxford University Press.

Kappes, H. B., & Shrout, P. E. (2011). When goal sharing produces support that is not caring. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(5), 662-673.

Full CV is available as PDF Document.

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Teaching

I teach doctoral courses, Intermediate Statistics, Advanced Regression Models, Analysis of Change, Psychometric Theory and Structural Equation Methods.  Recent syllabuses are available here.

Address

Department of Psychology
New York University
6 Washington Place, Room 455
New York, NY 10003
Phone: (212)-998-7895
Fax: (212)-995-4866

pat.shrout@nyu.edu

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Updated