Methodological issues raised in a feasibility study to develop a psychological test to predict illicit drug use are described. A small set of items was found to be related to prior drug use. These items maintained their ability to discriminate users and non-users in a cross-validation study. (Author/JKS)

The authors examined the Trauma Symptom Inventorys (TSI) ability to discriminate 88 student post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) simulators screened for genuine PTSD from 48 clinical PTSD-diagnosed outpatients. Results demonstrated between-group differences on several TSI clinical scales and the Atypical Response (ATR) validity scale.…

The use of Procrustean rotation as a procedure for assessing the invariance of study results is proposed. Researchers have long relied on significance testing as a measure of judging the worthiness of empirical findings. However, significance testing has come under fire because it does not provide information about the importance or replicability…

A dichotomous dependent variable is used to determine a combination of variables that will predict group membership. Dichotomous variables are frequently encountered in multiple regression analysis. However, several textbooks question the appropriateness of using multiple regression analysis when analyzing dichotomous dependent variables. The…

Default on guaranteed student loans has been increasing. The use of discriminant analysis as a technique to identify "good" v "bad" student loans based on information available from the loan application is discussed. Research to test the ability of models to such predictions is reported. (Author/MLW)