Philosophical Foundations of Quantitative Research Methodology

Yu (testing, evaluation, assessment and research, Arizona State U.) follows through with his commitment to a "detective mentality" in his commentary on the meanings of quantitative methods in the perspective of the history and philosophy of science done in the last several years. He examines the origins of the Fisherian and Pearsonian statistical methodologies, the links between positivism and quantitative research, the logic behind abduction, deduction and reduction, the philosophy of mathematics as it relates to quantitative research, philosophical issues of factor analysis, causal inference and the Duhem-Quine thesis, the causal Markov condition, faithfulness assumption and virtual intervention, closing with a lively treatment of evolutionary game theory. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Chong Ho Yu, Ph.D. is the Director of Testing, Evaluation, Assessment, and Research for Arizona State University's Digital Media Instructional Technology Department. He earned a Master's in Human Relations and a Master's in Education from the University of Oklahoma, and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Arizona State University, where he is also pursuing a Ph.D. in Philosophy. He is the author of several books, book chapters, and numerous journal articles.