First published in 1982

Textbooks in multivariate methods proliferate, but there are few books concerned with their application. Experimental psychology and its associated method of statistical data analysis, analysis of variance, has tended to dominate psychological thinking even in such areas as social and clinical psychology, two areas that are particularly ill-suited to simple analysis-of-variance statistical models.

The recent emphasis of clinical and social psychology on applied research relevant to social problems requires that more attention be paid to multivariate methods and appropriate research designs.

This book illustrates and examines the multivariate approach alone, this does not imply that a multivariate approach combined with an experimental approach would not in the long run provide the best overall research design.

The present collection of multivariate applications introduces some of the kinds of research problem that can be tackled by means of multivariate statistical analysis.