Among the frustrations constantly confronting the social scientist are those associated with the general process of measurement. The importance of good measurement has long been recognized in principle, but it has often been neglected in practice in many of the social sciences. Now that the methodological tools of multivariate analysis, simultaneous-equation estimation, and causal modeling are diffused more widely into the social sciences, and now that the very serious implications of random and non-random measurement errors are being systematically investigated, it is all the more important...

This is a companion volume to Causal Models in the Social Sciences, the majority of articles concern panel designs involving repeated measurements while a smaller cluster involve discussions of how experimental designs may be improved by more explicit attention to causal models. All of the papers are concerned with complications that may occur in actual research designs- as compared with idealized ones that often become the basis of textbook discussions of design issues.