Paul Austin McDermott

Professor

Contact Information

Graduate School of Education
3700 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Phone: 215.898.7368

Education

1967: B.A., General Experimental Psychology, Fairleigh Dickinson University
1969: Ed.M., Educational Psychology, Temple University
1975: Ph.D., School Psychology, Temple University

Description of Research Expertise

Areas of Expertise
Multivariate statistics
Multilevel modeling
Longitudinal analysis
Item response theory
Test construction

Professional Biography
Dr. McDermott is a psychometrician and quantitative psychologist. He is former director of Clinical and Industrial Measurement for The Psychological Corporation and holds a Diplomate from the American Academy of Assessment Psychology. He is also a licensed psychologist and certified school psychologist.

Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. McDermott specializes in measurement theory, test construction, applied multivariate statistics, and multilevel and longitudinal modeling. He develops computerized expert systems and standardized measures of psychopathology, addiction severity, and learning behaviors. Recent nationally standardized measures include the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents, the Learning Behaviors Scale, and the Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale. All of these instruments have been translated into numerous languages and are applied worldwide. He further co-authors the Adjustment Scales for Preschool Intervention, which is designed for Head Start populations.

McDermott directs several national epidemiological studies that examine the role in protection from social/emotional maladjustment and academic failure that is provided by children's and adolescents' stylistic learning behaviors. He also directs a large-cohort longitudinal investigation of the developmental trajectories and protective functions of children's differential learning behaviors through Head Start and primary school.

Dr. McDermott is co-principal investigator for curriculum integration and randomized field trials in Head Start, as funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. For this program he directs the research and evaluation group, which trains and supervises multiple teams of assessment specialists who travel throughout Philadelphia's Head Start centers. The group has developed the Learning Express, an individually-administered adaptive performance battery for measuring preschool learning growth over brief intervals as grounded in item response theory and has designed the Learning-To-Learn Scales to assess differential learning styles related to strategic planning in learning, persistence, appropriate risk-taking, attentiveness, and interpersonal responsiveness in learning situations. He also is applying multilevel longitudinal analyses to discover generative patterns of early childhood health, social, and environmental risks for school failure as drawn from large city archival records. This work is informed by McDermott's co-development of dimensional structures to quantify children's exposure to neighborhood social stress, physical decline and felony crime. Support is provided by the U.S. Department of Education's Institutes for Education Sciences.

Selected Publications

McDermott, P. A., Fantuzzo, J. W., Waterman, C., Angelo, L. E.; Warley, H. P, Gadsden, V. L., & Zhang, X. (in press). Measuring preschool cognitive growth while it's still happening: The Learning Express. Journal of School Psychology, 48.

Gross, K. S., & McDermott, P. A. (2008). Use of city archival data to inform dimensional structure of neighborhoods. Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 86: 161-182.

Kotz, K. M., Watkins, M. W., & McDermott, P. A. (2008). Validity of the General Conceptual Ability score from the Differential Ability Scales as a function of significant and rare interfactor variability. School Psychology Review, 37: 261-278.

Kim, H.-J., Barsevicl, A. M., Tulman, L., & McDermott, P. A. (2008). Treatment-related symptom clusters in breast cancer: A secondary analysis. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 36: 468-479.

Bulotsky-Shearer, R., Fantuzzo, J. F., & McDermott, P. A. (2008). An investigation of classroom situational dimensions of emotional and behavioral adjustment and cognitive and social outcomes for Head Start children. Developmental Psychology, 44: 139-154.

McWayne, C. M., McDermott, P.A., Fantuzzo, J. W., & Culhane, D. P. (2007). Employing community data to investigate social and structural dimensions of urban neighborhoods: An early childhood education example. American Journal of Community Psychology, 39: 47-60.

Fantuzzo, J. F., Bulotsky-Shearer, R., McDermott, P. A., McWayne, C., Frye, D., & Perlman, S. (2007). Investigation of dimensions of social-emotional classroom behavior and school readiness for low-income urban preschool children. School Psychology Review, 36: 44-62.

McDermott, P. A., Goldberg, M. M., Watkins, M. W., Stanley, J. L., & Glutting, J. J. (2006). A nationwide epidemiologic modeling study of LD: Risk, protection, and unintended impact. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 39: 230-251.

Glutting, J. J., Watkins, M. W., Konold, T. R., & McDermott, P. A. (2006). Distinctions without a difference: The utility of observed versus latent factors from the WISC-IV in estimating reading and math achievement on the WIAT-II. Journal of Special Education, 40: 103-114.

McDermott, P. A., Steinberg, C. M., & Angelo, L. E. (2006). Situational specificity makes the difference in assessment of youth behavior disorders. Psychology in the Schools, 42: 121-136.

Fantuzzo, J. W., Rouse, H. L., McDermott, P. A., Sekino, Y., Childs, S., & Weiss, A. (2006). Early childhood experiences and kindergarten success: A population-based study of a large urban setting. School Psychology Review, 34: 571-588.

Meyers, K., McDermott, P. A., Webb, A., & Hagan, T. A. (2006). Mapping the clinical complexities of adolescents with substance use disorders: A typological study. Journal of Child & Adolescent Substance Abuse, 16(1): 5-24.

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