Dr. Paul McDermott is a Professor in the Human Development and Quantitative Methods Division at Penn GSE. A psychometrician and quantitative psychologist, he previously served as director of Clinical and Industrial Measurement for The Psychological Corporation and Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry (Penn School of Medicine). He holds a Diplomate (A.B.A.P.) from the American Academy of Assessment Psychology and is a licensed psychologist and certified school psychologist.

Dr. McDermott specializes in measurement theory, scale development, and multilevel and latent variable modeling. He develops standardized measures of school behavioral adjustment, classroom learning behaviors, neighborhood effects, addiction severity, and cognitive growth. Recent nationally standardized measures include the Adjustment Scales for Early Transition in Schooling, the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents, the Learning Behaviors Scale, the Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale, and the Learning-To-Learn Scales. These instruments are translated into many European, Asian, Middle Eastern, and South American languages and are applied worldwide. Dr. McDermott co-authored the Adjustment Scales for Preschool Intervention, which is designed for Head Start populations, and the Home Edition of the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents, which is applied in the Caribbean for parental assessments of youth psychopathology.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Dr. McDermott co-directs with Dr. Michael Rovine (Penn GSE) several large-scale measurement development programs. They apply nationally representative data from the Adjustment Scales for Early Transition in Schooling to discover types of school maladjustment and to trace developmental patterns for pre-K through first grade. This program is identifying behavioral change trajectories that are emblematic of long-term academic proficiency and social resilience. A second program is longitudinally equating assessments from the Head Start Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale with those from the elementary school Learning Behaviors Scale. This work is revealing growth patterns in stylistic classroom learning behavior as related to later attendance, achievement, and adjustment problems. Additionally, he heads research that examines assessor bias in high-stakes psychological assessment for special education classification.

Dr. McDermott is co-principal investigator for a large-scale Spanish/English translation and equating study assessing classroom behavioral disorders via the Adjustment Scales for Preschool Intervention. This work applies item response theory (IRT) and other advanced psychometric procedures to develop linguistically and culturally appropriate measures with bilingual preschool teachers and diverse Latino populations in the southeastern U.S.

Dr. McDermott also co-supervises a Penn/Baylor/U.C.L.A.–Berkeley research group that is scaling and validating several measures of classroom learning behavior as well as school and home assessments of youth social-emotional adjustment in Trinidad and Tobago. These measures are nationally standardized across the islands. Dr. McDermott also directed development of the Learning Express, an individually administered adaptive performance battery for measuring preschool learning growth over brief intervals as grounded in IRT, and 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.

Publications

Selected Publications

Rovine, M. J., & McDermott, P. A. (2023). Touchstones of equivalence and the Houdini transformation. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 58, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/00273171.2023.2205390

Weiss, E. M., Gerstner, C.-C. E., McDermott, P. A., & Rovine, M. J. (2023). Latent trajectories of learning- and teacher-context behavior problems across the primary school transition. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 86, 101538. https:doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2023.101538

Gerstner, C.-C. E., Weiss, E. M., McDermott, P. A., Rovine, M. J., Worrell, F. C., & Hall, T. E. (2023). Contextual specificity in classroom adjustment: Latent profiles of primary school behavior problems in Trinidad and Tobago. International Journal of School & Educational Psychology, 11, 219-232. https://doi.org/10.1080/21683603.2022.2075998

Lopez, L. M, Bulotsky-Shearer, R. J., Mendez Smith, J. L., & McDermott, P. A. (2023). Validation of early childhood measures of social-emotional competence for linguistically and ethnically diverse preschoolers. In C. McWayne & V. Gadsden (Eds.) Early childhood research for educational equity: Family-school-systems connections. Brookes.

McDermott, P. A., Rovine, M. J., Gerstner, C.-C. E., Weiss, E. M., & Watkins, M. W. (2022). Latent profile analysis of classroom behavior problems in a national sample of prekindergarten children. Social Development, 31, 1050-1078. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12606

McDermott, P. A., Rovine, M. J., Weiss, E. M., Gladstone, J. N., Fatima, S. F., & Reyes, R. (2022). Latent change and co-occurrence of overactive and underactive behavior problems in American early education. School Psychology Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2021.2000842

Weiss, E. M., McDermott, P. A., Rovine, M. J., & Oh, J. (2021). Latent growth trajectories of peer context behavior problems across preschool, kindergarten and 1st grade. Early Education and Development, 33(6), 939-957. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2021.1928445

Wolf, S., Reyes, R., Weiss, E. M., & McDermott, P. A. (2021). Trajectories of social-emotional development across pre-primary and early primary school. Journal of Developmental Psychology, 75, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2021.101297

Canivez, G. L., Ding, Y., & McDermott, P. A. (2021). Development and psychometric examinations of a simplified Chinese Mandarin translation and adaptation of the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents. Archives of Assessment Psychology, 11(1), 51-75. https://www.assessmentpsychologyboard.org/journal/index.php/AAP/article/view/157

Bulotsky-Shearer, R. J., McDermott, P. A., Lopez, M., Gort., M., Bouza, J., Fernandez, V., & Bichay-Awadalla, K. (2021). Development and initial validation of the Spanish form of the Adjustment Scales for Preschool Intervention (ASPI). Journal of School Psychology, 84, 124-142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2020.11.003

Watkins, M. W., McDermott, P. A., Chao, J. L., Worrell, F. C., & Hall, T. E. (2020). Latent profile analysis of school and home versions of the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents among primary school children in Trinidad and Tobago. Caribbean Journal of Psychology, 12, 13-47. https://ojs.mona.uwi.edu/index.php/cjpsy

Reyes, R. S., McDermott, P. A., Watkins, M. W., Rovine, M. J., & Chao, J. L. (2020). Forecasting accuracy of earliest assessment versus transitional change in early education problem behavior among children at risk. School Psychology Review, 49; 47-59. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1717372

McDermott, P. A., Rovine, M. J., Watkins, M. W., Rikoon, S. H., Irwin, C. W., Reyes, R., & Chao, J. L. (2019). Emergent growth patterns of early education self-control problems among children from underresourced American families. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 43, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.08.010

Chao, J. L., McDermott, P. A., Watkins, M. W., Rovine, M. J., Drogalis, A. R., Worrell, F. C., & Hall, T. E. (2018). Standardization of parental assessments of child adjustment in Trinidad and Tobago using exploratory multidimensional IRT. Caribbean Journal of Psychology, 10, 127-164. https://ojs.mona.uwi.edu/index.php/cjpsy

McDermott, P., Rovine, M. J., Buek, K., Reyes, R., Chao, J. L., & Watkins, M. W. (2018). Initial assessment versus gradual change in childhood behavior problems―Which better foretells the future? Psychology in the Schools, 55, 1071-1085. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22150

Chao, J. L., McDermott, P. A., Watkins, M. W., Drogalis, A. R., Worrell, F. C., & Hall, T. E. (2018). The Learning Behaviors Scale: National standardization in Trinidad and Tobago. International Journal of School and Educational Psychology, 6, 35-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/21683603.2016.1261055

McDermott, P. A., Rovine, M. J., Reyes, R., Chao, J. L., Buek, K., & Fantuzzo, J. W. (2018). Trajectories of early childhood learning behaviors among children at risk: A growth mixture modeling approach. Psychology in the Schools, 55, 1205-1223. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22145

McDermott, P. A., & Waters, N. (2018). Collieries and camelbacks at Nay Aug―Circa 1903 [narrated photogrammetric modeling and history]. O Scale Trains Magazine, 17(4), 1(cover), 4-13.

Rovine, M. J., & McDermott, P. A. (2018). Latent growth curve and repeated measures ANOVA contrasts: What the models are telling you. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 53, 90-101. https://doi.org/10.1080/00273171.2017.1387511

McDermott, P. A., Rovine, M. J., Watkins, M. W., Chao, J. L., Irwin, C. W., & Reyes, R. (2017). Latent national subpopulations of early education classroom disengagement of children from underresourced families. Journal of School Psychology, 55, 69-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2017.07.002