Introduction to the special section on clinical applications of analogue behavioral observation

This Special Section addresses methods, validity, and utility of analogue behavioral observation. Separate contributions to the Special Section cover analogue behavioral observation of marital interaction, child behavior problems, parent-child interaction, and adult social functioning. Additional articles address psychometric foundations of analogue behavioral observations, general issues, and future directions in the development and evaluation of this assessment method. Many published studies were reviewed in detail and issues of validity, clinical assessment utility, and sources of variance in obtained measures are addressed.