Patrick E Shrout is a retired quantitative social psychologist who studies intimate relationships and statistical methods for analyzing observational data. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1976 and was on the Biostatistics Faculty at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health for fifteen years before moving to the Department of Psychology at NYU. His methodological areas of expertise include rater reliability, reliability of change, mediation analysis, and longitudinal methods. He remains interested in mental health epidemiology, relationship research and cognitive and social implications of construing couples as entities.