John Spicer was an Associate Professor and Head of Psychology at Massey University, New Zealand until the end of 2002, when he took early retirement to devote all of his time to writing books. Earlier, he was a Research Fellow for several years at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and held Visiting Fellowships at the Universities of Michigan and London. His primary research interests have been in health psychology, and he has published articles mainly on cardiovascular disease and theoretical issues in a variety of international journals. He was coeditor of Social Dimensions of Health and Disease: New Zealand Perspectives (1994). Most of his undergraduate and graduate teaching has focused on research methods, particularly multivariate data analysis. In 2002 he coauthored a chapter on sociological and psychological methods in the fourth edition of the Oxford Textbook of Public Health.