Applied Psychometrics and Models in Behavioral Research

(APMBR isn’t a nice, neat acronym, so I’ve reverted to Flaherty lab.)

“Understanding what you’re doing and being certain of the underlying justification for whatever conclusions you reach, no matter how trivial, is the whole story.” (Sentilles, Bridge to Advanced Mathematics)

“We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.” (Thomas Mann, Foreword, The Magic Mountain)

In our lab, we focus on developing new models and approaches to answer behavioral research questions, as well as examining how existing approaches perform in varied behavioral research situations. A few examples of research topics we are currently examining include:

• How does the choice of latent variable operationalization affect the results and scientific conclusions? Currently examining this in data on substance use, disability, frailty, and stigma, as well as simulation research.
  
• Pros and cons of different approaches to conceptualizing and modeling stigma and intersectional stigma.
• psychometric reliability assessment in latent class and mixture models
  
• parameter restrictions in latent class models
• exploratory data analysis techniques
  
• analysis of data from discrete choice experiments, as well as novel applications of this design

There are many opportunities for interested graduate and undergraduate students, as well as postdoctoral scholars in this lab!

People currently affiliated:

• Tessa Concepcion, graduate student (Global Health, Implementation Science), mixture regression and CART in understanding long-acting PrEP uptake among pregnant women
• Nancy Gomez, graduate student (Quantitative Psychology), latent class and mixture models, HIV, social frailty
• Sarena Sabine, graduate student (Quantitative Psychology), measurement and scale design, nature and well-being
• Jessica Yu, graduate student (Quantitative Psychology), latent class and mixture model estimation, activities of daily living and alcohol

People who have moved on:

• Esther Choo, Ph.D.
• Trevor Peckham, Ph.D., King County Public Health
• Yusuke Shono, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Community and Global Health, Claremont Graduate School
• Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D., Research Public Health Analyst, RTI International
• Ramona Beltran, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Social Work, University of Denver

I also work with many graduate students across departments on their own research.