Selected Publications

(2023). Seasonality of school climate. School Psychology Review.

(2023). Practical Multilevel Modeling Using R. Sage Publishing.

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(2023). Advanced categorical data analysis in prevention science. Prevention Science.

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Recent Publications

See CV for complete list

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Recent & Upcoming Talks

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Multilevel Modeling with Large-Scale International Databases Using HLM (Philadelphia)
Apr 10, 2024 9:00 AM
Using cluster robust standard errors to analyze nested data with a few clusters (Korea)
Oct 12, 2023 2:00 PM
Using Cluster Robust Standard Errors to Analyze Cross-Classified Data with a Small Number of Clusters
Sep 29, 2023 2:00 PM
Multilevel Modeling with Large-Scale International Databases Using HLM (Chicago)
Apr 12, 2023 9:00 AM
Multilevel Modeling with Large-Scale International Databases Using HLM
Apr 15, 2021 1:00 PM
Multilevel Modeling with Large-Scale International Databases Using HLM
Apr 16, 2020 9:00 AM
Summer of R Workshop
Aug 12, 2019 9:00 AM

Recent Posts

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List of Research, Statistics, and Evaluation job postings (that I’ve seen) as of 2023-11-28. Postings for (2023-2024): As of 2023.11 Tenure-Track Assistant Professor position in Education Statistics and Data Science, The University of Delaware Assistant Professor of Quantitative Research Methods, Tenure-Track, Chapman University, Orange, CA Assistant/Associate Professor - Educational Research, Measurement, and Analysis, Auburn University, Auburn, AL Assistant/Associate Professor in Quantitative Research Methodology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma

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Random notes. Regression based techniques often involve finding a maximum (e.g., the maximum likelihood) or a minimum (e.g., least squares or mean square error) value. Gradient descent is an iterative optimization algorithm used to find the minimum of a function (or gradient ascent to find the maximum). The algorithm for solving for \(\theta_j\) looks like: \[\theta_j = \theta_j - \alpha\frac{\partial{}}{\partial{\theta_j} }J(\theta)\] \(\alpha\) is the learning rate (smaller step size takes more iterations)

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(MLM notes). Residuals are often used for model diagnostics or for spotting outliers in the data. For single-level models, these are merely the observed - predicted data (i.e., \(y_i - \hat{y}_i\)). However, for multilevel models, these are a bit more complicated to compute. Since we have two error terms (in this example), we will have two sets of residuals. For example, a multilevel model with a single predictor at level one can be written as:

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Random stuff II: Plotting residuals I was poking around my old teaching files and I found an old file and I wasn’t sure what it was: dat <- read.table("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flh3/pubdata/main/Stefanski_2007/mizzo_1_data_yx1x5.txt") head(dat) ## V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 ## 1 -0.22391 0.0054599 0.380310 0.0135140 0.209240 0.1467100 ## 2 0.84413 0.1073700 -0.026533 0.0458640 0.012987 -0.0271900 ## 3 1.06240 0.0911160 0.181260 0.0501710 -0.188670 -0.0120820 ## 4 -1.04170 0.4404900 0.245960 0.0054154 -0.212920 0.1015200 ## 5 0.

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Random stuff: Rademacher distribution A month or two ago, I saw this comic on xkcd: This just shows how folks might use different ways to say the same thing (something simple can appear complex and vice versa). And then, in that same week, I was reading an article that mentioned drawing a random variable from a Rademacher distribution– which was a distribution I had not heard of (w/c has a M = 0, SD = 1) and somehow the name alone made it sound complicated.

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Projects

Ongoing Grant Funded Work

Various ongoing grants funded by the National Institute of Justice, Department of Education (i3), and Institute of Education Sciences.

Missouri Prevention Science Institute

The Missouri Prevention Science Institute (MPSI) brings community members and researchers together to help schools and families apply techniques that promote social and academic success. Through community outreach, the institute’s staff provides parent training and teacher consultation services.

Youth Violence Project @ UVA

Our team of faculty and graduate students conducts research on effective methods and policies for youth violence prevention and school safety.

Teaching

I teach the following courses at the University of Missouri:

Multilevel Modeling

The goal of the course is to provide students with the necessary skills needed to review/critique, analyze, interpret, and write-up studies involving nested (clustered) data using multilevel modeling (MLM). Clustered data (e.g., students within schools, patients within clinics) occur quite naturally in the social sciences and being able to understand and conduct their own analyses using nested data is an important skill. Alternatives are discussed as well.

Applied Multivariate Statistics

This course is designed to provide students with both a theoretical and applied understanding of useful multivariate statistical procedures (e.g., factor analysis, principal components analysis, discriminant function analysis, cluster analysis, MANOVA) in education sciences.

Program (Impact) Evaluation

Evaluating the quantifiable impact of social programs is a key task that policy makers, governments, and program funders perform. In education and the social sciences, a fundamental question asked is ‘How do we know our policy or program works?’

Quantitative Foundations in Educational Research

This course is designed to provide students the fundamental and necessary quantitative methods in educational research.

Data Management (using R)

Good data management is a prerequisite for successful research, needed for reproducibility of results, and essential when collaborating with others.

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