Methodology Program

2006 - Workshops

WHAT TO DO ABOUT MISSING DATA: TOOLS FOR PRACTITIONERS
Monday, January 23, 2006
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Instructor: Recai Yucel, assistant professor of biostatistics at the School of Public Health at UMass Amherst.

The workshop focused on modern approaches to missing data and presented models for missing continuous, categorical, mixture of continuous and categorical and panel data. The workshop was both theoretical and included hands-on lessons on the software that can be used for implementing the modern methods.

HIERARCHICAL LINEAR MODELS I
June 19-23, 2006
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Instructor: Aline Sayer, associate professor of psychology and CRF's Methodology Program Director at UMass Amherst.

Hierarchical linear models (HLMs) provide a conceptual framework and a flexible set of analytical tools to study a variety of social, political, and developmental processes. One major HLM application focuses on the modeling of longitudinal data or the analysis of individual change over time. Another set of applications focuses on data in which persons are clustered within social context such as schools, neighborhoods, or organizations. Participants will be exposed to a wide variety of examples, with emphasis on the interpretation and reporting of results. This workshop is offered in collaboration with the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan.

ANALYZING DEVELOPMENTAL TRAJECTORIES
June 26-28, 2006
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Instructor: Daniel Nagin, professor of Public Policy and Statistics at Carnegie-Mellon University.

A developmental trajectory describes the course of a behavior over age or time. This three-day workshop aims to provide participants with the training to apply a group-based method for analyzing developmental trajectories. This methodology has four significant capabilities: (1) the capability to identify rather than assume distinctive groups of trajectories, (2) the capability to estimate the proportion of the population following each such trajectory group, (3) the capability to relate group membership probability to individual characteristics and circumstances, and (4) the capability to use the group membership probabilities for various other purposes such as creating profiles of group members. In addition, workshop participants will be trained in the application of three important extensions of the method: (1) the capability to add time-varying covariates to trajectory models, (2) the capability to estimate joint trajectory models of distinct but related behaviors, and (3) the capability to link trajectories with distal outcomes. This workshop is offered in collaboration with the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan.