QUANTITATIVE TRAINING FOR MENTAL HEALTH RESEARCH

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Mental health research often requires the consideration of advanced statistical and psychometric methods to adjust for confounding and measurement error, and to model causal processes in non-experimental contexts. Although many of the emerging methods are developed by statisticians and biostatisticians, the application of these methods often falls on the shoulders of persons trained in psychology departments. In order to develop a cadre of mental health researchers who are well equipped to benefit from advances in quantitative methods, we propose to continue operating a quantitative training program in mental health research at the Department of Psychology at NYU. The program provides specific, sophisticated training in psychometrics, statistics and study design to two postdoctoral fellows and five predoctoral fellows. The training draws on the curriculum of NYU's Department of Statistics and Operations Research as well as of the Department of Psychology. In addition to providing specific instruction in quantitative methods to mental health researchers, the training program aims to affect the broader context of the quantitative methods to mental health researchers, the training program aims to affect the broader context of the Psychology Department. Fellows participate in ongoing research projects that involve mental health variables in clinical, community, cognitive and developmental psychology at NYU, as well as in research settings in the New York area. Their expertise in methods such as logistic regression, random regression models and multivariate techniques allow faculty and other students to appreciate better the statistical methodology that is now available for mental health research. Fellows' exposure to important issues in psychiatric epidemiology and public health may lead to more involvement by basic physiological scientists in these areas.