Please join us for An Introduction to Network Psychometrics, a research talk by Dr. Sacha Epskamp (Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore).
Recent years have seen a rise in the network approach to psychology: modeling human behavior as a complex system of interacting psychological, biological, and sociological components. This approach has since been utilized in various topics of psychological research, such as mental health, attitude formation and intelligence. While the approach originated from a complex systems point of view, it has since inspired new psychometric modelling frameworks that are made available in open-source and accessible software packages – Network Psychometrics. Network psychometrics is both an alternative to and complementary with traditional psychometric modeling techniques such as Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). In this seminar, I will introduce network psychometrics and showcase some recent applications of psychometric network modeling, such as meta-analytic modeling of multiple datasets and separating within-person dynamics from between-person relations in longitudinal panel data.
Sacha Epskamp is an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Department of Psychology. Prior to joining NUS, he worked at the University of Amsterdam in the Department of Psychology and the Centre for Urban Mental Health. Sacha's research focuses on network psychometrics, specifically in the topics of estimating network models from psychological datasets and equating these to established psychometric modeling techniques. This work culminated in a book, Network Psychometrics with R: A Guide for Behavioral and Social Scientists. He has implemented these methods in several software packages now routinely used in diverse fields of psychological research. His other research interests include meta-science and reproducibility, complexity, time-series modeling, and dynamical systems modeling. Sacha Epskamp has received several awards for his research, including the Leamer-Rosenthal Prize of the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences, the dissertation prize of the psychometric society, and the junior scientific reward of the Complex Systems Society. In 2024, Sacha was the recipient of the Janet T. Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions.