On September 1, 2020, the OPTIMAL project—funded with an ERC consolidator grant from the European Research Council awarded to Ellen Hamaker—started. This 5-year research project aims to develop an overarching methodological framework that integrates psychological theory about processes, measurement based on intensive longitudinal methodology, and statistical modeling focused on the dynamics (including techniques such as time series analysis (TSA), dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM), and continuous time (CT) modeling).
In August 2019, Noémi Schuurman, Laura Bringmann, Oisín Ryan, Rebecca Kuiper, and Ellen Hamaker taught a new course within the Utrecht Summer School, called: Modeling the Dynamics of Intensive Longitudinal Data. In this five-day course participants were provided a tour of diverse modeling approaches for intensive longitudinal data and the philosophies behind them, and they obtained practical experience with these modeling techniques using different software packages (including R and Mplus). The course was a major success and was fully booked. The team is currently investigating options to teach the course this winter at TESC, and they plan to teach the course next summer at Utrecht again.
On April 12, 2019, Ellen Hamaker gave her inaugural speech by which she officially accepted her position as full professor of Longitudinal Data Analysis at Utrecht University. Her speech can be found here: OratieHamaker2019.pdf (in Dutch).
The Consortium on Individual Development (CID) has welcomed Ellen Hamaker as a new PI. CID is a 10-year Gravity project supported by NWO, and focuses on the development of children, in particular the development of their social competence and behavioral control and how this affected by environmental factors and child characteristics. Read more about Ellen’s role within CID here.
September 14, 2018: A symposium on Psychological Networks and Time Series Models in Groningen, with leading international experts from methodology, clinical psychology and psychiatry. For more information click here.
The Utrecht Summer School offers many courses on statistics and methodology for social scientists and the like; find out more here.
Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling (DSEM), is a new toolbox that Ellen Hamaker helped to develop and that is part of Mplus since version 8.0. It allows for time series analysis and multilevel extensions of this, and is particularly tailored to model the dynamics in intensive longitudinal data such as obtained with ecological momentary assessments, experience sampling, daily diaries, and ambulatory assessments. More information about DSEM and residual DSEM (RDSEM) in Mplus—including handouts, papers, scripts, webinars, and videos of our 2-day workshop at Johns Hopkins in 2017—can be found at the Mplus website here. To read about the collaboration between Ellen Hamaker and Mplus, click here (in Dutch only).
