The Missouri Prevention Science Institute (MPSI) at the University of Missouri (MU) is pleased to offer a post-doctoral position. Fellows will join a large team of interdisciplinary scholars supporting the mission of MPSI-Applied, -Methods and -Measurement branches. MPSI’s mission is improve the lives and well-being of children, individuals, and families using prevention science. We will consider applications from any one of these three branches of MPSI. MPSI-Applied focuses on the administration of large scale trials in school and community settings, preventive intervention development and delivery, culturally responsive practices, and widescale dissemination of research knowledge and effective practices. MPSI-Methods has a focus on improving existing and developing new innovative statistical methods through integrating methodological perspectives from various areas including statistics, epidemiology, psychology, education, and machine learning with a focus on methods for the analysis of dependent data (e.g., multilevel modeling), evaluation methods for experimental and quasi-experimental studies, causal learning in non-experimental data (e.g., direction dependence modeling), statistical modeling of complex moderation processes (e.g., recursive partitioning), and non-standard analysis of intervention effects (e.g., distributional regression modeling). MPSI-Measurement
Fellows will work closely with a primary mentor who has content, methodological, and/or measurement expertise to support MPSI training and scholarly initiatives including analyses, publications, and grant-writing. In particular, MPSI-Applied fellows will (1) assist with implementation large scale prevention trials and interventions in school and community settings; (2) assist with grant- and paper-writing; and (3) develop independent lines of inquiry. MPSI-Methods and -Measurement fellows will (1) perform systematic secondary data analysis for all recent MPSI datasets with a focus on some of the cutting-edge quantitative methods emerging from MPSI research; (2) assist with planned analyses on existing MPSI grants; and (3) help refine and extend MPSI’s Summer of R workshop series and other prevention science-related coursework. Fellows will be mentored on how to apply these new methods, write a paper about the methods, and, depending on the results, write a related grant proposal. Additionally, fellows will be immersed in a rich training environment that includes opportunities to work with scholars from a range of related fields including school psychology, special education, educational statistics and methodology, educational leadership, social work, and counseling psychology.
Completed and ongoing research projects with which fellows may interface, depending on skills and interests, include five group randomized evaluations of classroom management and principal training programs; developmental projects focused on a web-based teacher consultation model and a self-monitoring intervention for youth; measurement projects that are in exploratory or development stages; and a county-wide school mental health surveillance and intervention model. Additionally, MPSI scholarship will promote culturally responsive practices and reducing disproportionality in educational and juvenile justice outcomes. The positions will also afford the fellow opportunities for publishing, grant-writing and administration, and mentoring and training in prevention and education sciences.