Abstract

Recent years have seen a rise in the modeling of human behavior as a complex system of interacting psychological, biological, and sociological components rather than reflective to a few underlying latent traits. This complex systems approach has grown especially prominent in the study of mental health, in which mental illnesses are seen as emergent behavior in a complex interplay of symptoms and external forces. For example, concentration problems may lead to stress at work, leading in turn to more concentration problems. From this network perspective arose a field of research focused on the estimation of network models from psychological datasets: network psychometrics. The workshop will present a broad introduction to the topic and will discuss the estimation and interpretation of network models from large datasets of many patients, as well idiographic studies of a single patient. By the end of the day, participants will understand the reasoning and interpretation of network models as well as will have hands-on practical experience with estimating such network models from data in R.