Lab Director

Katerina M. Marcoulides, PhD 

Dr. Marcoulides is an Associate Professor in the Quantitative and Psychometric Methods Program in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities.  She is also a member of the Minnesota Population Center and is the Chair of the Structural Equation Modeling Special Interest Group for the American Educational Research Association. Prior to her arrival at UMN, she was an Assistant Professor in the Research and Evaluation Methodology Program in the College of Education and a member of the Informatics Institute at the University of Florida.  She received her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Education from the University of California, Santa Barbara and her M.A. in Quantitative Psychology from the University of California, Davis.  She completed her Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology from Arizona State University.

Research

My research focuses on the development and application of advanced modeling and data mining approaches for the analysis of complex psychological data, and considers ways in which various substantive domains within psychology can be studied through these analytic approaches.  I have developed and utilized data mining techniques to fit optimal structural equation and longitudinal models.  In addition to data mining techniques, another aspect of my research is in estimation issues within structural equation modeling (SEM).  I am also particularly interested in applying modeling techniques to study developmental and educational processes, with an emphasis on economically disadvantaged immigrant children.  My collaborative work with applied researchers in the Minnesota Population Center recently received 5-years of funding from the National Institute of Health to investigate ​​the complex associations among parenting, marginalization, and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.  


Teaching

I teach undergraduate and graduate quantitative courses at the University of Minnesota, including Honors Introduction to Psychological Measurement and Data Analysis, Structural Equation Modeling for the Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Multilevel Modeling for Psychological Data.   At the University of Florida I taught graduate courses in Regression Analysis, Data Mining, and Multilevel Modeling.  I have taught an Introduction to Educational Data Mining workshop at the Florida Educational Research Association (FERA) annual conference.  I have also previously assisted and presented at the APA Advanced Training Institute workshops on Big Data: Exploratory Data Mining in Behavioral Research and Structural Equation Modeling in Longitudinal Research. 


Graduate Students

Dr. Marcoulides will be recruiting graduate students to join her research lab during the Fall 2024 application cycle. 

Click here for information about the Quantitative & Psychometric Methods Area at UMN

Click here for information about How To Apply

Hannah Hamling

Hannah is a first year PhD student in the Quantitative and Psychometric Methods program at the University of Minnesota. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from New York University, where she researched reinforcement learning models and cognitive development. Her research interests include latent variable analyses, Bayesian statistics, factor analysis, and their applications to psychopathology and cognitive processes.

Xinyu Liu

Xinyu is a first-year Ph.D. student in the QPM program. He received his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Peking University in China. He then found his interest in Psychology and went to Brandeis University where he received a Master of Arts in Psychology. His research interest include incomplete and non-normal data in structural equation models. In his free time he enjoys watching movies, especially Christopher Nolan's.

Raj Wahlquist 

Raj Wahlquist is a third year Ph.D student at the University of Minnesota in the Quantitative & Psychometric Methods program.  He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Iowa State University with minors in theoretical statistics, philosophy, and psychology.  He is currently researching predictors of generic conspiracy theory beliefs using parametric versus non-parametric methods. 

Alumni

King Yiu Suen (University of Minnesota, 2023)

Dissertation: A Comparison of Item Selection Methods and Stopping Rules in Multi-category Computerized Classification Testing

Data Science Intern, National Board of Medical Examiners

Data Scientist, JKL Group


Affiliated Graduate Students

Undergraduate Students

PSY 5993, Directed Research in Psychology

Dr. Marcoulides will resume recruiting undergraduate students to participate in PSY 5993, Directed Research in Psychology in 2025. 

Click here for more information about this Directed Research opportunity. 

Click here to download the application