archiveicon_white.png

Archived Content

The Office of Disease Prevention (ODP) archives materials that are more than 3 years old and no longer being updated. Over time, links and other information may have changed. We cannot guarantee that all of the links in these materials will be current or accurate.

Methods: Mind the Gap

Webinar Series

Optimizing Inferences Using Principled Missing Data Treatments

June 29, 2016
Todd D. Little, Ph.D.
​Todd D. Little, Ph.D.

Director
Institute for Measurement, Methodology, Analysis, and Policy
Professor
Educational Psychology and Leadership
Texas Tech University

View the Webinar

About the Webinar

Missing data are a common problem for prevention research and improperly handling missing data can severely compromise the validity of a study’s inferences.

In this webinar, Dr. Little highlights the power and utility of modern principled treatments for missing data to optimize inferences. He discusses the three issues that occur when data go missing and the three mechanisms that give rise to missing data.

Dr. Little also addresses how modern principled treatments are capable of remedying the otherwise deleterious effects of unplanned missing data. He emphasizes the importance of the missing data modeling plan as a precursor to any data analytic modeling plan. Lastly, Dr. Little shows how experimentally manipulated missing data can increase the validity and reduce the costs of research.

About Todd D. Little

Dr. Little is a Professor and Director of the Research, Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics program at Texas Tech University and Director of the Institute for Measurement, Methodology, Analysis, and Policy. He is internationally recognized for his quantitative work on various aspects of applied structural equation modeling (e.g., modern missing data treatments, indicator selection, parceling, modeling developmental processes) as well as his substantive developmental research (e.g., action-control processes and motivation, coping, self-regulation).

In 2001, Dr. Little was elected to membership in the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology, and in 2009, he was elected President of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Division 5 (Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics). He founded, organizes, and teaches in the internationally renowned “Stats Camps” (see statscamp.org). Dr. Little is a Fellow in the APA, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2013, he received the Cohen Award from the APA’s Division 5 for distinguished contributions to teaching and mentoring. In 2015, he received the inaugural Distinguished Contributions to Mentoring of Developmental Scientists Award from the Society for Research in Child Development.

As an interdisciplinary-oriented collaborator, Dr. Little has published with over 340 persons from around the world in over 65 different peer-reviewed journals. His work has garnered over 17,000 citations with an H-index of 67 and an I-10 index of 151. Dr. Little published Longitudinal Structural Equation Modeling in 2013, and he has edited five books related to methodology including the Oxford Handbook of Quantitative Methods and the Guildford Handbook of Developmental Research Methods (with Brett Laursen and Noel Card).

Last updated on