Summer of R

The Mis­souri Pre­ven­tion Sci­ence Insti­tute is proud to spon­sor the 2nd Annu­al Sum­mer of R train­ing series. Be sure to enroll soon as slots are lim­it­ed!

What is R and why use it?

R is an open-source plat­form for sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses that has become increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar in edu­ca­tion­al and social sci­ence research. There are many ben­e­fits to mak­ing the switch from using oth­er sta­tis­ti­cal soft­ware pro­grams, which can be lim­it­ed in the analy­ses they can per­form and can also be expen­sive. R is a great alter­na­tive because:

  • R has a wide range of capa­bil­i­ties for sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses.
  • Both data man­age­ment and analy­ses can be per­formed with­out hav­ing to switch between pro­grams.
  • R code is suit­ed for col­lab­o­ra­tion and repli­ca­tion of find­ings.
  • New capa­bil­i­ties are con­stant­ly being devel­oped by an ever grow­ing R user com­mu­ni­ty!
  • Final­ly, R is total­ly FREE!

What to expect from Summer of R:

This train­ing is designed for researchers who want to make the switch to using R. The train­ing will pro­vide the nuts and bolts of the pro­gram which is cru­cial in under­stand­ing how R func­tions work.

The train­ing has four cours­es:

  • Course I: Data Explo­ration & Lin­ear Regres­sion (3 days)
    • Data man­age­ment
    • Descrip­tive sta­tis­tics
    • Graph­ics
    • Per­form­ing regres­sion analy­ses
    • Con­duct­ing regres­sion diag­nos­tics
    • Visu­al­iz­ing results and cre­at­ing pub­li­ca­tion-ready out­put
  • Course II: Mul­ti­level Mod­el­ing (1 day)
    • Under­stand­ing the need and log­ic of mul­ti­level mod­els
    • Spec­i­fy­ing uncon­di­tion­al, ran­dom inter­cept, and ran­dom slope mod­els
    • Aggre­gat­ing and merg­ing data
    • Test­ing dif­fer­ent mod­el spec­i­fi­ca­tions
    • Overview of cen­ter­ing, esti­ma­tion meth­ods, and design effects
    • Mod­el diag­nos­tics
  • Course III: Causal Infer­ence: A Graph­i­cal Mod­els Approach (half day)
    • Intro­duc­ing causal graph­i­cal mod­els (direct­ed acyclic graphs: DAGs)
    • Causal graph­i­cal views of Simp­sons’ and Lord’s para­dox­es
    • Rep­re­sent­ing researchers’ qual­i­ta­tive knowl­edge with graphs
    • Deriv­ing causal analy­sis strate­gies from graphs
    • Back­door and front-door adjust­ments
    • Causal medi­a­tion analy­sis
  • Course IV: Item Response The­o­ry (half day)
    • Fun­da­men­tal con­cepts of the IRT mea­sure­ment frame­work
    • Advan­tages of IRT over clas­si­cal test theory/factor ana­lyt­ic meth­ods
    • Mod­els for bina­ry data
    • Mod­els for ordi­nal & nom­i­nal data
    • Mod­el eval­u­a­tion
    • Item/scale analy­sis & diag­nos­tics

Who should enroll in this training?

This train­ing is designed to pro­vide every­thing you need to get start­ed using R and com­plete basic analy­ses. Enroll­ment is open to stu­dents, fac­ul­ty and researchers in the social, behav­ioral, med­ical, and edu­ca­tion sci­ences . Par­tic­i­pants should have a back­ground under­stand­ing of sta­tis­ti­cal meth­ods. Course I (Data Explo­ration & Lin­ear Regres­sion) will not cov­er the back­ground and the­o­ry of the sta­tis­ti­cal meth­ods used in R. Course I is not a train­ing in sta­tis­tics, but a train­ing in using R to com­plete the analy­ses. Cours­es II — IV will cov­er both, sta­tis­ti­cal the­o­ry and appli­ca­tions in R.

About the R experts providing the training:

The train­ing will be pro­vid­ed by four of our excel­lent instruc­tors Drs. Fran­cis Huang, Wolf­gang Wie­der­mann, Wes Boni­fay, and Yong­nam Kim. They are all pro­lif­ic method­ol­o­gists and mea­sure­ment experts, expe­ri­enced edu­ca­tors, and fac­ul­ty mem­bers in the Sta­tis­tics, Mea­sure­ment, and Eval­u­a­tion in Edu­ca­tion (SMEE) depart­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri, and teach a vari­ety of grad­u­ate meth­ods and mea­sure­ment cours­es that sole­ly use R.

  • Dr. Fran­cis Huang
  • Dr. Wolf­gang Wie­der­mann
  • Dr. Wes Boni­fay
  • Dr. Yong­nam Kim

Summer of R training dates and pricing

Dates

  • August 17–21
  • Loca­tion: TBA
  • Time: 9:00AM‑4:30PM

Pric­ing & Sched­ule

  • Ear­ly Bird (before June 1, 2020):
    • Full week: $900
    • Price per course:
      • Course I: Data Explo­ration & Lin­ear Regres­sion (3 days) – $500
      • Course II: Mul­ti­level Mod­el­ing (1 day) – $200
      • Course III: Causal Infer­ence (half day) – $100
      • Course III: Item Response The­o­ry (half day) – $100
  • Late Reg­is­tra­tion (after May 31, 2020):
    • Full week: $1,000
    • Price per course:
      • Course I: Data Explo­ration & Lin­ear Regres­sion (3 days) – $600
      • Course II: Mul­ti­level Mod­el­ing (1 day) – $250
      • Course III: Causal Infer­ence (half day) – $150
      • Course III: Item Response The­o­ry (half day) – $150

Training Location and Travel Information

Hotel Information

Airport Information

  • Colum­bia Region­al Air­port (11 miles)
    • Air­lines: Amer­i­can and Unit­ed Air­lines
  • St. Louis Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (107 Miles)
    • Most Major Air­lines
  • Kansas City Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (130 Miles)
    • Most Major Air­lines
  • Air­port Shut­tle Ser­vice from St. Louis and Kansas City Air­ports: MoX

Parking

Map of Townsend Hall:

Sponsors

If you have any ques­tions, feel free to con­tact Toby Mills-San­doval at millsto@mail.missouri.edu.