D. Betsy McCoach, Ph.D., is professor of Research Methods, Measurement, and Evaluation in the Educational Psychology department at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches graduate courses in Structural Equation Modeling, Multilevel Modeling, Advances in Latent Variable Modeling, and Instrument Design. Dr. McCoach has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and books, including Instrument Design in the Affective Domain and Multilevel Modeling of Educational Data. In 2011, Dr. McCoach founded the Modern Modeling Methods conference. Dr. McCoach is co-Principal Investigator for the National Center for Research on Gifted Education and has served as Principal Investigator, co-Principal Investigator, and/or research methodologist for several other federally-funded research projects/grants. Dr. McCoach's research interests include latent variable modeling, multilevel modeling, longitudinal modeling, instrument design, and gifted education. Dr. Dakota Cintron, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral scholar for the Evidence for Action (E4A) Methods Laboratory. Dr. Cintron's research focuses on the application, development, and assessment of quantitative methods in the social and behavioral sciences. His areas of research interest include topics such as item response theory, latent variable and structural equation modeling, longitudinal data analysis, hierarchical linear modeling, and causal inference. Dr. Cintron earned his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Connecticut. He has previously held research positions at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, the National Institute for Early Education Research, and New Visions for Public Schools.
