Ryne Estabrook

Post-Doctoral Fellow

Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics

Virginia Commonwealth University

Curriculum Vitae

Affiliations   Research   Software   Courses   Instruction   Acknowledgements   Contact

I am a post-doctoral fellow at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, working with Mike Neale. I received my Ph.D. from the quantitative psychology area at the University of Virginia in August 2010 under the mentorship of John Nesselroade. I've also received an M.A in psychology from UVa in 2007 and a B.S. in psychology from Arizona State University in 2005.

My research focuses on intraindividual variability, lifespan development and the creation of new statistical methods, including the study of interindividual differences in intraindividual variability, interindividual differences in change and development, alternative approaches to factorial and measurement invariance, and terminal change. My methodological training pertains largely to structural equation modeling and the general linear model, but I've also carried out work in mixed-effect modeling, survival analysis, dynamical systems analysis, simulation studies and Bayesian methods. My recent work in statistical methodology has been focused in the OpenMx project. I'd be happy to answer questions about my substantive research, methodological and statistical work, or my curriculum vitae.

Affiliations
  • Post-doctoral fellow at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics (VIPBG) at Virginia Commonwealth University.
  • Member of the OpenMx Development Team, which has created and maintains an open-source statistical software package for structural equation and related multivariate modeling. See the above link or the software section of this page for more information.
  • Recent Ph.D. student at the University of Virginia Department of Psychology.
  • Member of the Center for Developmental and Health Research Methodology (CDHRM), which focuses on the development of methodological and statistical techniques for social and behavioral sciences.
  • Recent fellow in the LIFE program, an international and multidisciplinary program that focuses on studying lifespan development over evolutionary and ontogenetic time.

Research
The materials below are a sample of some of my recent research. Please contact me and let me know if you use the information presented here.

Measurement Model of Derivatives. My dissertation research pertains to the measurement of latent constructs that change over time. The measurement model of derivatives is a proposed model for the evaluation of factor-analytic measurement that uses local linear approximation of derivatives to transform longitudinal data. Using this method, researchers can evaluate whether the factor structure of between-person differences in some construct matches the factor structure of within-person change. Intraindividual Variability (IIV). Intraindividual variability, as measured by the individual standard deviation (ISD), is an interesting measure, as they quantify an amount of stochasticity rather than systematic change. My pre-dissertation (i.e., masters thesis) on this topic deals with the reliability of ISDs, finding that ISDs have much lower reliabilities than individual means or trends from the same data. Factorial Invariance and Idiographic Filtering. Establishing multivariate measurement depends on establishing a multivariate "rule" that is held constant in some way across individuals or populations. My work on factorial invariance takes two main paths: discussion of traditional work in factorial and measurement invariance, and idiographic filtering. Idiographic filtering (Nesselroade, et al, 2007) establishes factorial invariance through an invariant higher-order factor structure, allowing first-order factor structures to vary across individuals, groups or populations. Terminal Change. Terminal change processes (which cover terminal decline and terminal drop phenomena) describe developmental change in the months or years immediately preceding death. Other research materials listed on my curriculum vitae but not listed here are available by request.

Software
OpenMx. OpenMx is a free, open-source software package for structural equation modeling and related multivariate multivariate and matrix algebra operations. It runs as a library in R, and is available for download here. I am a member of the Core Development Team, which creates new features for the package, and also provide documentation, alpha and beta testing and user support for the OpenMx community.

Courses
PSYC 771. I co-taught the first semester of the graduate statistics sequence for the UVa Department of Psychology, along with Tim Brick in Fall 2008. Those with access to UVa Collab can access course materials here.

Here are a few sample class presentations, spanning most of the range of the class. Please contact me if you'd like additional course materials.

Workshop and Seminar Instruction
I've also given a number of instructional presentations outside of coursework, focusing on overviews of statistical concepts and computing. Please contact me and let me know if you use the information presented here.

General Statistics

Statistical Programming

Acknowledgements
I also wish to acknowledge some of my coauthors, collaborators, lab members and mentors for all of their hard work and dedication. In alphabetical order:
.

Contact
Ryne Estabrook
Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics
Virginia Commonwealth University
P.O. Box 980126
Richmond VA 23298-0126
e-mail: crestabrook@vcu.edu