Professional Certificate in Network Psychometrics for Behavioral and Social Scientists

Overview

The Professional Certificate (PC) in Network Psychometrics for Behavioral and Social Scientists comprises two workshops that aim to provide expert guidance for researchers and practitioners interested in learning the basics of network modeling for social science.

This professional certificate will:

Provide instructors of undergraduate and graduate level courses with a new foundational skillset in data analysis. This will allow them in turn to teach courses focused on network modeling of survey data, which are highly popular worldwide.
Provide researchers in all phases of their career with the necessary knowledge and skills to use network models in their research, which in turn may lead to important progress in their respective fields, as well as ultimately in the society.
Further appeal to clinical practitioners and other professionals in a similar role, as network psychometrics is especially seen as a useful tool to investigate mental health and mental disorders.

Short PCs do not require a significant time commitment and can be followed at an intensive-study rate, which is often appealing to busy practitioners and researchers who want to extend their knowledge, but face many time constraints.

For enquiries, please email Nur Zahirah at zahirah@nus.edu.sg.

Mode of Delivery and Assessment

Mode of Delivery

The mode of delivery is face-to-face workshops with 4h teaching sessions (2 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon) and 3h practical/seminar style sessions (1.5 in the morning and 1.5 in the afternoon). During the last training day more time may be devoted to seminar-style teaching to allow participants to prepare their presentations. All participants will receive their own copy of the Network Psychometrics with R: A Guide for Behavioral and Social Scientists textbook.

Assessment

Learners will be assessed in the following ways:

(Group) presentations
In-class quizzes
Reflection assignments

Target Audience

Entry Requirements

Application

Professional Certificate	Workshops	Application Links
Network Psychometrics for Behavioral and Social Scientists	Workshop I: Network Psychometrics: Foundations, Theory, and Cross-sectional Data Analysis	Enquire here
Network Psychometrics for Behavioral and Social Scientists	Workshop II: Network Psychometrics: Longitudinal Data Modeling	Enquire here

Note:

Course application closes 2 weeks prior to course commencement.
Every professional certificate comprises two unique workshops. Learners will be awarded a professional certificate when they complete both workshops, and apply to the NUS Department of Psychology for the professional certificate.
The maximum candidature period that learners must complete both workshops to be awarded the professional certificate is 24 months.
Learners can choose not to stack both workshops into a professional certificate, but register for single workshops.
There is no limit to the number of workshops that learners can attend.

Course Fees

Course Structure and Details

Workshop I: Network Psychometrics: Foundations, Theory, and Cross-sectional Data Analysis

Course Synopsis

This workshop will focus on both theoretical foundations of network psychometrics and modeling techniques developed from this perspective. It will provide the programming background and skills necessary to carry out independent data analyses, as well as the central concepts in the estimation of psychometric network models. The workshop will consist of plenary lectures (2h), followed by seminar-style computer practicals (1.5h).

Learning Outcomes

After completing this workshop, attendees will be able to:

Understand the theoretical foundations behind network psychometrics
Carry out basic programming in R: create a matrix, load and inspect data, computer a variance-covariance matrix, visualize and analyze networks using the qgraph package for R
Explain the differences between social network analysis and network psychometrics
Compute network metrics common in the field
Draw an implied Markov Random Field (MRF) given a certain causal structure
Be familiar with Gaussian Graphical Models (GGMs), Ising models, and Mixed Graphical Models
Interpret MRFs in different ways (causal, predictive)
Estimate unconstrained MRFs from cross-sectional data
Understand the differences between pruning, model selection, and regularization
Estimate MRFs using different estimation algorithms and understand which algorithm should be preferred for which setting
Apply permutation tests to check differences between two groups
Apply bootstrapping to assess the stability of network model parameters

Dates and Time

Day 1: TBC in 2025
Day 2: TBC in 2025
Day 3: TBC in 2025

Classes will be conducted from 9 am to 5 pm.

Venue

Classes will be conducted face-to-face in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS.

About The Trainer

Dr Adela Isvoranu
Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore

Education
Ph.D. (University of Amsterdam, NL; cum laude)
M.Sc. (University of Amsterdam, NL; cum merit)
B.Sc. (Hons.) (University of Leeds, UK)

Dr. Isvoranu is an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore, Department of Psychology. Her research focuses on pathways from mental health to mental illness and fuzzy boundaries between psychopathological conditions. Dr. Isvoranu’s PhD work, which she completed cum laude at the University of Amsterdam, argues for complexity-based conceptualizations of psychopathology, focusing on symptoms and their interactions, rather than on syndromes. Dr. Isvoranu works in a multidisciplinary environment, often collaborating with clinical psychologists, practitioners, and methodologists, ultimately aiming to facilitate the development of novel intervention approaches to improve mental health. She is the main author of the textbook “Network Psychometrics with R: A Guide for Behavioral and Social Scientists”.

Research Interests

Network models/analysis
Psychopathology
Modeling of mental health
Developmental pathways from mental health to mental illness

Recent/Representative Publications

Isvoranu, A. M., Epskamp, S., Waldorp, L. J., & Borsboom, D. (Eds.). (2022). Network Psychometrics with R: A Guide for Behavioral and Social Scientists. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Isvoranu, A. M., van Borkulo, C. D., Boyette, L. L., Wigman, J. T. W., Vinkers, C. H., Borsboom, D., GROUP Investigators. (2017). A Network Approach to Psychosis: Pathways Between Childhood Trauma and Psychotic Symptoms. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 43(1), 187–196.
Isvoranu, A. M., & Epskamp, S. (2021). Which Estimation Method to Choose in Network Psychometrics? Deriving Guidelines for Applied Researchers. Psychological Methods.

Workshop II: Network Psychometrics: Longitudinal Data Modeling

Course Synopsis

This workshop will focus on longitudinal data modeling in the context of network psychometrics. The material will move the focus from cross-sectional data sets to data sets of one or more people measured repeatedly over time and provide the necessary skills to independently estimate network models from longitudinal data. The workshop will consist of plenary lectures (2h), followed by seminar-style computer practicals (1.5h).

Learning Outcomes

After completing this workshop, attendees will be able to:

Understand when to use single measurement, panel, and intensive time-series data
Explain the difference between within-subject effects and between-subject effects
Estimate vector-autoregression models from longitudinal data
Critically assess the interpretation from longitudinal data analyses
Understand the basics of multi-level analysis
Estimate personalized network models from single subject time-series
Estimate multi-level network models from time-series data of multiple participants
Estimate network models from panel data
Incorporate latent variable and measurement errors in (longitudinal) network models

Dates and Time

Day 1: TBC in 2025
Day 2: TBC in 2025
Day 3: TBC in 2025

Classes will be conducted from 9 am to 5 pm.

Venue

Classes will be conducted face-to-face in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS.

About The Trainer

Dr Sacha Epskamp
Associate Professor, National University of Singapore

Education
Ph.D. (University of Amsterdam, NL)
M.Sc. (University of Amsterdam, NL)
B.Sc. (University of Amsterdam, NL)

A/P Epskamp is an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, Department of Psychology. Previously, he worked at the University of Amsterdam in the Department of Psychology and the Centre for Urban Mental Health. In addition, A/P Epskamp is a former research fellow at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Studies and has been a visiting researcher at the Complexity Institute of Nanyang Technological University. In 2016, A/P Epskamp completed his seminal PhD on network psychometrics—estimating network models from psychological datasets and equating these to established psychometric modeling techniques. This dissertation laid the groundworks for the field of Network Psychometrics. He has implemented these methods in several software packages now routinely used in diverse fields of psychological research. A/P Epskamp teaches multivariate statistics and data science, and his research interests involve (network) psychometrics, meta-science, reproducibility, complexity, time-series modeling, and dynamical systems modeling. A/P Epskamp has received several awards for his research, including the Leamer-Rosenthal Prize of the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences, the dissertation prize of the psychometric society, and the junior scientific award of the Complex Systems Society.

Research Interests

Recent/Representative Publications

Epskamp, S. & Fried, Eiko I. (2018). A Tutorial on Regularized Partial Correlation Networks. Psychological Methods, 23(4), 617–634. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000167
Epskamp, S., Rhemtulla, M. T., & Borsboom, D. (2017). Generalized Network Psychometrics: Combining Network and Latent Variable Models. Psychometrika, 82(4), 904–927. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-017-9557-x
Epskamp, S., Waldorp, L. J., Mõttus, R., & Borsboom, D. (2018). The Gaussian Graphical Model in Cross-sectional and Time-series Data. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 53(4), 453–480. https://doi.org/10.1080/00273171.2018.1454823

Fees Description	Programme Fee (Inc 9% GST)
Workshop I: Network Psychometrics: Foundations, Theory, and Cross-sectional Data Analysis	SGD $2,779.50
Workshop II: Network Psychometrics: Longitudinal Data Modeling	SGD $2,779.50
Professional Certificate in Network Psychometrics for Behavioral and Social Scientists (Workshops I & II)	SGD $5,559.00
*Dinner (Optional)	SGD $150