PhD candidate in Psychology (NWO project 'ELDER: Life-Event Longitudinal Description and...

This PhD project, funded by a NWO Open Competition grant awarded to Professor Jaap Denissen, will be conducted at the Department of Psychology, Section of Developmental Psychology of Utrecht University. The proposed research aims to unravel the effects of negative life events on psychological functioning by improved description, explanation, and generalization. Using data from large and representative panel studies (e.g., the LISS panel), we will examine novel ways to describe nonlinear change in psychological functioning, by using sophisticated statistical methods that can take prior information into account. Furthermore, we will use event-triggered measurement bursts of plausible mediators (e.g., need satisfaction; re-alignment of shattered worldviews) to elucidate the mechanisms of change.

Main responsibilities of the PhD candidate will be to co-design and conduct research to address the research questions (e.g., set up appropriate statistical models to analyze longitudinal data). The PhD will help to develop Gaussian Process and GAM techniques, which are machine learning techniques for learning nonlinear trajectories. Furthermore, the candidate will become involved in longitudinal data collection of psychological mediators that can explain the effects of life events on psychological functioning. The PhD candidate will be supported in writing press releases based on the publications and write about the results on popular blog sites (e.g., Psychology Today).

Dr. ir. Joris Mulder (Tilburg University) will be the second promotor of the PhD trajectory. He has an extensive experience with Bayesian methods in general, and in the field of Bayesian Gaussian process methods in particular. The PhD also has the option to stay for 3 months at Prof. Luhmann’s lab at Bochum University.