I am a research analyst at the Social Development Research Group with the University of Washington (Seattle, Washington).  At SDRG I work on the Diffusion project, a longitudinal study examining how communities plan and implement intervention programs to prevent adolescent substance use.  We are studying the implementation of Communities that Care, a system through which communities assess their needs and then implement tested prevention programs to address the needs.

I am also continuing my work on the effects of educational settings on children.  In this work I study how schools and classrooms affect child academic and social outcomes. One vein of work examines the influence of school climate on children's cognitive and social development over time. A second area I'm working on is looking at the effects of classrooms, specifically developmentally appropriate classroom practices, on outcomes. As well as being a Developmental Psychologist I am also a statistician. I find that to answer the research questions I'm interested in requires complex multilevel longitudinal analyses. I work not only on my own areas of research but also as a statistical consultant on various other projects in diverse areas including public health, education, theology, and ecology.

Finally, I conduct extensive psychometric work with the instruments I use. For the analyses I conduct to be useful the measures I use have to also be established as valid. I am working to move from a pure psychometric perspective to models that test simultaneously for internal and external validity. My belief is that internal reliability of measures means little if the measures are not related to meaningful outcomes. For more information about the specific projects I'm involved in see my Vita. Also under the Other Web Sites Worth Your Time section I have a list of sites related to childcare and statistical issues.

Last Updated:  8/7/2001

Please also see my backpacking guide to Alabama and the web page for the Alabama Hiking Trail Society: AHTS Website

Copyright 1999 - 2002, M. Lee Van Horn.  Unless otherwise indicated I own the copyright for all material on these pages.