UtekGoing take this coming winter break to really get a grasp on SEM and maybe try to wrap my head around running simulations in R.
Honestly, I feel like I spend too much time learning methods/stats at the expense of my content knowledge.
Alex Danvers@utek spent way more time on stats than content, & found it consistently more useful. Depends on your area, but I worried that reading too much 90's, and 00's JPSP would be just learning things that weren't really true (or at least not supported by the methods that were presented as supporting them).
Personality psych: would be happy to read more.
Big-N clinical trials: would be happy to read more.
Typical journal article: meh.
@adanvers thanks for this! yeah I pretty much agree with you here.
Also, I feel like knowing stats inside out helps you see things from a fresher POV and to ask more meaningful research questions.
Øyvind Halsøy@utek @adanvers I'm currently on the same track as you. Just started my Phd and have been focusing a lot on stats, and especially SEM. Several people have told me to focus on stats during the phd, because thats when you have the most time available to dive into it. My favourite SEM course so far is the Utrecht summer school, it's all done in Mplus but it integrates very well with R.
@oyvindhalsoy @adanvers yeah I guess where I am there isn’t a strong push for PhD students to be extremely competent in stats unless they have a quant psych advisor. So I tend to feel a little guilty focusing so much on grasping stats/methods hah
@utek @oyvindhalsoy I've seen that response in some advisors... but stats is a superpower that opens up a lot of collaborations and opportunities down the line. Lots of U.S. universities want folks who can teach stats, and lots of collaborators want folks who can handle the high end stuff for them.
That's not even mentioning how it opens up jobs outside of academia. It's good to have options in this job market!
@adanvers @oyvindhalsoy yeah I completely agree with you. There’s just so much to learn, it gets overwhelming sometimes