Yong Zhang is a PhD student at the department of psychometrics and statistics at the University of Groningen. Yong is interested in improving the experience sampling methodology and the education and communication of statistics. His PhD project focuses on developing simulation-based methods that can be used to assess the quality of individualized time-series models, more specifically targeting the risk of overfitting of such models. In his spare time, he enjoys watching films and cooking.

“How can we improve the methodology of intensive longitudinal research?”

As daily life research using ambulatory assessments becomes increasingly popular, we are entering a new territory where many methodological questions are not yet tackled sufficiently. What, when, and how should the measurements be? How should we properly model the endogenous temporal dynamics of individuals while making sure exogenous contextual variables receive enough attention? The high complexity of intensive longitudinal data makes any rule-of-thumb style thinking unfeasible when dealing with such questions. My research thus focuses on answering these questions with simulation-based methods and developing tools that can be used by future researchers in their own research scenarios.

PhD student,
University of Groningen