Prerequisites: SPHPH 717 OR 714. - Many psychological, cognitive, behavioral, and social constructs are defined in ways that are not directly observable (cf. biological measurements such as white blood cell count, tumor size). As a result, there are challenges associated with measurement. Significant psychometric efforts are devoted to developing and disseminating reliable and valid measures of psychosocial constructs. As mental health and stress are now recognized as critical domains of public health, psychiatric epidemiology and other subdisciplines (e.g., social epidemiology) grapple with complex measurement problems and decisions. The goal of this course is to present an overview of psychometrics and concepts surrounding the measurement and of psychosocial constructs in epidemiology. Students will learn about gold-standard and novel assessment methods (self-report, interview, EMA), measurement theory, reliability (internal, inter-rater, test-retest), validity (e.g., structural, concurrent, criterion, predictive), and diagnostic classification procedures (e.g., ROC, clustering). Special attention will be paid to psychometric evaluation and measurement models using latent variable methods (e.g., exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis). Based on the material and research covered in this course, students will be asked to consider the implications for epidemiology and public health (e.g., best measurement practices).

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