Co-Principal Investigators: Horst, Alison; Ing, Marsha; Masyn, Katherine

This program will provide education researchers with training on foundational skills in mixture modeling and in-depth support in the appropriate use of the modeling approach in their research. The training is intended for researchers who have some background in statistics, access to data, and potential research questions that could be addressed using a mixture model.

They will recruit 2 cohorts of 12 participants to engage in a year long, intensive training program involving online synchronous and asynchronous mixture modeling training, a 3-day in-person training and community building event, and 1-year of mentoring and ongoing professional learning opportunities. Training will cover multiple topics relevant for the systematic, purposeful, and principled application of mixture modeling to real data through a combination of lectures, structured cooperative learning activities, and hands-on lab sessions.

A second focus of the program is the development and dissemination of an extensive set of freely available, online methodological training materials that highlight the utility of mixture modeling and provide specific support to encourages the best practice of mixture modeling. These materials include online videos on data analysis topics and tasks related to the application mixture modeling, annotated output files for Mplus and MplusAutomation, and resources for running models and creating related graphical results and figures in mixture modeling.