Felix Thoemmes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development in the College of Human Ecology. He has a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology, and is a member of the graduate field of Statistics. Before he came to Cornell, he was a Professor at the University of Tuebingen, Germany, in the Center for Educational Science and Psychology, and an Assistant Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University.
I am broadly interested in quantitative methods in psychology, with a special focus on causal inference, and missing data. My work spans both the development and evaluation of statistical tools for social scientist, but also the application of these methods on data collected by social scientists. Among some topics of specific interest are the regression-discontinuity design, propensity score matching, and missing data analysis using missingness instruments.
Broadly speaking, I work on topics of quantitative methods and design for the social sciences. In particular, I am interested in causal inference, both model-based and design-based.
Recently, I finished a grant by the Institute of Education Sciences to develop a web-based interface for the analysis of regression-discontinuity designs. An R package has been released on CRAN, and a web-based GUI using the Shiny environment was released in 2018. https://rddapp.shinyapps.io/shinyrdd_beta/
I continue to publish in methodological and applied journals, including Multivariate Behavioral Research, Psychological Methods, or Structural Equation Modeling.
Finally, I work on collaborative projects with applied colleagues that span different areas of developmental psychology.
I teach Quantitative Methods (QM) 1, 2, (and 3) on a regular basis. All courses are cross-listed in Human Development and Psychology, and are open to graduate students and advanced undergraduate students. QM1 is a course on the analysis of randomized studies (mostly ANOVA designs), QM2 focuses on the analysis of non-randomized studies (mostly regression), and QM3 covers a mix of more advanced statistical methods. I try to implement active learning components in all of my classes, and am the faculty lead for an active learning grant in the Psychology department.
Recent publications:
Please refer to CV for full list of publications.
Ratner, K., Burrow, A., Thoemmes, F., & Mendle, J. (in press). Invariance of the Derailment
Scale-6: Testing the Measurement and Correlates of Derailment across Adulthood
Psychological Assessment.
Rosenfeld, D., …, Thoemmes, F., et. al. (in press). Conducting Social Psychological
Research in the Wake of COVID-19. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Grosz, M., Rohrer, J., & Thoemmes, F. (2020). The taboo against explicit causal inference
in nonexperimental psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15 (5),
1243-1255.
Ong, A., Thoemmes, F., Ratner, K., Ghezzi-Kopel, K., & Reid, C. (2020). Positive Affect
and Chronic Pain: A Preregistered Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Pain, 161(6),
1140-1149.
Thoemmes, F. (2020). The assumptions of directional dependence analysis. Multivariate
Behavioral Research, 55 (4), 516-522.
I am the outgoing programming chair for the annual APA conference, Division 5.
I am currently an Associate editor for Multivariate Behavioral Research, and have reviewed for a large number of academic journals.