January 2024 Online Short Course:

Within Person Research

Dr. Nikos Dimotakis

Wednesday, January 3 – Friday, January 5

Taught daily from 10:00 AM ET – 4:00 PM ET

Instructor Biography

Dr. Nikos Dimotakis is a Professor and the Raymond A. Young Chair in the Department of Management at Oklahoma State University. His research focuses on affective and motivational processes, seeking to understand how individuals perceive and react to their environment and during interactions with other people. This work has been published in outlets such as the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Dr. Dimotakis has served on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of Applied Psychology, and Personnel Psychology. He was also Rep-At-Large for the Research Methods Division of Academy of Management and is still engaged in a variety of endeavors to promote research methods education.

Course Description

The CARMA Within Person Research short course provides an overview of the conceptual and operational knowledge and skills needed to conduct research that aims to understand individuals’ attitudes, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors over time. We will focus on techniques aimed at examining dynamic and fluctuating states that individuals are experiencing and analyzing data with a temporally nested structure (observations within individuals, observations within days within individuals, and so forth). We will begin by an overview of what within-person conceptualizations look like in terms of their underlying theory and their statistical modeling. We will then introduce concepts and principles that are important in designing and conducting within-person research. The third module introduces the specification of basic within-person models analyzed via multilevel approaches (i.e., random coefficient regression or hierarchical linear models). We will then discuss some more advanced models and revisit some of the assumptions of multilevel work with a critical eye, and finish with a synthesis module with time set aside for a final Q&A. Participants are encouraged to bring their own data to the course, to facilitate their progress with existing research. This course is aimed at faculty and graduate students who have some familiarity with regular regression but have little experience or knowledge about multilevel analyses.

Module 1: Introduction to within-person conceptualization: Models and theories

Module 2: Within-person studies: Design, analytical needs, and measurement

Module 3: Within-person models: An illustration of within-person and cross-level models

Module 4: Advanced person models and reconsideration of assumption

Module 5: Synthesis and review; final Q & A