HHS researchers keep Methodology Center at Purdue data-driven

Kristine Marceau

Written by: Tim Brouk, tbrouk@purdue.edu

When researchers require some statistical expertise or data analysis know-how, The Methodology Center at Purdue (MCAP) is there.

A collaboration between the Purdue University College of Health and Human Sciences (HHS) and the College of Liberal Arts (CLA), the center consists of four co-directors, 15 core faculty, more than 100 affiliated faculty researchers, and over 50 graduate students and postdocs who have a passion for data analysis and statistical methodologies that make research projects sing.

“It is very typical of people who are (statistical) methods experts to be on widely varying interdisciplinary projects because the skill set really transfers across many kinds of science,” said Kristine Marceau, an MCAP co-director and associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science (HDFS).

MCAP’s mission is to help researchers across career stages grow in their ability and expertise in quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods data collection, analysis and communication through events, coursework, workshops, practice presentations and valuable feedback. MCAP offers a graduate certificate program and will introduce a one-week longitudinal data analysis summer institute open to anyone in the United States in July.

The center also helps researchers with grant applications — including finding collaborators with specific expertise — and hosts social events, such as the Methods Café series, where participants enjoy wine and cheese while discussing their research methods and common challenges and celebrating MCAP graduate student awards.

It all adds up

Sharon Christ

MCAP began in 2017 as a cluster hire, and it was then known as the Advanced Methodologies at Purdue (AMAP) initiative. But in 2024, additional funding was secured, and the initiative leveled up to MCAP. MCAP is funded through a National Institutes of Health R25 grant for about $900,000 over the next three years, a grant from the Purdue Innovation Hub, and money from HHS and CLA.

The funding pays for events, workshop materials, graduate student funding opportunities, course development and other required costs. The co-directors — HDFS associate professor Sharon Christ, Marceau, and CLA’s James McCann and Trenton Mize — and the core and affiliated faculty are fueled by passions for data, statistics and mentoring younger faculty, postdocs and graduate students to be more comfortable with data and statistics — almost always the backbone of a successful study.

“One of the reasons MCAP was established and is being expanded is there’s a huge need for methods help,” Christ said. “A lot of faculty are looking for people who can be the stats person or the methods person, and there’s just not enough people.”

MCAP events

MCAP events are approachable and supportive, and they range from a gathering where one or two researchers present their work and then get feedback from the MCAP community, or they can be more of a social event, such as the New Faculty Flask Talks in the fall or Methods Café series in the spring. These events allow faculty, postdocs and students from many departments across Purdue to meet, collaborate, and create new and innovative research ideas.

“We truly do have an interdisciplinary group of people who are there to listen and give feedback,” Marceau said. “And that kind of feedback is very, very valuable in enhancing your creativity, coming up with new ideas and pushing forward, and just seeing where there’s connections. And there’s pretty much no barrier to entry. Anybody who would like to be affiliated can be affiliated, and any student who wants to do a certificate has a path forward to get there.”

Christ added MCAP is a safe place to present different research methods because of the gracious guidance from more seasoned stats-based researchers.

“It’s very informal and low key. So, I think a student can come and present there and not feel intimidated if they’re not a hardcore methods person,” Christ said. “It allows them to do some methodology but not have to be integrating equations. They can come and present in a very friendly environment.”

Summer course syllabus

Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, MCAP’s summer institute on longitudinal data analysis will be open to 50 researchers from Purdue and beyond. It will be taught by a host of MCAP faculty, postdocs and graduate student teaching assistants. Like a living learning community, the intensive course will feature visiting researchers living on the Purdue campus for the week.

“In the second year (2026), we’re going to open this up to industry and government professionals — anybody who might need to be using and analyzing longitudinal data as part of their work and who might not have access to courses because they’re not in academia,” Marceau explained. “And part of the reason why we wanted to do that is because a lot of our students, especially our methodologically minded students, are interested in industry careers. This will open up a networking opportunity for our students to meet professionals that can help them learn about potential non-academic career paths.”

Filling a need

Louis Tay, the William C. Byham Professor in the Purdue Department of Psychological Sciences, is among 15 core faculty members affiliated with MCAP — all passionate believers in strong data analysis in scientific studies. He even developed a data-collecting app called ExpiWell.

“Good science is grounded in the use of rigorous methods,” Tay stated. “MCAP provides a valuable resource for Purdue students and faculty by training and supporting researchers to answer important questions and meet the high methodological requirements of publishing and grant applications.”

Marceau and Christ are firm believers that MCAP can extend beyond HHS and CLA. MCAP has facilitated research projects that included students and faculty from HDFS, Public Health, and the Computer Graphics Technology Department, as well as collaborations within and across HHS and CLA. Collaborations like that are a major goal of MCAP.

“It was fun to be able to build a community from the ground up on the things that we cared about in the way that we wanted to do it, which has been very interdisciplinary and very, very supportive,” Marceau said. “We purposely wanted to build a community where anybody using any kind of method who wanted to get better or go beyond their current expertise could come share their work, and they wouldn’t be in a position to be shut down about all the problems but more built up about how to keep improving.”