Robert Pruzek Professor B.S. Wisconsin State University (River Falls) M.S., Ph.D. University of Wisconsin (Madison)

Dr. Pruzek’s interests include measurement, psychometric methods and research design as well as multivariate analysis and regression. Pruzek holds joint appointments in Educational and Counseling Psychology, Division of Educational Psychology and Methodology, as well as the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Public Health. He has been active in the American Educational Research Association, the Psychometric Society, and most recently the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology. He has recently focused on visualization methods, and propensity score methods. Through the use of R, the rapidly developing software system that is free [r-project.org], he has focused on developing novel graphic methods for display of data that can improve the ways data analytic methods are taught, as well as how work-a-day practice of data analysis is conducted. (See rmpruzek.com) He has studied how smoothing methods can facilitate, and be facilitated by, graphical and propensity score methodology, the standard goal being how effectively to borrow strength in various contexts, to aid descriptions of data, and improve predictions or inferences about future data. Most recently, he has developed new methods for exploratory longitudinal data analysis, and has coauthored (with James Helmreich) two packages for R, one on graphical methods for analysis of variance (granova) and the other with functions to facilitate propensity score analysis (PSAgraphics). Pruzek has consulted for several years with the New York State Health Department, Division of Nutrition, evaluating effects of WIC programs, especially effects of mothers’ nutrition on birth outcomes. His publications have appeared in the Psychological Bulletin, Cortex, The Journal of the American Educational Research Association, Social Indictors Research, Encyclopedia of Statistics in Behavioral Science, Maternal and Child Health and Multivariate Behavioral Research.

Representative Publications:

Pruzek, R.M., & Lepak, G. (1992). Weighted structural regression: A broad class of adaptive methods to improving linear prediction. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 27, 95-129.

Pruzek, R.M. (1997). An introduction to Bayesian Inference and its applications. In Harlow, L., Mulaik, S.A., and Steiger, J. (Eds.), What if there were no significance tests? (pp. 287-318). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum & Associates.

Rabinowitz, S.N., Rule, D., & Pruzek, R.M. (1998). Some new regression methods for predictive and construct validation. Social Indicators Research, 45, 201-231.

Lazariu-Bauer, V., Stratton, H., Pruzek, R.M. & Woelfel, M.L. (2004). A comparative analysis of effects of early versus late prenatal WIC participation on birthweight: NYS, 1995Maternal and Child Health Journal, 8(2): 77-86.

E-mail: rpruzek@uamail.albany.edu

homepage: http://www.rmpruzek.com