Volume 38 · Number 12
DECEMBER 2008

Design and Analysis of Longitudinal Studies

By Robert D. Gibbons, PhD

In 1993, several of the authors of this issue of Psychiatric Annals wrote an article titled “Some Conceptual and Statistical Issues in the Analysis of Longitudinal Psychiatric Data.” The article provided a timely discussion and illustration of newly developed mixed-effects regression models for the analysis of longitudinal psychiatric data. The article has now been cited more than 500 times. Not only has the article been used to inform the psychiatric research community, but it has been widely cited throughout the medical literature.

ABOUT THE GUEST EDITOR

Robert D. Gibbons, PhD, is Director of the Center for Health Statistics, Professor of Biostatistics and Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Gibbons received his doctorate in statistics and psychometrics from the University of Chicago in 1981. He has spent his entire career at the University of Illinois at Chicago (1981-present) where he directs the Center for Health Statistics, a consortium of 15 statisticians working in both theoretical and applied areas of environmetrics, chemometrics, biometrics, and psychometrics. Support for his research includes numerous grants and contracts from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Office of Naval Research (ONR), National Cancer Institutes (NCI), and MacArthur foundation. Recognition for his work includes a Young Scientist Award from the ONR, Research Scientist Award from NIH, the Harvard Award for lifetime contributions to psychiatric epidemiology and biostatistics, the Lucaks award for contributions to environmental statistics in the 20th century, and two Youden prizes (2001 and 2006) from the American Statistical Associations for statistical contributions to the field of chemistry. Dr. Gibbons is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He has authored more than 180 peer-reviewed scientific papers and four books. His latest book, Longitudinal Data Analysis, with Don Hedeker, has recently been published by John Wiley and Sons.