Profile
Biography
I am a Professor and Director of the Child and Adolescent Neurodevelopmental Diversity (CANDY) group. I am also the Research Centre Leader for the Psychology in Education Research Centre.
I love fitting advanced statistical models to existing large and complex datasets (eg, longitudinal cohort studies or administrative data). My substantive expertise is child and adolescent development; specifically special educational needs and mental health.
PhD applicants
I am interested in hearing from potential PhD students who would like to develop projects on the following:
- children's social, emotional, and cognitive development
- special educational needs
- mental health and wellbeing
- sibling bullying
- anti-social behaviour and youth offending
I am open to supervising projects that rely on primary data collection, secondary data analysis, or a mix of both!
Research
Overview
I lead the Child and Adolescent Neurodevelopmental Diversity (CANDY) Group; we focus on special educational needs and mental health during childhood and adolescence.
We love quantitative data-in fact we love big datasets! A key strength of our group is longitudinal modelling of large epidemiological and administrative datasets. We use big data to study:
- Social functioning (eg, anti-social behaviour, conduct problems, hyperactivity, inattention, bullying, youth offending),
- Emotional functioning (eg, depression, anxiety, self-harm, wellbeing, self-esteem, happiness, self-esteem),
- Cognitive and learning differences (eg, autism, developmental language disorder),
- Genetic and environmental influences on children’s development.
Analysis Keywords: Longitudinal Modelling, Latent Class Analysis, Growth Curve Modelling, Mixture Modelling, Structural Equation Modelling, Factor Analysis, Mediation Analysis, Latent Class Growth Modelling, Multilevel Modelling, Measurement Invariance, Twin Modelling, Polygenic Scoring, Genome-Wide Association Study, Network Analysis, Propensity Score Matching.
Datasets: Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, Millennium Cohort Study, Manchester Language Study, Twins Early Development Study, British Cohort Study, Neuroscience in Psychiatry Network, Born in Bradford Study, National Pupil Database, Police National Computer.
Research group members
- Dr Gill Francis (Assistant Professor): play and children’s development
- Dr Emre Deniz (Research Associate): transdiagnostic approaches to special educational needs
- Megan Frith (Research Associate): special educational needs and youth offending
Research Centre Affiliations
