2013 Annual Scientific Meeting & AGM (London, December 14th)

Annual Scientific Meeting & AGM
BPS London Offices, 30 Tabernacle Street, London EC2A 4UE
Saturday 14th of December 2013 at 10.30am
10.30am – 11.30am	Welcome
11.30am – 12.00pm	Reasoning about individual change using session-by-session school counselling data: a comparison of three approaches Andy Fugard                      Mick Cooper University College London     University of Strathclyde
12.00pm – 12.30pm	Morning Break
12.30pm – 1.00pm	Association between sitting time in midlife and common mental disorder: Whitehall II prospective cohort study  Gareth Hagger-Johnson, Mark Hamer, Eric John Brunner, Emmanuel Stamatakis, Mika Kivimaki, Joshua Bell, Lion Shahab & David Batty University College London
1.00pm – 2.30pm	Lunch
2.30pm – 3.00pm	Confidence intervals for independent and repeated measures ANOVA designs Thom Baguley Nottingham Trent University
3.00pm – 3.30pm	What effect will research council requirements for data sharing have on science? Andrew Rutherford Keele University
3.30pm-4.00pm	Afternoon Break
4.00pm	AGM

Jon Rasbash prize for Quantitative Social Science

The Centre for Multilevel Modelling just announced The Jon Rasbash prize for Quantitative Social Science. The Jon Rasbash prize for Quantitative Social Science  is awarded biennially for early career achievement in the field of quantitative social science.

The award was established in 2010 to commemorate the contributions to quantitative social science of Jon Rasbash, who was Professor of Computational Statistics and Director of the Centre for Multilevel Modelling at the University of Bristol. Jon was principally known for his development of multilevel methodology and its software implementation and for his research on studying social relationships within families. Through the development of the MLwiN software and teaching at numerous workshops worldwide, he played a major role in the adoption of multilevel modelling as a mainstream statistical technique.

Criteria; The £500 prize recognizes early career achievement in the development and/or application of advanced quantitative methods in any social science discipline. Applicants should be UK residents and in the first 10 years of their research career (including periods of postgraduate study). The prize will be awarded on the basis of a research paper published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2012 or 2013. The applicant should be the sole or lead author of the paper.

Application procedure; The deadline for submissions is 10 January 2014. Applicants should submit their paper to info-cmm at bristol.ac.uk, together with a short summary of the paper’s contribution to the development or application of advanced quantitative methods in social research. In the case of co-authored papers, a statement of the applicant’s contribution should also be submitted. Applications will be assessed by a panel including Professors Harvey Goldstein, Lindsay Paterson, Chris Skinner, Fiona Steele, and Patrick Sturgis. The prize will be presented at the 6th ESRC Research Methods Festival in July 2014. Please see http://www.bris.ac.uk/cmm/ for further information on the Centre for Multilevel Modelling.

Annual Scientific Meeting 14 December 2013 (BPS London Offices)

British Psychological Society

Mathematical, Statistical & Computing Section

Annual Scientific Meeting

14^th of December 2013

BPS Offices, 30 Tabernacle Street, EC2A 4UE, London

Call for Papers

The Mathematical Statistical & Computing (MSC) Section of the BPS is seeking symposium proposals and submissions of abstracts for its Annual Scientific Meeting. Please contact Dr Gerry Markopoulos (g.markopoulos at bathspa.ac.uk), Honorary Secretary, to discuss symposium proposals by the 11^th of November 2013. Abstracts should be between 150 and 250 words and should be submitted by email to Dr Gerry Markopoulos by the 18^th of November 2013.

All abstracts will be considered for a paper presentation of 20 minutes (15 min presentation plus 5 minutes for questions). There are no poster presentation sessions.

It is not necessary to be a member of the MSC Section, nor even a member of the BPS to present at the MSC Section Annual Scientific Meeting, nor are there any registration fees.

Section announces first psychology research methods hackathon

1st Psychology Open research methods Hackathon

Friday 21 June, 2013, at the BPS London Offices (30 Tabernacle St – EC2A 4EU)

You need to bring a laptop

One day workshop for psychologists at all levels (postgrads to professors) to get together and create an open source psychology research methods textbook.

The workshop will introduce the following free software tools: Latex, R and Python

Assistance available for installation & operation. This software will be used to create an resources for teaching psychology (quantitative) research methods – from simple statistics to programming experiments. This is intended to first of several hackathons, so, over time, a body of free professionally produced, peer-created (quantitative) research methods teaching resources will be available for psychologists.

Hackathon Co-ordinator: Sol Nte (University of Manchester)

To attend workshop, you must be a member of the BPS, Maths, Stats & Computing Section. If you are not a member already, then you can join at the workshop – NB. you need to be a BPS member already to join the Maths, Stats & Computing Section.

To reserve a place, contact BPS, MSC Section Hon Sec., Dr G Markopoulos, g.markopoulos@bathspa.ac.uk, with Hackathon Booking in the subject line.

Ranald Macdonald PG Research Award - nominations open

BPS Mathematical, Statistical and Computing Section

2012 Ranald Macdonald Postgraduate Research Award

The Mathematical, Statistical and Computing Section is pleased to invite considerations for the 2012 Ranald Macdonald Postgraduate Research Award.

Deadline for applications: 30th March 2013.

This will be awarded to the best UK Postgraduate thesis/dissertation/project (MSc, MRes, MPhil, Professional Doctorate, DPhil or PhD) using mathematics, statistics or computing in an interesting and novel way to investigate an aspect of Psychology.

The work and qualification upon which the award is assessed must have been awarded between 1st January 2012 to 31st December 2012.

The award consists of £150 and expenses up to £200 to attend the section's Annual Scientific Meeting in the following year (2013 for the 2012 award). As a condition of accepting the award, the winner will be expected to present on their winning work at that meeting (scheduled for December 2013) and to join the section if they are not already a member.

Details about eligibility and the (simple) application process can be found below or by contacting the Section Secretary Dr Gerry Markopoulos. 
g.markopoulos _at_ bathspa.ac.uk 

Please note the deadline for submissions will be 14th April 2013 at 5pm.

How to apply:

Please send the following to the section secretary Dr Gerry Markopoulos via email to:
g.markopoulos _at_ bathspa.ac.uk

1. Your full contact details including Name, Institution, Degree Title and Date the qualification was awarded, Address, Email, Telephone number and the Name (s) of Supervisors
2. The extended abstract from your thesis, which outlines the findings of your work
3. A supporting statement from one of your supervisory team outlining the importance and contribution of your thesis and suitability for the award (no more than 300 words) and listing any peer-reviewed publications associated with the work.
Procedure: Your application will be considered by a panel of Mathematical, Statistical and Computing Section Committee members, and the panel’s decision will be final. One or more submissions will be short-listed and their authors may be invited to submit the complete thesis to the panel for final consideration via PDF. The panel reserves the right not to short-list any candidates if the panel does not deem the quality of submissions to be sufficiently high. From time to time the panel may also seek the views of expert reviewers on the quality of a submission prior to short-listing or to making an award. The panel may, in exceptional circumstances, make a split award between two equally deserving candidates.

Criteria for making the award: Emphasis will be placed on the following criteria:
- use of novel mathematics or statistics
- reference to substantive issues in psychology or related disciplines
- clarity of exposition of the mathematical or statistical concepts
- potential or actual contribution to the field, via peer-reviewed publication

Happy New Year to all our readers

It also just happens to be the International Year of Statistics too!  www.statistics2013.org