D. Betsy McCoach

Dr. D. Betsy McCoach is a Professor of Educational Psychology and Research Methods at the University of Connecticut's School of Education. She specializes in quantitative research methodologies, including latent variable modeling, multilevel modeling, and educational measurement. Her work focuses on gifted education, underachievement, and open science practices. She contributes to the M.S. in Data Science program and chairs the Modern Modeling Methods conference.

• Roles: Professor of Educational Psychology, Co-Principal Investigator on federally funded grants (e.g., National Center for Research on Gifted Education), and Board Member of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC).
• Research Interests: Gifted education disparities, longitudinal analysis, instrument design, and addressing equity in public education. Her work integrates statistical rigor with real-world educational challenges.
• Grants & Leadership: Led projects like Project NEEDs2 (vocabulary intervention), SLAC (NSF-funded), and PAPER (training in psychometrics). Served as co-editor of Gifted Child Quarterly and founding co-editor of Journal of Advanced Academics.
• Awards: 2022 NAGC Distinguished Scholar Award and Fellow of APA's Division 5 (Educational Psychology).
• Labs/Groups: Modern Modeling Methods Conference organizer and collaborator on initiatives like the National Exploration of Emotional/Behavioral Detection in School Screening (NEEDs2).

Her recent work emphasizes equity in gifted identification, teacher bias in rating scales, and methodological advancements in mixture models. She advocates for reproducible research practices and has authored/co-authored over 100 publications, including seminal textbooks on multilevel modeling and gifted education.