Summer Workshop on Dynamical Systems Modeling

For five days in June (June 20-24), a group of about 20 C-FAHR members, including faculty and graduate students, participated in an intensive workshop called "An Applied Introduction to Dynamical Systems Modeling of Families and Health Data" taught by C-FAHR members Brian Baucom and Jonathan Butner. 

The goal of the workshop was to introduce computational modeling of family data so that participants can conduct analyses on longitudinal data in line with how a family functions as a dynamic system.  These procedures can focus on a single outcome through time or multiple outcomes consistent with how family variables (e..g, emotion, support, communication) may relate to each other by pushing and pulling one another through time to create a pattern. The workshop provided an applied introduction to these statistical methods, including discussion of how to think about families and health related questions from a dynamical systems perspective, how to generate dynamical systems hypotheses and how to interpret results of dynamical systems analyses. 

Thank you to Jon and Brian for teaching us, and thank you to all of the participants.  We feel certain that trainings such as these will help C-FAHR researchers apply novel, cutting-edge techniques to the study of families and health dynamics.