The candidate will carry out statistical research on interaction modelling for designs with two fully crossed factors and a single replication per combination.

Such data are encountered, for instance, in personality research (e.g., subjects are observed on a behavioural response across a set of situations), in educational testing (e.g., students receive a score on each of a set of test items), in marketing research (e.g., customers indicate willingness to buy for each of a set of products), etc.

The approach taken in this project implies making use of clustering methods. This research entails mathematical derivations, development of algorithms and computer simulations.
The challenges are model fitting, performing statistical inference (possibly using resampling techniques) and assessment of the performance of the methods.

The candidate is expected to publish this work in peer reviewed top journals in (behavioural) statistics, to present this work on international statistical conferences and to disseminate the results through practical guidelines and software for applied (social) scientists.

• Graduated with a MSc in Statistics, Psychometrics, Biometrics, Econometrics or similar

• Good mathematical and computer programming skills

• Good writing and expressional skills in the English language

Fixed-term contract: 4 years.

Temporary employment for 4 years.

Your salary would be € 2.222,- gross per month in the first year up to € 2.840,- gross per month in the fourth year according to the PhD-student salary scale.

Each year an evaluation will take place.

The terms of employment of Maastricht University are set out in the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities (CAO). Furthermore, local UM provisions also apply.

For more information look at the website www.maastrichtuniversity.nl , Support/UM employees/Employment conditions.

Department Methodology and Statistics

The Department of your place of employment is the Department of Methodology and Statistics of the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience (FPN) at Maastricht University, the Netherlands.

This Department works closely together with the dept. of Methodology and Statistics of the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML) of the Maastricht University Medical Center, under a common leadership.

Together, these two departments consist of 20 staff members from PhD student to Professor, and provide the statistics education in five different Bachelor programs and various master and PhD courses in the two aforementioned faculties. The research of this department concentrates on multilevel/mixed and mixture models for longitudinal data, optimal sample sizes for nested designs, Bayesian statistics for high-dim data, multiple imputation for missing data, analysis of interrater agreement in complex designs, and clustering methods. Further, the Department offers statistical consulting and advanced data analyses to researchers from other departments.