Congratulations to Division 5 awardees in 2024

APA Division 5 is honored to grant eight annual awards in 2024, recognizing the outstanding contributions of its members to quantitative and qualitative methods in psychology. The awardees were celebrated at the awards ceremony organized by Division 5, held in conjunction with the APA 2024 Annual Convention in August 2024 at Seattle, WA. As the Chair of the Awards Committee, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to all the 2024 awardees. I also wish to express my gratitude to all the candidates and nominators who participated in the award application process. Additionally, I deeply appreciate the tremendous efforts made by the Awards Committee, which comprises both quantitative and qualitative award panel, and support from the APA Division 5 President Frederick Wertz, Sr., PhD.

Quantitative Awards

Quantitative Award Panel: Emily Shaw (chair), Amy Schmidt, and Qiwei He

Anne Anastasi Dissertation Award

Winner: Mark Himmelstein, PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology
Nominator: David Budescu, PhD, Fordham University
This award recognizes distinguished dissertations that address a topic in the field of quantitative research methods (assessment, evaluation, measurement, statistics). Mark Himmelstein received his PhD in 2023 from Fordham University in Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology. His dissertation is titled, Measuring Persuasion Without Measuring a Prior Belief: A New Application of Planned Missing Data Techniques. Mark’s dissertation developed a new way of formulating the Judge Advisor System (JAS) paradigm, with a clever design that allows the estimation of the effect of advice by “imputing” the judge’s (predicted) original judgement. This is done by implementing various algorithms designed to impute missing data, on the basis of the relations between the various observed / measured responses. His dissertation demonstrates innovative research designs and accompanying modeling techniques for eliminating measurement reactivity, which has applications beyond advice-taking, as these methods could be applied to any pretest-posttest research design. In addition, the results reveal new, more ecologically valid theoretical insights regarding how people take advice when their prior beliefs are not explicitly elicited.

Anne Anastasi Distinguished Early Career Contributions Award

Winner: Qian Zhang, PhD, Florida State University
Nominator: Lijuan (Peggy) Wang, PhD, University of Notre Dame
This award recognizes an early career individual who has made outstanding contributions to quantitative research methods. Zhang received her PhD in 2015 in Quantitative Psychology from Notre Dame University. She is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems, at Florida State University. Her research portfolio encompasses a breadth of topics within quantitative psychology, ranging from (causal) mediation analysis, data synthesis approaches, to missing data handling techniques and more recently, venturing into machine learning applications. Zhang has developed longitudinal mediation modeling approaches, addressing the temporal order of variables in potential causal chains. Her multilevel longitudinal mediation model, accommodating varying mediation effects across individuals, has been pivotal in studying diverse scenarios, from adolescent-mother relationships to the impact of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge on student outcomes. Zhang stands as the 5th most published author in APA Division 5’s flagship journal Psychological Methods since 2020. She also has a broad variety of collaboration with non-methodologists to enable them to incorporate state-of-the-art methodologies (e.g., longitudinal analysis, mediation analysis, and hierarchical linear modeling) to address novel research questions.

Jacob Cohen Distinguished Contributions to Teaching and Mentoring Award

Winner: Zhiyong Zhang, PhD, University of Notre Dame
Nominator: Xin Cynthia Tong, PhD, University of Virginia
This award recognizes demonstrated excellence in teaching and mentoring within the field of quantitative research methods. Johnny Zhang, PhD, is Professor of Quantitative Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. He has taught 7 different undergraduate and graduate courses a total of 59 times. Zhang is dedicated to stimulating student learning and improving their knowledge of statistics, designing his classes such that students not only successfully learn the required materials, but also gain the confidence necessary to conduct data analyses in their future career development. Zhang also developed his course lectures and related extensive materials into online courseware (https://advstats.psychstat.org/) that not only saves students the cost of buying textbooks but provides them an environment to conduct statistical data analysis using R online. In the past 12 months, this only courseware has close to 100,000 users. Zhang has advised numerous graduate students from different areas in Psychology and across the university. Students have commented that Zhang “cares about the quality of experience for students when pursuing a degree”, has a “tremendous impact on their academic achievement, motivation, and confidence to become a quantitative researcher”, and “his mentorship extends beyond mere research, encompassing holistic career development”. In addition to his regular teaching duties, he is also committed to educating the APA community through various avenues. He has taught 9 workshops with a total of over 500 trainees on various topics, including Deep Learning using R, Power Analysis, Bayesian Longitudinal Data Modeling, Data Mining Methods for Education and Psychology, Robust SEM using WebSEM, etc.

Samuel J. Messick Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions

Winner: Hua-hua Chang, PhD, Purdue University
Nominator: Chun Wang, PhD, University of Washington
This award honors an individual who has a long and distinguished history of scientific contributions within the field of quantitative research methods. Hua-hua Chang, PhD, is the Charles R. Hicks Chair Professor of Purdue University. As a professor in measurement, a past president of the Psychometric Society and an elected fellow of both the American Statistical Association and the American Educational Research Association, Hua-Hua Chang has been actively conducting pioneering research and mentoring students in the educational measurement, psychometrics, and statistics fields for over 30 years. In particular, he has made significant and seminal advances in the areas of computer adaptive testing (CAT), cognitive diagnosis modeling (CDM), multi-stage testing with an overarching aim to increase test reliability, validity and security. Having transitioned from a practitioner in the testing industry to a professor in 2001, Chang brought a wealth of industry experience to his academic pursuits. Chang has had over a hundred publications and hundreds of invited presentations. His publications have become foundational in the field, cited extensively by scholars and researchers globally. Chang has also provided guidance and co-advised over 40 PhD students, actively participating in more than 80 doctoral thesis committees. A significant number of his direct advisees have secured faculty positions in prestigious universities immediately upon earning their PhD, while others have successfully pursued careers as data scientists, psychometricians, and statisticians at prominent testing companies, government institutions, and research organizations in the U.S., China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Qualitative Awards

Qualitative Award Panel: Deborah Tolman (chair), Pani Farvid, and Leeat Granek

Distinguished Dissertation in Qualitative Inquiry Award

Winner: José Giovanni Luiggi-Hernández, PhD, University of Puerto Rico
Nominator: Leswin Laubscher, PhD, Duquesne University
This award recognizes distinguished dissertations that addressed a topic in the field of qualitative research methods. Jose Luigi-Hernández received his PhD degree in Clinical Psychology from Duquesne University in 2023. His dissertation is entitled “Hoping as a Transformational Imperative in Puerto Rico: A Phenomenological and Grounded Theory Study within Colonized Space.” Anchoring his inquiry in the colonized space of Puerto Rico after the disastrous hurricanes is both urgent and compelling. His focus on hope is a response to the limits of psychological research and policy assuming victimhood and suffering in the face of catastrophes and thus has produced limited scholarship. Each aspect of his design, analysis and findings is a model of robust qualitative inquiry. Hernández’s use of critical phenomenology paired with grounded theory is precisely what his question required. Hernández developed a powerful collectivist theory of hope and hopelessness within the colonized space of Puerto Rico. Rather than individual hopelessness paralyzing people as individuals, he excavated how community transforms hopelessness into hope. By meaningfully attending to context, locality and cultural values of connection and collectivity, he demonstrated how community strength, resilience and resources generated the hope that then fueled Puerto Ricans’ refusal to accept colonial neglect and failure. In his outstanding dissertation, Luigi-Hernandez exemplified the power of linking multifaceted qualitative inquiry and criticality.

Early Career Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award

Winner: Gabriel Mateo Velez, PhD, Marquette University
Nominator: Frederick J. Wertz, PhD, Fordham University
This award recognizes an early career individual who has made outstanding contributions to qualitative research methods. The award committee recommend Gabriel Mateo Velez for his exceptional early career accomplishments. Velez’s scholarship lies at the intersections of adolescence and emerging adult development, peace education, restorative justice and human rights. Only five years after earning his PhD, he has over forty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on research in which he uses an array of qualitative methods. He has secured a contract with Cambridge University Press for his single-authored book. The plethora of grants he has secured and awards he has been given are especially noteworthy. He exemplifies public science, publishing editorials and blog posts, as well as appearing often in popular media. In addition to a cornucopia of conference presentations, he has reached out to a range of audiences, including school principals and universities in South America. His work responds to urgent questions in our social worlds, for instance the effects of Covid-19 on young people’s health and well-being, reflecting his commitment to social justice and demonstrating the power of qualitative inquiry for producing psychological knowledge within and beyond the academy.

Distinguished Contributions to Teaching and Mentoring in Qualitative Inquiry Award

Winner: Jessica Nina Lester, PhD, University of Indiana
Nominator: Michelle O’Reilly, PhD, University of Leicester
This award recognizes demonstrated excellence in teaching and mentoring within the field of qualitative inquiry. Jessica Nina Lester, PhD is Professor and Department Chair of Applied Psychology in Education and Research Methodology at School of Education in Indiana University Bloomington. Her talent and commitment can be measured quantitatively: she has taught seven qualitative inquiry courses, has received eight times of awards for teaching including one for “excellence in extraordinary teaching”, co-authored 24 papers with students, chaired 80 doctoral student dissertations, and host 41 podcasts in Qualitative Conversations that she created. Lister’s student remarked: as a teacher, “she practices what she preaches, treating students as co-learners and co-participations in knowledge construction and analysis…She consistently encouraged us to do the difficult intellectual work of sitting with ideas for months, years, and often longer than expected so that we could learn deeply…In no uncertain terms, Lester’s mentorship has played a critical role in my past and current successes.”

Distinguished Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award

Winner: Kenneth Gergen, PhD, The Taos Institute, and Mark Freeman, PhD, College of the Holy Cross
Nomination: Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology
This award honors an individual who has a long and distinguished history of scientific contributions within the field of qualitative research methods. The Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology (SQIP) recommends that Kenneth Gergen and Mark Freeman jointly receive the Distinguished Contributions to Qualitative Inquiry Award in 2024. Gergen and Freeman are both monumental figures in qualitative inquiry, and their history of working together to form and lead SQIP have earned them this joint award many times over. They have published scores of books and papers, given a plethora of invited talks, and created and taught a wide range of courses in qualitative inquiry in psychology and its epistemological roots. Each of them is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology. Gergen’s work on social construction can be understood as the bread and butter of qualitative inquiry, even as it was met with hostility in some quarters in the US. Freeman has been a leader in narrative psychology and in developing the qualitative approaches necessary for narrative research, providing methodological pathways to create knowledge through collection and analysis of life stories, memoirs, and biographies. Both Gergen’s and Freeman’s work has had global reach. This award recognizes how they have created and grown the professional infrastructure for qualitative inquiry in psychology. Gergen in partnership with Ruthellen Josselson established SQIP as a section of Division 5. Freeman was its first president. They were instrumental in working together with Division 5 leadership to rename it “Quantitative and Qualitative Methods.” Their critically important leadership as scholars and in launching SQIP has paved the way for new generations of scholars to pursue qualitative research with creativity, empathy, and an open mind, fostering a discipline that is more inclusive, reflective, and impactful.

Division 5 is Seeking Award Nominations

September 19, 2024
On behalf of the Division 5: Quantitative and Qualitative Methods, the Division 5 Awards Committee is pleased to share the call for nominations for the 2025 APA Division 5 Awards.

For a description of the awards, please visit the Division 5 awards website. Please consider nominating yourself, colleagues, and students for these prestigious awards! For a list of previous winners, please visit the “Past Recipients” tabs on each award page.

The Division 5 awards include:

Quantitative Methods

Qualitative Methods

New this year will also be a Mixed Methods Award.

Distinguished Contributions in Mixed Methods Award

The Division is working with APA to update the Division website with the description of this exciting new award, so please check back over the next few weeks for more information.

Nominations and due dates.

In the case of all the awards, neither the nominator nor nominee need be a current or former member of either APA or Division 5. Both self-nominations and nominations of others will be considered.

Nominations are due Monday, December 2, 2024.

Please feel free to reach out to Emily Shaw, the Division 5 Awards Committee chair, with questions regarding award applications, eligibility or other issues.