Faculty and Staff

PhD, Clinical Psychology (research focus in Quantitative Psychology) – McGill University

Predoctoral Internship in Clinical Psychology – Alaska Veterans Affairs Healthcare System

MA, Psychology in Education – Columbia University, Teachers College

BA, Philosophy (Minor in Mathematics) – Stanford University

Dr. Starr’s teaching interests include fundamentals of clinical psychology, introduction to psychological disorders, statistics and quantitative methods in psychology, and data science for psychological research.

Dr. Starr’s research addresses quantitative issues related to the estimation and analysis of network models of psychopathology. Such models conceptualize psychological disorders as systems of interacting symptoms and offer advantages over traditional latent variable models of psychopathology, such as access to investigating direct relationships among symptoms and the ability to identify highly important symptoms within the larger disordered presentation. Dr. Starr’s research focuses on methodological problems that are likely to undermine the purported benefits of network models. Examples of these problems include the issue of redundant variables, large amounts of missing data, and validity concerns related to popular metrics of symptom importance (e.g., centrality indices). Dr. Starr is also trained in the practice of clinical psychology and has experience treating a range of psychological conditions, including mood and anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, specific phobias, and insomnia.

Falk, C. F., & Starr, J. (in press). Regularized cross-sectional network modeling with missing data: A comparison of methods. Multivariate Behavioral Research.

Starr, J., & Falk, C. F. (2024). Generating random partial correlation matrices with an application to redundant variables and bridge centrality. PsyArXiv Preprints. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qds8r.

Starr, J., & Falk, C. F. (2024). On the testing of equivalent variables: Perfect correlations and correlational topology. PsyArXiv Preprints. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/vhgfk.

Starr, J., & Falk, C. F. (2023). Comparison of latent variable and psychological network models in PROMIS data: Output metrics and factor structure. Quality of Life Research, 32(11), 3247-3255. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-023-03471-5.

Carrière, K., Shireen, S. H., Siemers, N., Preißner, C. E., Starr, J., Falk, C., & Knäuper, B. (2021). Development and validation of the Four Facet Mindful Eating Scale (FFaMES). Appetite, 168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105689.

Starr, J., Falk, C. F., Monroe, S. L., & Vachon, D. D. (2021). A comparison of limited-information test statistics for a response style MIRT model. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 56(4), 687-702. https://doi.org/10.1080/00273171.2020.1828024.