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Wenjing Huang

Photo of Wenjing Huang
Associate Behavioral and Social Scientist
Santa Monica Office

Education

Ph.D. in quantitative psychology, University of California, Los Angeles; M.A. in quantitative psychology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; B.A. in education, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

Overview

Wenjing Huang is an associate behavioral and social scientist at the RAND Corporation. Also a psychometrician, her quantitative methodological research has focused on statistical modeling tools such as Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), Item Response Theory (IRT), and Latent Growth Modeling.

Huang has collaborated extensively with researchers at RAND in the areas of educational assessment, mental health, substance use, and drug policy. A major focus of her research is using modern measurement methods to develop item banks for psychological or educational assessments. She participated in building the PROMIS Smoking Initiative, a NIDA-funded initiative for assessing smoking behaviors and biopsychosocial correlates of smoking. She also worked on a DoD project for measuring barriers to mental health care in the military, and international projects including an integrated depression care and microfinance program for women in Vietnam and a study of risky behaviors among Palestinian youth exposed to war trauma. Recently Huang worked with Beau Kilmer on a project to assess drug policy in Asia. Currently she is working with a team of researchers to build data standardization and cross setting measures in accordance with mandates from the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act.

Before joining RAND, Huang interned at the World Health Organization (WHO, headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland), contributing to the Global status report on alcohol and health 2014 while backpacking in Europe on weekends. She received her Ph.D. in quantitative psychology from UCLA.

Research Focus

Recent Projects

  • Emerging Divergence? Understanding the Drug Policy Landscape in Asia and Prospects for Change
  • Development and Maintenance of Post-Acute Care Cross-Setting Standardized Patient Assessment Data
  • Brief Online Intervention to Reduce Heavy Alcohol Use Among Young Adult Veterans
  • Stigma Reduction Efforts in the Department of Defense
  • Health Risk Behaviors Among Palestinian Youth

Selected Publications

Acosta, J.D., Cerfully, J., Edelen, M., Huang, W. , Test-retest reliability and validity of a short-form to assess barriers and facilitators to mental health care in the military, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA (WR-WR-1211-OSD), 2018 (forthcoming)

Huang, W., Hunter, S. B., Ayer, L., Han, B., Slaughter, M. E., Garner, B. R. & Godley, S. H. , "Measuring Sustainment of an Evidence Based Treatment for Adolescent Substance Use," Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 83, 2017

Huang, W., Stucky, B.D., Edelen, M.O., Tucker, J. S., Shadel, W.G., Hansen, M., & Cai, L., "Calibration of the Spanish PROMIS® smoking item banks," Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 18(7), 2016

Pedersen, E. R., Huang, W., Dvorak, R. D., Prince, M., Hummer, J. F., & Marijuana Outcomes Study Team, "The Protective Behavioral Strategies for Marijuana Scale: Further examination using Item Response Theory," Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 2016 (forthcoming)

Bentler, P., & Huang, W., "On components, latent variables, PLS and simple methods: reactions to Ridgon’s rethinking of PLS.," Long Range Planning, 47(3), 2014

Hussong, A. M., Huang, W., Serrano, D., Curran, P. J., & Chassin, L., "Testing whether and when parent alcoholism uniquely affects various forms of adolescent substance use.," Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 40(8), 2012

Hussong, A. M., Bauer, D. J., Huang, W., Chassin, L., Sher, K. J., & Zucker, R. A., "Characterizing the life stressors of children of alcoholic parents.," Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 2008

Curran, P. J., Hussong, A. M., Cai, L., Huang, W., Chassin, L., Sher, K. J., & Zucker, R. A., "Pooling data from multiple prospective studies: The role of item response theory in integrative analysis.," Developmental Psychology, 44, 2008

Languages

Chinese

Publications