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 a psychometrician at the RAND Corporation. She specializes in using Response Theory (IRT) to develop assessment tools for measuring mental health, substance abuse, and related issues in the health, education, and military manpower settings.

Her recent projects at RAND include a Department of Defense (DoD) project for measuring barriers to mental health care in the military, and was on the research team for the NIH PROMIS Smoking Initiative. She also co-led a high profile report on Asia Drug Policy, and studies mental health issues of youth in the Middle East and other areas experiencing war and civil unrest.

Before joining RAND, Huang interned at the World Health Organization (WHO). She started her quantitative psychology training with Patrick Curran in the Ph.D. program at L.L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory (UNC, Chapel Hill). She received her Ph.D. at UCLA degree working with Peter Bentler on estimation algorithms for Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).

Research Focus

Recent Projects

  • Contemporary Asian drug policy: insights and opportunities for change
  • Development and Maintenance of Post-Acute Care Cross-Setting Standardized Patient Assessment Data
  • Can Newly Democratic States Survive Disillusionment: The Case of Tunisian Youth
  • Stigma Reduction Efforts in the Department of Defense
  • Health Risk Behaviors Among Palestinian Youth

Selected Publications

Pardo, B.A., Kilmer, B. & Huang, W. , Contemporary Asian drug policy: insights and opportunities for change, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA (RR-RR-2733-RC), 2019 (forthcoming)

Acosta, J.D., Huang, W., Edelen, M., Cerfully, J., Soliman, S., and Chandra, A. , Measuring Barriers to Mental Health Care in the Military, RAND Corporation (RR-1762-OSD), 2018

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

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

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., Rose, A.J., Bayliss, E., Baseman, L., Butcher, E., Garcia, R.E. & Edelen, M.O. , "Adapting summary scores for the PROMIS-29 v2.0 for use among older adults with multiple chronic conditions," Quality of Life Research, 28(1), 2019

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)

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