Xu Qin Receives Early Career Award

Qin’s research on causal moderation and mediation analysis advances the understanding of educational intervention impacts.

Xu Qin, associate professor of research methodology at the School of Education, recently received the Early Career Award from the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) during the organization’s annual conference in Baltimore last month.

SREE advances research on causal effects of education policies, programs, interventions and practices.

“I think this is a good encouragement to me,” Qin said. “As an early career researcher, this award indicates that the field values my work, which is a great motivation for my further methodological development in this area.” 

Qin, who holds a secondary appointment as an associate professor of biostatistics at the School of Public Health, has contributed significantly to solving methodological problems in causal moderation and mediation analysis. She has developed conceptual frameworks, statistical methods, and easy-to-implement computational software for causal moderation and mediation analysis, sensitivity analysis, and power analysis. Her work has been funded by the prestigious National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship and NSF CAREER award and published in top-tier journals.

In the meantime, Qin has been actively collaborating with empirical researchers in various fields and contributing to educational and health practices by utilizing sophisticated statistical techniques. She has also been dedicated to teaching and mentoring. She has designed a new course on causal moderation and mediation analysis and taught a workshop on causal moderated mediation analysis.