Texas Tech University

Todd D. Little, Ph.D.

Professor
Educational Psychology, Leadership, & Counseling

Email: todd.d.little@ttu.edu

Phone: 406-858-0363

Office: Education 371

Vita

Todd D. Little, Ph.D. is a Professor of Educational Psychology at Texas Tech University (TTU). Little is internationally recognized for his quantitative work on various aspects of applied SEM (e.g., indicator selection, parceling, modeling developmental processes) as well as his substantive developmental research (e.g., action-control processes and motivation, coping, and self-regulation). Prior to joining TTU, Little has guided quantitative training and provided consultation to students, staff, and faculty at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development's Center for Lifespan Studies (1991-1998), Yale University's Department of Psychology (1998-2002), and researchers at KU (2002-2013, including as director of the RDA unit at the Lifespan Institute and as director of the Center for Research Methods and Data Analysis). In 2001, Little was elected to membership in the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology, a restricted-membership society of quantitative specialists in the behavioral and social sciences.

In 2009, he was elected President of APA's Division 5 (Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics). He founded, organizes, and teaches in the internationally renowned ‘Stats Camps' each June (see statscamp.org for details of the summer training programs) and has given over 150 workshops and talks on methodology topics around the world. As an interdisciplinary-oriented collaborator, Little has published with over 280 persons from around the world in over 65 different peer-reviewed journals. His work has garnered over 11,000 citations. He published Longitudinal Structural Equation Modeling in 2013 and he has edited five books related to methodology, including the Oxford Handbook of Quantitative Methods and the Guildford Handbook of Developmental Research Methods (with Brett Laursen and Noel Card). Little has served on numerous grant review panels for federal agencies such as NSF, NIH, and IES, and private foundations such as the Jacobs Foundation. He has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on over 15 grants and contracts and he has served as a statistical consultant on over 70 grants and contracts. In the conduct of his collaborative research, he has participated in the development of over 12 different measurement tools, including the CAMI, the Multi-CAM, the BALES, the BISC, the I FEEL, and the form/function decomposition of aggression.

Todd D. Little

Education

  • Ph.D., Developmental Psychology. University of California, Riverside: December, 1988
  • B.A., English Literature , University of California, Riverside: June, 1983

Areas of Expertise

  • Statistics and Methodology:    Modeling Individual, Group, and Developmental Differences;   General Structural Equations Modeling Techniques (e.g., LISREL, MACS, Growth Curve, HLM),    Construct Validation;    Measurement;    Selection Effects,    Missing data estimation.
  • Developmental Psychology:    Action-Control Processes;    Motivation;   Self-regulation;    School Achievement;    Peer and Friendship Relationships;     Adjustment and Well-being;    The Social-Personality Nexus;    Cross-Cultural and Socio-contextual Influences;   Childhood & Adolescence.
  • Citation Impact (as of December 2021): Google Scholar is 45,683, H-index of 95, i-10 index of 258.

Selected Publications

Six Signature Publications on Statistics and Methodology:

Little, T. D. (2013). Longitudinal structural equation modeling. New York: Guilford Press.

Little, T. D., Rhemtulla, M., Gibson, K., & Schoemann, A. M. (2013). Why the items versus parcels controversy needn't be one. Psychological Methods, 18, 285-300.

Little, T. D., Bovaird, J. A., & Widaman, K. F. (2006). On the merits of orthogonalizing powered and product terms: Implications for modeling interactions among latent variables. Structural Equation Modeling, 13, 497-519. (doi:10.1207/s15328007sem1304_1).

Little, T. D., Cunningham, W. A., Shahar, G., & Widaman, K. F. (2002). To parcel or not to parcel: Exploring the question, weighing the merits. Structural Equation Modeling, 9, 151-173. (doi:10.1207/S15328007SEM0902_1).

Little, T. D., Lindenberger, U. & Nesselroade, J. R. (1999). On selecting indicators for multivariate measurement and modeling with latent variables: When "good" indicators are bad and "bad" indicators are good. Psychological Methods, 4, 192-211.

Little, T. D. (1997). Mean and covariance structures (MACS) analyses of cross-cultural data: Practical and theoretical issues. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 32, 53-76. (doi:10.1207/s15327906mbr3201_3).

Six Signature Publications on Developmental Topics:

Geldhof, G. J., Little, T. D., & Colombo, J. (2010). Self-regulation across the lifespan. In M. E. Lamb & A. M. Freund (Vol. Eds.), and R. M. Lerner (Editor-in-Chief). Social and emotional development (pp. 116-157). Volume 2 of The Handbook of Lifespan Development. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Little, T. D., Snyder, C. R., & Wehmeyer, M. (2006). The agentic self: On the nature and origins of personal agency across the lifespan. In. D. K. Mroczek & T. D. Little (Eds.). Handbook of Personality Development (pp. 61-79). Mahwah, NJ: LEA.

Little, T. D., Jones, S. M., Henrich, C. C., & Hawley, P. H. (2003). Disentangling the ‘whys' from the ‘whats' of aggressive behavior. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 27, 122-133.(doi: 10.1080/01650250244000128). *top cited article in IJBD, 2010, 2011, 2012.

Little, T. D., Lopez, D. F., Oettingen, G. O., & Baltes, P. B. (2001). A comparative-longitudinal study of action-control beliefs and school performance: On the role of context. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 25, 237-245. (doi: 10.1080/01650250042000258). 

Little, T. D., Lopez, D. F., & Wanner, B. (2001). Children's action-control behaviors (Coping): A longitudinal validation of the behavioral inventory of strategic control. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 14, 315-336.

Little, T. D., & Lopez, D. F.  (1997).Regularities in the development of children's causality beliefs about school performance across six sociocultural contexts. Developmental Psychology, 33, 165-175.