John B. Willett

John B. Willett is professor of education emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he also served as the academic dean and then acting dean. Willett is an expert in statistical methods for analyzing the timing and occurrence of events; methods for modeling change, learning, and development; longitudinal research design; and methods for making causal inferences from quantitative data. Willett and his colleague Judy Singer co-authored Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence, an integrated presentation of statistical methods for the analysis of longitudinal data. His most recent book, with his colleague Richard J. Murnane, Methods Matter: Improving Causal Inference in Educational and Social Science Research, seeks to bring innovative methods for making causal inferences into greater prominence in social research. He received his PhD in applied statistics from Stanford University.

updated 2010