Assistant Professor
Director, IQRM Lab

Office: Heyne 123B
Phone: (713) 743-1446
E-mail: klitson@uh.edu
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/litsonlab 
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Dr. Litson will be reviewing PhD student applications for the 2026-27 academic year.

Biographical Summary

I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston, Director of the Interdisciplinary Quantitative Research Methods Collaboratory (IQRM Lab), and am presently affiliated with the Industrial-Organizational Psychology Program. As an interdisciplinary quantitative psychologist whose research bridges psychology, education, industry, and health, my expertise lies in the development and application of structural equation models using constructively defined latent variables, but my focus extends beyond technical modeling. I aim to develop methods that bridge the measurement of latent processes to their substantive meaning, grounding statistical tools in explicit philosophical and theoretical perspectives, including psychometric evidence and validity theories. Substantively, I study how so-called “soft skills” shape the workforce trajectories of graduating PhDs, and I collaborate on projects spanning educational development, career pathways, cognitive measurement, and impacts of ecological systems changes (e.g., neighborhood gentrification, transition from school-to-workforce). Across these areas, my research aims to build tools that explain—not just estimate—how complex individuals and systems evolve over time through theoretically grounded, systematic methodology.

Within the IQRM lab, research is built on theoretical meanings of the measured concepts alongside statistical best-practices. We develop statistical and theoretical methods to better capture variability in combinations of longitudinal process data, multi- and mixed-methods data, nested data, and subgroup data. Active areas of research include: longitudinal measurement of cognition, measurement invariance, outcome discrepancy in education or workforce settings, latent moderation, SEM model fit indices, design-based SEM, and bridging methods with meaning using mixed methods frameworks. For more detail about the IQRM lab and ongoing work, visit our lab website.

The IQRM lab is actively seeking a PhD student who is interested in cross-cultural measurement and methodology over time, though open to students with interests broadly related to measurement and methods in cognition and/or the education to career pipeline. Funding for research assistantships are available for qualified candidates.

Education

• 2012, B.S. in Psychology, Utah Tech University
• 2019, Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology, Utah State University
• 2020, Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biostatistics, Temple University

Publications

A complete list of Dr Litson’s published work can be found on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2Te_TMEAAAAJ&hl=en