My name is Kiana Guarino, and I am a third-year PhD student in Quantitative Research Methods at Arizona State University, where I work primarily with Dr. Samantha Anderson. My research interests include missing data analysis, replication, study design, and Bayesian methods.

I have experience teaching and supporting graduate-level statistics courses, including Intermediate Statistics and Multiple Regression, and I have served as a lab instructor for Research Methods.

My first-year research project (Guarino & Anderson, 2025) examined the consequences of unplanned optional stopping on effect size bias, error rates, and statistical power across a simulated research literature. My Master’s thesis explored how variations of missing at random (MAR) data influence power, precision, and accuracy in estimating the average treatment effect within randomized controlled trials. I am currently in the process of expanding on this work, and look forward to disseminating the findings.

Before beginning my PhD, I earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology with a minor in Statistics from ASU. As an undergraduate, I worked as a Research Assistant in Dr. David MacKinnon’s Research in Prevention Lab (RiPL), where I developed a strong foundation in quantitative methods research—an experience that sparked my passion for the field. I also contributed to projects in the Social Addictions Impulse Lab (SAIL) and the Embodied Games for Learning Lab, and worked as a Success Coach at the Psychology Student Success Center. Additionally, I served as an undergraduate teaching assistant for Statistical Methods.

Looking ahead, I aspire to pursue an academic career as a professor of Quantitative Methods, where I can teach, conduct research, and mentor both graduate and undergraduate students in developing rigorous, transparent, and impactful scientific practices.