Rate My Professor William Coventry

Dr. William Coventry is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology within the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of New England. He holds a PhD from the University of New England (2007), a 1st class Honours in Arts with a Psychology major from the University of Queensland, a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics from the University of Sydney, and a Graduate Diploma in Social Sciences from the University of New England. In his role, he teaches PSYC372/472 Advanced Research Methods and Statistics. His career at the University of New England has focused on advancing understanding in quantitative genetics and educational psychology through rigorous empirical research.

Coventry's research specializations are behaviour genetics and educational psychology, funded by grants from the Australian Research Council. He employs twin and family studies to disentangle genetic and environmental influences on individual differences, alongside analyses of student academic trajectories across schooling years using longitudinal databases. These include population-level data and twin/parent datasets spanning NAPLAN literacy and numeracy assessments from early primary to high school. He utilizes structural equation modeling to investigate nature-nurture dynamics and longitudinal causation. As Chief Investigator, he has directed the Academic Development Study of Australian Twins (ADSAT) for over a decade, yielding insights into academic achievement genetics. Additional work examines optimal presentation of statistical probabilities such as p-values and confidence intervals. Key publications include 'Genome-wide association for major depressive disorder: a possible role for the presynaptic protein piccolo' (2009), 'Collaborative meta-analysis finds no evidence of a strong interaction between stress and 5-HTTLPR genotype contributing to the development of depression' (2018), 'A direct test of the diathesis–stress model for depression' (2018), 'Widespread evidence for non-additive genetic variation in Cloninger’s and Eysenck’s personality dimensions using a twin plus sibling design' (2005), and 'Do student differences in reading enjoyment relate to differences in reading comprehension growth?' (2023). His work has substantial impact, with publications garnering hundreds of citations and contributing to fields like genetic influences on literacy, depression risk, and educational outcomes.