ESRC Researcher Development Initiative in Applied Psychometrics

Our very successful ESRC RDI in Applied Psychometrics has been extended until mid 2012. This programme is primarily addressed to university teachers and postgraduate students, although psychometricians in publishing and industry are also welcome to attend. We run stand-alone workshops and two-week residential Summer School programmes.

The Summer Schools are addressed to those who wish to learn how to develop assessment tests and questionnaires using the latest methods. The Summer School in September 2011 will focus on the assessment of Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL), a popular and rapidly evolving area of psychometric research that builds on the long-standing methodology of self-report questionnaires. The assessment, analysis and interpretation of these questionnaires and of Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs) rely upon a variety of modern psychometric methods that extend beyond the typical skills of today's social science or medical researcher. Here is the opportunity to catch up.

Our Two-day and Three-day Workshops are targeted at University teaching staff challenged by the transition from classical to modern psychometric methods. However, they are also suitable for applied researchers (including graduate students and post-doctoral research workers) who have a Masters Degree in a topic area with a significant amount of quantitative methodology, and who wish to learn about the potential for estimation of psychometric models in both commercial and free software. In early 2012, two workshops will be held; one in Test Invariance and Differential Item Functioning and the other in Structural Equation Modelling. Both topics have been chosen by popular demand.

For both Summer Schools and Workshops this website contains scripts, slides and other training materials that enable participants to learn and teach computational, statistical and psychological aspects of psychological measurement (see Online Resources)

Contact us if you would like to talk over any particular issues you have.