22. 1. 2020: Workshop “Basics of psychometrics for social sciences”

Date:  22/01/2020, 12:30-17:00

Room: RB 437

Registration: Due to a limited capacity please register using this link

Teacher: Hynek Cígler

Description: Psychometrics is a scientific discipline lying on the boundary of psychology and mathematical statistics which studies measurement of psychological phenomena; that is, of human characteristics, abilities, states, and of their knowledge. It is therefore focused on modeling of responses to items in tests and diagnostic methods, fairness of such testing, and on methods for verification of validity and reliability of these methods. Psychometrics is also a practical discipline which develops methods for measurement, both for practice and research. Basic knowledge of psychometrics is important for any research which involves measurement of behavioral characteristics of people (questionnaires, ability tests, observation, etc.).

The workshop will present basic psychometric concepts, especially validity and reliability, and introduce selected models of measurement. It will emphasize their research applications: you will find out why it is good to know these concepts for doing research. We will discuss how unreliability of measurement methods affects research findings, especially effect sizes, and the methods to control this unreliability will be presented. The association between validity of a measurement method and internal validity of research design will be also introduced.

Selected analyses will be also presented in practice using an open-source software Jamovi and an open-source application ShinyItemAnalysis (https://shiny.cs.cas.cz/ShinyItemAnalysis/), specifically item analysis from the perspective of classical test theory, methods for estimation of reliability, and basics of factor analysis (especially confirmatory factor analysis).

Pre-requisites for the Class: Basic knowledge of statistics on the level of correlational analysis (ideally also regression analysis) is recommended. The sofware Jamovi will be installed on computers in the room where the workshop will take place, but you may bring your laptop as well. In that case, you can freely download Jamovi before the workshop on www.jamovi.org.

About the lecturer: Hynek Cígler works at the Institute for Research on Children, Youth and Family (http://ivdmr.fss.muni.cz) and at the Department of Psychology (http://psych.fss.muni.cz) at the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University, where he teaches statistical and methodological courses, especially psychometrics. He also serves as an editor-in-chief of the journal Testfórum (www.testforum.cz), which focuses on psychological diagnostics. He is also interested in development of psychological diagnostic methods for practical purposes. His research interests lie in the process of responding to questionnaire and test items and in models of measurement. Beside other topics, he is interested in the research of cognitive abilities, namely, intelligence, mathematical reasoning, and percpetion of numbers and magnitude. Personal webpage: https://is.muni.cz/osoba/175803