UCLA Center for Research, Education, Training, and Strategic Communication on Minority Health Disparities

Item Response Theory Workshop

Steven P. Reise, PhD

Professor of Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles

Time: 12-4:30pm (Lunch served from 12-12:30)

Item Response Theory (IRT) is a model that will facilitate the description, in probabilistic terms, of the relationship between a person's response and his or her standing on the construct being measured by the scale. IRT is a very valuable method to be employed by those interested in looking at differences in response by racial/ethnic minorities and so this workshop is an excellent opportunity for participants interested in investigating health disparities in minority populations.

This introductory workshop includes a discussion of the basics of item response theory (IRT) modeling, including discussions of defining model parameters, model assumptions, item and test characteristic and information curves, frequently-used IRT models, and differences between traditional methods and IRT methods. Also included are discussions of the role of IRT modeling in health outcomes research of evaluating and developing questionnaires, identifying differential item functioning, linking instruments, developing item banks, and assessing change and critical issues for applying this methodology in health outcomes research.

The workshop is open to graduate students, post docs, faculty and researchers who are actively engaged in research in which this particular methodology would be most relevant. If you are interested in participating in this Item Response Theory workshop on Friday May 11th from 12-4:30 please send an e-mail to cmhd@ucla.edu. Include in it your name, whether you are a graduate, post doc or faculty member and your department. Please include the research question/topic which you would like to work on during the workshop, tell us whether this is a funded research project, your dissertation, master's or independent project that you are working on alone. Your response is needed by noon on Wednesday May 2nd.