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Sonia Sappl is a graduate from UWA with a major in Neuroscience and Psychology.  While completing her Honours in Psychology, Sonia discovered a passion for measurement and psychometrics.  The potential it provided to assess and improve existing psychological measures was fascinating and an area that Sonia wanted to explore further.

“I’m interested in learning about the validity of psychological measures. For example, does a particular measure show a bias towards a population in terms of gender or culture and how can this be improved?”

Psychometrics is a field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement. One part of the field is concerned with the objective measurement of skills and knowledge, abilities, attitudes, personality traits, and educational achievement. The other part is concerned with statistical research bearing on measurement theory.

Earlier this year Sonia was selected for the Pearson Psychometric Internship at UWA’s Faculty of Education.  Under the mentorship of Professor David Andrich and Doctor Ida Marais, Sonia hopes to learn more about the field, in particular the Rasch model of measurement.

“After finishing my studies I hoped to gain experience working in the field of psychometrics so when I heard about the internship I was excited about the opportunity to learn from someone like Professor David Andrich,” says Sonia.

“As part of my internship I have begun learning how to use RUMM and BiLog which are statistical analysis software.  I am also looking into the effects of response dependency and guessing. A typical day involves simulating data and running it through RUMM and BiLog.”

The Pearson Psychometric Laboratory, based at UWA, is a partnership between Pearson Research and Assessment and the Faculty of Education . The Laboratory provides a range of support services, including teaching, consultancy and contract work to aid in the design and delivery of large-scale educational assessment systems.

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Siaw Chai         Marketing and Communications Officer         +61 (08) 6488 2382