research overview
- Dr. Shear's primary research interests address topics in psychometrics and applied statistics aimed at improving the fairness of test development and use in educational research. His areas of expertise include validity theory, differential item functioning (DIF), and categorical data analysis techniques. His work aims to inform our perspectives about test score meaning and use for research and accountability purposes, and to help answer questions such as, “what do test scores measure, and how do we know?” His work addresses these questions by developing and applying statistical models to generate and evaluate test scores and to make better use of existing large-scale assessment data. An example of the former is the use of DIF analyses to detect biased test items; an example of the latter is the novel application of ordered probit models to summarize large-scale state assessment data.
