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UGA College of Education to host 75th Annual Psychometric Conference July 6-9

Athens, Ga. – More than 300 scholars, graduate students and professionals in the educational testing industry from around the world are expected to attend the 75th annual meeting of the Psychometric Society at the University of Georgia July 6-9.

The largest and premier conference in the field will include dozens of invited talks, state-of-the-art presentations and keynote lectures by some of the world’s best-known psychometric and psychological scholars, researchers and educational testing experts during the four-day meeting at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel.

Alexander Shapiro, a professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology will deliver the first keynote address at 5:10 p.m. on Wednesday, July 7 entitled, What Optimization and Statistics Can Learn from Each Other. Shapiro’s research focuses on stochastic programming, simulation based optimization, non-differentiable optimization and non-smooth analysis, sensitivity analysis and optimization of queuing networks, sensitivity analysis of nonlinear programs, multivariate statistical analysis.

Michael Browne, a professor of psychology and a professor of statistics at Ohio State University, will deliver a keynote address at 5:10 p.m. on Thursday, July 8 entitled, Some Facets of Factor Analysis. Browne’s research has been primarily concerned with statistical modeling of multivariate psychological data.

Susan Embretson, a professor of psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology will give a keynote address at 4:10 p.m. on Friday, July 9 entitled, Item Generation Revisited: Psychometric Issues and Models in 2010. Embretson’s main research focus has been to integrate cognitive theory into psychometric models and test design.

Jos ten Berge, a professor of differential psychology from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, will give the Presidential Address at 5:10 p.m. on Friday, July 9 entitled, Simplicity and Typical Rank of Three-Way Arrays.

All keynote lectures and the presidential address will be held in Mahler Auditorium.

The Psychometric Society is an international nonprofit professional organization devoted to the advancement of quantitative measurement practices in psychology, education and the social sciences. The society publishes the journal Psychometrika, which contains articles on the development of quantitative models of psychological phenomena, as well as statistical methods and mathematical techniques for the evaluation of psychological and educational data.

For a complete list of guest speakers and topics, see http://projects.coe.uga.edu/imps/invited/.

For additional information about the conference, see http://projects.coe.uga.edu/imps/ or email imps2010@uga.edu.

The conference is being hosted by the UGA College of Education Research Office, the Georgia Center for Assessment and the Institute for Behavioral Research.