A biweekly publication for faculty and staff

Fulbright Visiting Scholar to Deliver Lecture

Date: 
February 12, 2014 - 12:00 pm

A Fulbright-Masaryk fellow delivers a talk at UC Merced about researching the reliability estimates in the Czech admissions test as part of the Outreach Lecturing Fund, which lets Fulbright visiting scholars travel across the United States.

Patrícia Martinková, a fellow with the Center for Statistics in the Social Sciences at University of Washington, gives her talk at noon Wednesday, Feb. 12, in the Social Sciences and Management Building, Room 104. The talk is free and open to the public.

Many Czech colleges and universities run their own admission tests. Several years ago, there was a suggestion to require reporting of Cronbach’s alpha, a measure of reliability, for all higher education admissions tests. Martinkova’s study first aimed to explain the statistical groundings for Cronbach’s alpha, to stress its assumptions and to research alternative reliability estimates in more complicated designs. As a secondary outcome, a new estimate of reliability, logistic alpha, was proposed for binary items.

Her talk presents work on the development of the new reliability estimate and the simulation study that compares the logistic alpha with existing estimators of reliability in IRT models. Findings will be discussed in the context of actual admission data.

Each year about 800 faculty and professionals from around the world receive Fulbright Scholar grants for advanced research and university lecturing. The purpose of the Outreach Lecturing Fund is to allow these scholars to share their specific research interests, speak on the history and culture of their home countries, exchange ideas with U.S. students, faculty members and community organizations, become better acquainted with U.S. higher education, and create links between their homes and host institutions and CIES.

Martinkova received her Ph.D. in probability and mathematical statistics at Charles University in Prague. She is a scientist at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

For more information, contact Professor William Shadish.

5200 North Lake Rd.
Merced, CA 95343
United States