Joanna S. Gorin, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Division of Psychology in Education

Measurement, Statistics, and Methodological Studies Program

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Program of Research

 

As a young measurement scholar-researcher, I have focused my teaching, research, and service efforts to advance fair and equitable educational practice, particularly the informed use of educational assessment. Toward this goal, two underlying themes of my work emerge: 1) specialized work in cognitive-psychometric analysis of standardized test data, and 2) basic measurement and statistical training for non-quantitative educators and students. The majority of my current research applies cognitive-psychometric models (e.g., LLTM, Rule Space Methodology) to standardized measures of reading comprehension for young adults. By merging information from cognitive theory with advanced measurement models, important information has been gained about the meaning and characteristics of verbal reasoning test scores that is useful for educators. Most recently, I have created the Psychometric Testing and Eye-Tracking Laboratory to gather extensive data supporting my research. This facility permits me to collect experimental data on standardized testing items, including digital eye-tracking data, verbal protocols, and survey data, all of which augment the traditional information available for item difficulty modeling and diagnostic score reporting.

Psychometric Testing and Eye-tracking Laboratory (P-TEL)

This laboratory was established to promote the investigation of cognitive modeling of standardized assessment data. The environment of the lab was designed to simulate that of a "real" computerized adaptive testing situation. Current projects include the investigation of item generation for reading comprehension assessment, validation of cognitive models of verbal reasoning with visual eye-trackers, and cognitive diagnostic modeling of international mathematics items. Members of the P-TEL staff include Dr. Joanna Gorin (Director), Angela Argo (GA), Dubravka Svetina (GA), and Lisa Mitchell (GA).

Publications:

  • Atwill, K., Blachard, J., Gorin, J. S., & Burstein, K. (in press). The effect of language proficiency on cross-language transfer of phonemic awareness in kindergarten Spanish-speaking children. Manuscript to appear in Journal of Educational Research.
  • Gorin, J. S. (in press). Book review: Constructing Measures: An item modeling approach. Book review to be published in International Journal of Testing.
  • Gorin, J. S., & Embretson, S. E. (in press) Item response theory and Rasch models. Handbook of research methods in abnormal and clinical psychology. (D. McKay, Ed.). Sage Publications.
·       Gorin, J. S. (in press). Test Construction and Diagnostic Testing. In J. P. Leighton & M. J. Gierl, Eds. Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment in Education: Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press.
  • Gorin, J. S. (2006). Item Design with cognition in mind. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 25(4), 21-35.
·       Thompson, M. S., Gorin, J. S., Obeidat, K., & Chen, Y.-H. (2006). Academic precursors of underrepresented groups in higher education: Findings from multiple data sources. Journal of Negro Education, 75(3), 546-562.
  • Gorin, J. S., & Embretson, S. E. (2006) Item Difficulty Modeling of Paragraph Comprehension Items. Applied Psychological Measurement, 30(5), 394-411.
·       Gorin, J. S. (2005) Manipulation of processing difficulty on reading comprehension test questions: The feasibility of verbal item generation. Journal of Educational Measurement, 42, 351-373.   
·       Gorin J. S., Dodd, B. G., Fitzpatrick, S., & Sheih, Y. Y. (2005). Computerized adaptive testing with the partial credit model: Estimation procedures, population distributions, and item pool characteristics. Applied Psychological Measurement, 29, 1-24.
·       Summers, J. J., Whitaker, T. A, Svinicki, M. D., & Gorin, J. S. (2005). Evaluating community and cooperative learning. Journal of Experimental Education, 73, 165 - 188.
  • Summers, J. J., Svinicki, M. D., Gorin, J. S., Sullivan, T. A. (2002). Student Feelings of Connection to the Campus and Openness to Diversity and Challenge at a Large Research University: Evidence of Progress?," Innovative Higher Education, 27(1), 53-64.
  • Embretson, S. E.  & Gorin, J. S. (2001). Improving construct validity with cognitive psychology principles. Journal of Educational Measurement, 38(4), 343 – 368.

Current ASU Courses Offered:

EDP/COE 502: Introduction to Data Analysis - NEW ONLINE EDP/COE 502 (Click here for information!)

This course is designed to familiarize students with descriptive and introductory inferential statistics often utilized in educational and psychological research. Students will learn to select appropriate statistical procedures, calculate statistics, and perform statistical tests both by hand and with SPSS (statistical software package). In addition to calculations, students will learn to interpret the results of statistical tests in terms of the experimental design and hypotheses.

Syllabus and Schedule

 

EDP 550: Introduction to Measurement in Education

This course is designed to introduce education and non-education graduate students to classical and modern test theory, as well as "best-practices" in applied measurement in education. Students will learn the assumptions, limitations, and applications of test theory to the development and interpretation of classroom and standardized tests. Students will also be briefly introduced to the development and analysis of items to measure personality and attitudes. 

Syllabus and Schedule

 

EDP 691: Introduction to Item Response Theory

The purpose of this course is to introduce students with moderate statistical knowledge to Item Response Theory as an alternative to Classical True Score Theory. We begin with a comparison of IRT to CTST, including a thorough review of the assumptions of both and an introduction to the basic models. Both dichotomous and polytomous IRT models are discussed as they are applied to cognitive, personality, and attitudinal measurement. Additionally, new applications of IRT to computerized adaptive testing (CAT), cognitively diagnostic assessment, and measurement of individual change are examined.

Syllabus and Schedule

 

EDP 691: Test and Scale Construction

This course is designed as a second course in measurement and test development theory to follow EDP 550. The primary goal is to give students experience applying classical and modern test theory to the development and analysis of test and scales. Of primary interest are issues of validity and reliability, discussed within both a CTST and IRT framework. Students work in small groups to design and examine measures in their desired content domains and present preliminary results from analysis in a publication-like paper and presentation.

Syllabus and Schedule

 

Awards and Honors:

·  Jason Millman Promising Measurement Scholar, National Council on Measurement in Education, 2007

·  COE Dean's Excellence Award in Teaching, ASU, 2006

·  Nominated for NCME Millman Promising Measurement Scholar Award, 2006

·  NSF Young Scientist Travel Award, National Science Foundation, 2004

·  COE Stimulus Grant: Investigator Initiated Study, ASU, 2004 - 2005

·  Harold Gulliksen Psychometric Fellow, Educational Testing Service, 2001-2002

·  William L. Hays Endowed Fellowship, University of Texas, 1998-99

·  ETS Summer Internship/Fellowship, Educational Testing Service, 1998; 2001

Funded Projects:

·  Item Generation for Verbal Reasoning: Some possibilities for the near future, NSF Young Scientist Travel Award

·  The Pursuit of Post-Secondary Education: Exploring Underrepresented Groups in Arizona, ASU COE Stimulus Grant, Co-PI

·  Investigation of Curriculum Alignment: Improving Elementary Reading and Mathematics Achievement, Evans and Newton, Inc., Co-PI

·  Cognitive and Psychometric Modeling of GRE-V Reading Comprehension Items, ETS Fellowship, PI

 

Presentations, and Symposia

·        Chen, Y.-H., Gorin, J. S., Thompson, M. S., & Tatsuoka, K. (2007). An alternative examination of Taiwanese Mathematics Achievement: Application of Rule-Space Methodology to TIMSS-1999. Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.

·        Huff, K. & Gorin, J. S. (2006). Innovations in Item Difficulty Modeling: Recent Developments and Novel Applications. Coordinated Symposium accepted for presentation at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the National Council on Educational Measurement.

  • Gorin, J. S. (2006). Using alternative data sources to inform item difficulty modeling. Paper to be presented in organized symposium at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the National Council on Educational Measurement.
  • Chen, Y.-H., Gorin, J. S., Thompson, M. S., & Tatsuoka, K. (2006). Verification of cognitive attributes required to solve the TIMSS-1999 mathematics items for Taiwanese students. Paper to be presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. 
  • Thompson, M. S., Gorin, J. S., Obeidat, K., & Chen, Y.-H. (2006). Academic Precursors of Underrepresented Groups in Postsecondary Education: Findings from Multiple Data Sources. Paper to be presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Gorin, J. S., Thompson, M. S., Obeidat, K., & Chen, Y.-H. (2005). Using Multiple Data Sources to Support Diversity Research: Examining Underrepresentation in Postsecondary Education. Presented at the 2005 Educating All of One Nation Conference of the National Council on Education, Phoenix, AZ.

  • Blanchard, J., Atwill, K., Burnstein, K., Christie, J., Gorin, J. S., Wodrich, D. (2005). Is phonological awareness a language specific skill? A test of cross-language transfer in young children. Paper to be preseted at the 14th European Conference on Reading, Zagreb, Croatia.
  • Blanchard, J., Atwill, K., Burnstein, K., Christie, J., Gorin, J. S., Wodrich, D. (2005). An investigation of cross-language transfer in the phonemic awareness of kindergarten Spanish-speaking children. Paper to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Toronto, Canada.

·        Yang, Y., Argo, A., Lo, W., Chen, Y., Krech, P., Mitchell, L., Green, S., Gorin, J. S., Thompson, M. (2005). Item Analysis Methods for Emergent Factors: A Case Study of a Stress Scale. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, Canada.

·        Gorin, J. S. (2004). Modeling Reading Comprehension-Test Questions: Onward Toward Item Generation. Presented at the 2004 Meeting of the International Congress in Psychology, Beijing China.

·        Blanchard, J. Christie, J., Burstein, K., Atwill, K., Gorin, J. S., & Moore, T. (2004). The effect of illustrations on assessment of phonemic awareness in young children. Presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Study of Reading, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

·        Blanchard, J. S., & Gorin, J. S. (2004). The effect of curriculum alignment on reading achievement: A multi-school district study. Presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the International Reading Association, Reno Nevada.

·        Gorin, J. S., & Chen, Y. (2004). Manipulation of processing difficulty on reading comprehension test questions: A step towards item generation. Presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.

·        Gorin, J. S., & Blanchard, J. S. (2004). The effect of curriculum alignment on elementary mathematics and reading achievement. Presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.

·        Gorin, J. S., & Embretson, S. E (2003). GRE-V test score validation with cognitive psychology principles. Presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Canada.

·        Gorin. J. S. (2002) Getting more meaning from standardized test scores with cognitive psychology. Presented at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Arizona Educational Research Organization, Tempe, Arizona.

·        Gorin, J. S., Embretson, S. E., & Sheehan, K. (2002).  Cognitive and Psychometric Modeling of text-based reading comprehension GRE-V items. Paper presented at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the National Council on Measurement in Education: New Orleans, LA.

·        Gorin, J. S., & Embretson, S. E (2001). Automated Item Generation in Spatial Reasoning: An Investigation of Assembling Objects (AO) Problems. Paper presented at an Organized Symposium at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the National Council on Measurement and Education: Seattle, WA.

·        Summers, J. J., Gorin J. S., & Svinicki M. D. (2001). Tools for evaluating cooperative learning. Paper presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association: San Francisco, CA. 

·        Gorin, J. G., Dodd, B. G., Fitzpatrick, S., Shieh, Y. Y. (2000). Computerized adaptive testing with the Partial Credit Model: Estimation Procedures, Population Distributions, and Item Pool Characteristics. Paper presented at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association: New Orleans, LA.

·        Summers, J. J., Svinicki, M. D., & Gorin, J. S. (2000). Connectedness and diversity: Do instructional methods matter? Paper presented at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association. Washington D. C..

·        Gorin, J. S., Husman, J., & Turner, J. E. (1998). The interaction of extrinsic and Intrinsic motivation on college students' use of learning strategies. Paper presented at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.

·        Turner, J. E., Gorin, J. S., Husman, J., McCann E. J., Achacoso, M. V., Do, S. L., Summers, J. J., Way, P. J., Wohlblatt, K. A., & Yerly, R. C. (1998). Individual differences in students' academic motivation, self-regulation, emotional experiences, and general well-being. Poster presented at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.

·        Husman, J. & Gorin, J. S. (1998). The effects of perceptions of instrumentality on intrinsic motivation. Paper presented at the 6th Workshop on Achievement and Task Motivation, Thesaloniki, Greece.

·        Husman, J. & Gorin, J. S. (1998). An integration of future time perspective, motivation, and self-regulatory variables. Paper presented at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the Southwest Educational Research Association, Houston, TX.

 

Research Interests:

·  Item Generation

·  Diagnostic Assessment

·  Computer Adaptive Testing

·  Cognitive Test Design

·  Cognitive IRT Models

·  Construct Validity

·  Large Scale Testing

College of Education

Division of Psychology in Education

PO Box 870611

Tempe, Arizona 85287-0611

Tel: (480) 965-1142

FAX: (480) 965-0300

joanna.gorin@asu.edu

http://coe.asu.edu/gorin