AERC Hosts: Prof. David Andrich "Rasch meta-meters of growth in reading and mathematics attainment tests".

Abstract: Although hardly known, Georg Rasch had an approach to studying growth based on the principle of invariant comparisons, the same principle for which he is well known with his models for measurement. The approach identifies a non-linear function of time, called a meta-metre, which governs the growth of all individuals of a population. Then within the meta-metre, each individual’s rate of growth is linear and invariant, thus permitting ready comparisons of rates of growth among individuals using standard statistical procedures. This presentation illustrates the approach with the educationally important variables of reading and mathematics attainment tests from two longitudinal studies. Each of the meta-metres show early rapid, decelerating growth, with noticeably different rates of growth among sub-populations. Decelerating growth is also related to the common grade scale, showing that any grade difference between groups in the early years invariably increases in later years. This increase has implications for interventions for groups at risk in their attainments.

Professor David Andrich is the former Chapple Professor of Education, The University of Western Australia. His interests are in educational, psychological and social measurement in general, where he is best known for his work with Rasch class of models for measurement. He has published on epistemological foundations and mathematical elaborations of this class of models, and has contributed to software development for its implementation and published on models for preference and choice. His more recent work has been on the study of growth, both cross-sectional and longitudinal at the population, sample, and individual levels, reflected in the publication Andrich, D., Marais, I. and Sappl, S. (2023) Rasch Meta-Metres of Growth for Some Intelligence and Attainment Tests. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4693-8.

David Andrich has held major research grants, either Discovery or Linkage with Industry Partners, or at times both, from the Australian Research Council continuously from 1985 to 2023. He was also a member of the ARC panel for assessing grants in the social sciences and in

1990 was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia for his contributions to measurement in the social sciences. He has published in Educational, Psychological, Sociological, Statistical and more recently, Physics measurement journals.

He is the author of Rasch Models for Measurement (Sage) which has been cited some 1500 times. One of his seminal papers, A rating formulation for ordered response categories (Psychometrika, 1978) has been described as a classic in this field (with over 4200 citations), making possible analyses of ordered categories data with the Rasch model. In 2020 he was listed as one of the 30 top social science researchers in Australia, and the most cited researcher in the top 20 journals in the area of educational and psychological assessment. He is also an author of a text in the field published by Springer.

In addition to his academic and applied research, David Andrich has been a member of expert advisory committees at national and state levels. He has conducted commissioned reports for governments at both the national and state levels. These reports have influenced policy decisions, including some major ones, for system-wide assessment and university selection in Western Australia. In 2011 he was listed in The West Australian as one of the 100 most influential people in Western Australia. He is currently a Board Member of the School, Curriculum and Standards Authority of Western Australia and is a member of the Measurement Advisory Group concerned with the National Assessment Program for the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority.