The Research and Evaluation group has provided psychometric and research services and developed customized assessment instruments for a wide variety of educational and corporate clients. The R&E Group uses a broad spectrum of research methodologies and statistical procedures. The special expertise of the research group lies in the applications of Rasch measurement models to a wide variety of response formats.

Program Evaluation Services

An effective program evaluation requires good planning, detailed and accurate execution, appropriate timing, and effective write up of results. EDS staff can help ensure your program evaluation has a sound design resulting in meaningful results and is implemented according to the highest of standards.

Our services include:

• Planning and research design
• Thorough analysis of variables
• Effective and efficient data collection
• Accurate data processing
• Customized survey and assessment instrument development
• Personal interviews and on-site visits
• Data collection, database management and data storage
• Psychometric and statistical analysis and evaluation
• Technical reporting and write up of results
• Unbiased presentation and reporting to relevant groups

EDS’ expert research and evaluation staff can establish a conceptual framework, outcome measures, dependent and independent variables, and measurement indices that address each of your program’s guiding questions and critical factors.

Statistics and Psychometric Services

Statistics is the sciences of collapsing large amounts of information into simple data that leads to valid conclusions. Statistics allow us to 1) describe populations; 2) compare groups; 3) reveal relationships; 4) remove irrelevancies.

Our statistical staff builds on a tradition of revealing the truth hidden in complicated data in the form of simple graphs and tables that give you access to all the information available within your data.

Psychometrics is the science of psychological measurement. An important application of psychometrics is to accurately measure student aptitudes with far greater precision than can be reached using simple "percent-correct" scores.

Rasch Modeling
At EDS, our specialty is a family of psychometric models called Rasch Models. Very simply, the Rasch Model approach applies a mathematical analysis to allow comparison of things that are not directly connected. It can be used to ensure objective, accurate student test results and accurate comparisons between different assessments. It also is useful in test equating, the process of yielding assessments whose results are directly comparable.

Equating
Equating is a way to produce scores from one test that are comparable to scores on a different test. Equating is important in administration of an assessment using several test forms. But it can be most useful in comparing tests over time, allowing accurate gauging of student progress from month to month, even year to year.

Survey Services

At EDS, we have many years’ experience in developing, administering, evaluating and analyzing surveys for business and educational clients. Our research team begins by determining what you want to learn, then develops the tool that will yield the most accurate picture possible.

Your survey can be administered on the web, or as a traditional paper document. We can handle distribution and administration of your survey, or you are free to do so. Once your surveys are returned to us, we scan them, performing a variety of accuracy checks to ensure all data is recovered. Using Rasch Modeling, connections can be made between many survey items, resulting in reports that give you far more useful information than you may ever have thought available.

For more information, please complete our Information Request Form.