contact: dkatz@education.ucsb.edu
EDUCATION
PhD (2021): Education - Research Methods and Philosophy of Measurement
University, of California, Santa Barbara
Advisor: Andrew Maul
M.A. (2017) Education (Quantitative Research Methods)
Thesis: Validating a Multidimensional Measure of Reading Strategy Use with the Rasch Model
University of California, Santa Barbara
Committee: Andrew Maul, Karen Nylund-Gibson, Diana Arya
BA (2011), Political Science, Minor in History
University of California, Santa Barbara
RESEARCH INTERESTS
The Rasch Model and Item Response Theory
Measurement Invariance
Explanatory Item Response Models
Philosophy of Measurement and Probability
Casual Inference
Measuring student literacy and other non-academic abilities
RELEVANT EXPERIENCE
University of Florida, Virtual Learning Lab – IES Funded Grant (2019-Present)
- Supervisor: Anne Corinne Manley
- Role: Graduate Student Extern/Data Analyst – IRT/Simulation focus
UCSB Center for Innovative Teaching, Research, and Learning (CITRAL) (2018-Present)
- Supervisor: Linda Adler-Kassner
- Role: Graduate Student Researcher in Assessment and Evaluation
New York City Department of Education Assessment, Design, and Evaluation Team (Summer 2018)
- Supervisor: Ronli Diakow
- Role: Graduate Student Psychometrics Intern – Applying IRT and Explanatory IRT Models
UCSB California Dropout Research Project (CDRP) and Get Focused Stay Focused Evaluations (2016-2019)
- PI: Russell Rumberger
- Role: Graduate Student Researcher (data analyst)
UCSB General Education Assessment Project, Office of Institutional Research and Assessment Research Group (2016-2018)
- PI: Linda Adler-Kassner, Co-Interim Dean of UCSB Undergraduate Education
- Role: Graduate Student Researcher
PUBLISHED WORK
Arya, Diana, Clairmont, A. Katz, Daniel & Maul, A. (2020) Measuring Reading Strategy Use, Educational Assessment, 25:1, 5-30, DOI: 10.1080/10627197.2019.1702464
Maul, A. and Katz, D. (2018). Internal Validity. In B. Frey (Editor), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Katz, D. (2017, May). An Update: The Narrowing California High School Graduation Gap between Black, Latino, and White Students. (CDRP Statistical Brief No. 24). Retrieved from http://cdrpsb.org/pubs_statbriefs.htm
Katz, D. (2017, March). The Narrowing California High School Graduation Gap between Black, Latino, and White Students. (CDRP Statistical Brief No. 23). Retrieved from http://cdrpsb.org/pubs_statbriefs.htm. The Narrowing California High School Graduation Gap between Black, Latino, and White Students
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
Katz, D. and Diakow, R. (2019, April). Using Explanatory Item Response Theory Models to Re-Examine Fairness in Psychometrics. Paper to be presented at the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) April 4-8, 2019. Toronto.
Katz, D.v, Nylund-Gibson, K., Furlong, M. (2019, April). Is One Item Enough? Examining Affect-Laden Survey Items Using Mixture Modelling with Distal Outcomes. Paper presented at American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, April 5-9, 2019. Toronto.
Best Graduate Student Paper in the AERA Survey Special Interest Group Sig
Katz, D., Clairmont, A., Arya, D., & Maul, A., (2018, April). Measuring Reading Strategy Use in a Multilingual Context. Paper presented at American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, April 13-17, 2018. New York.
Katz, D., Clairmont, A., Arya, D. & Maul, A. (2018, April). Measuring Reading Strategy Use in a Multidimensional, Multilingual Context. Paper presented at the International Objective Measurement Workshop (IOMW), April 10-12, 2018. New York.
SELECT IN PROGRESS RESEARCH PROJECTS
Clairmont, A. & Katz D. (in preperation) Using Rasch Measurement Theory for Program Evaluation: A Methods Note. To be submitted to American Journal of Evaluation
Reconsidering fairness in educational assessment: using tools from ethics, causal inference, and psychometrics
Using Rasch Measurement Theory for program evaluation
Measuring subjective well-being and other constructs in positive psychology using mixture modelling approaches (with an emphasis on educational settings).
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Instructor
- One Day Workshop: UCSB Methods U - An Introduction to R: Data Cleaning, Wrangling, and Visualizing
- Implementing Explanatory IRT via the R package, TAM – Course Materials
Teaching Assistant
- Education 214C, Linear Models for Data Analysis (and categorical data analysis), Spring 2018
- Education 214B, Inferential Statistics, Winter 2018
- Education 214A, Introductory Statistics, Fall 2017
ORGANIZATION & COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIPS
- Graduate Student Representative – NCME Committee on informing assessment policy and practice
- American Educational Research Association
- National Council on Measurement in Education
- Society for the Improvement of Psychological Sciences
STATISTICAL SOFTWARE KNOWLEDGE
- R
- Commonly used stats packages: TAM, mirt, lme4, Lavaan, plm
- Other packages: tidyverse, Rmarkdown, xaringan
- Mplus
- Stata (Basic Knowledge)
- Tableau (Basic Knowledge)
- Git and Gitub (Basic Knowledge)
- Stan/rstan (Beginner)
- Dedoose (Beginner)