The second talk within Seminar series in Statistics and Data Science for this semester will take place in Erling Svedrups plass (Niels Henrik Abel Hus, 8th floor), at 14:15, on Tuesday 05.10.2021. The talk will be given by Björn Andersson, an associate professor at the Centre for Educational Measurement, University of Oslo (CEMO).

Access to the seminar area will be granted for up to 20 UiO employees from the Department of Mathematics on the basis of the "first come first served" principle.

It is always possible to follow the talk on Zoom, using this link:

https://uio.zoom.us/j/67753931995?pwd=N1p3QjkvNzNMZnE3bE02OVVtWG8zUT09

Title:
Estimation of longitudinal item response theory models with a second-order Laplace approximation

Abstract:
Marginal maximum likelihood estimation of longitudinal latent variable models for ordinal observed variables is challenging due to the high latent dimensionality required to accurately model residual dependencies for repeated measurements. We use second-order Laplace approximations to the high-dimensional integrals in the marginal likelihood function for longitudinal item response theory models and implement an efficient estimation method based on the approximations. The method is illustrated with items from the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, administered at four time points in a Hong Kong study of aging and well-being. We discuss the limitations of the proposed estimation method and outline a potential extension to the approach that uses a dimension-reduction technique.

Best regards,

Sven Ove Samuelsen & Aliaksandr Hubin