Extensions of Multiple-Group Item Response Theory Alignment: Application to Psychiatric Phenotypes in an International Genomics Consortium

Maxwell Mansolf, Annabel Vreeker, Steven P Reise, Nelson B Freimer, David C Glahn, Raquel E Gur, Tyler M Moore, Carlos N Pato, Michele T Pato, Aarno Palotie, Minna Holm, Jaana Suvisaari, Timo Partonen, Tuula Kieseppä, Tiina Paunio, Marco Boks, René Kahn, Roel A Ophoff, Carrie E Bearden, Loes Olde LoohuisTerri Teshiba, Daniella deGeorge, Robert M Bilder,

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Large-scale studies spanning diverse project sites, populations, languages, and measurements are increasingly important to relate psychological to biological variables. National and international consortia already are collecting and executing mega-analyses on aggregated data from individuals, with different measures on each person. In this research, we show that Asparouhov and Muthén's alignment method can be adapted to align data from disparate item sets and response formats. We argue that with these adaptations, the alignment method is well suited for combining data across multiple sites even when they use different measurement instruments. The approach is illustrated using data from the Whole Genome Sequencing in Psychiatric Disorders consortium and a real-data-based simulation is used to verify accurate parameter recovery. Factor alignment appears to increase precision of measurement and validity of scores with respect to external criteria. The resulting parameter estimates may further inform development of more effective and efficient methods to assess the same constructs in prospectively designed studies.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)870-909
Number of pages40
JournalEducational and Psychological Measurement
Volume80
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2020

Keywords

  • data integration
  • differential item functioning
  • harmonization
  • mega-analysis
  • test equating

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