The PSC Brown Bag Series runs live and on Zoom this year, Mondays from 12 to 12:50 p.m.

Matt Diemer of U-M Education and Psychology and ISR’s PSC and RCGD presents::

Critical quantitative methodology: MIMIC models to identify and remediate racial (and other) forms of measurement bias

The emerging Critical Quantitative (CQ) perspective is anchored by five guiding principles (i.e., foundation, goals, parity, subjectivity, and self-reflexivity) to mitigate racism and advance social justice. Within this broader methodological perspective, sound measurement is foundational to the quantitative enterprise. Despite the problematic history of measurement, it can be repurposed for critical and equitable ends. MIMIC (Multiple Indicator and MultIple Causes) models are a measurement strategy to simply and efficiently test whether a measure means the same thing and can be measured in the same way across groups (e.g., racial/ethnic and/or gender). Briefly, MIMIC models are variants of confirmatory factor analyses, which include an exogenous covariate(s) to test for latent mean differences as well as for differences in items (“DIF,” or differential item functioning in psychometrics parlance). This talk considers the affordances and limitations of MIMICs for critical quantitative methods, by detecting and mitigating racial, ethnic, gendered, and other forms of bias in items and in measures.

This PSC event is co-sponsored by ISR’s Inclusive Research Matters Series.