Psychometrician

Overview

• Lead psychometric analyses for a new early literacy screening tool, including dimensionality analyses, item calibration, and creation of benchmarks and different scaled scores.
• Apply item response theory and receiver operating characteristic curve frameworks appropriate for early childhood assessment.
• Advise on sampling, field testing, and data collection protocols.
• Lead establishing reliability and validity evidence.
• Develop scoring procedures and normative frameworks.
• Prepare technical documentation of the screener and contribute to deliverables for the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care.
• Contribute to peer-reviewed publications and presentations.
• Collaborate with the project team, the French language screener team, and external partners.
• Maintain current knowledge of standards for educational and psychological testing.
• Code statistical models using methods to ensure reproducibility.
• Monitor data trends as ongoing data collection is occurring.
• Ensures that data is accurate, consistent, properly maintained and shared in compliance with relevant privacy protection, confidentiality, and other ethical principles.
• Prepares final data files.
• Identifies and addresses data integrity/reliability issues and uses data cleaning processes to achieve required data quality standards.
• Works with large data sets to perform data mining and statistical analyses.
• Transforms, synthesizes, and cleanses data; identifies opportunities to reduce duplication and errors and ensure data consistency; identifies data integrity issues and proposes data cleansing processes to develop clear and consistent data quality standards.
• Facilitate disseminating research and findings by making presentations and scientific meetings.
• Contribute to scientific papers and write technical reports.
• Assume responsibility for the results published in peer-reviewed journals, including the accuracy of published data and assurance of scientific integrity.
• Write documentation reports to accompany the datasets.
• Develops accurate graphs, reports, dashboards, and presentations to convey complex information understandably and compellingly.
• Potential to take an active role in writing scholarly papers for submission to refereed journals.
• 5+ years of demonstrated experience with mathematical, statistical, and analytical methods, such as ROC curve analysis, IRT and other measurement models.
• Experience with relevant statistical software (e.g., R packages such as mirt or TAM, Mplus

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Job Requisition ID:

2026-00465

Time Type:

Full time

Employee Group:

Staff

Job Category:

Analytics and Reporting

Employment Type:

Temporary

Department:

Faculty of Arts - School of Psychology - Research, Hart Lab

Hiring Range:

$73,695.42 - $92,119.28

Posting Information:

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

This role is contingent of funding and being offered as an external contract

Term - 3 years

Job Description:

Primary Purpose

We are seeking a Psychometrician to join a new project developing a screening assessment for reading skills in children from kindergarten through grade 3 for the British Columbia Literacy Screening Research Project (BCLSRP)—a large-scale, multi-year research initiative designed to rigorously study, follow, and inform the implementation of literacy initiatives across the province led by Canada Excellence Research Chair in Developmental Science, Dr. Sara Hart. The Psychometrician will lead the technical work involved in standardizing the screener, including item selection and refinement, field test design, ROC curve analysis, IRT modeling, scaling, equating, and norming. The successful candidate will also advise on data collection procedures to ensure that the resulting data support the planned psychometric analyses.  This includes tasks such as psychometric modeling, statistical validation of assessment tools, longitudinal data analysis, and the preparation of analytical reports for internal and external stakeholders. The successful incumbent will provide methodological expertise, ensure data integrity, and support evidence‑based decision‑making within the research unit.

Key Accountabilities

Statistical Modeling, Data Analysis and Reporting

Data Management and Knowledge Translation

Communication and Consultation

Required Qualifications

Education

PhD in quantitative psychology, educational measurement, psychometrics, or a related field; or a Master's degree with substantial applied experience in educational test development.

Experience