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Professor Anna Brown

Scientific Advisor

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A Bit About Me

Anna Brown is a psychometrician with an established reputation and extensive industry experience, teaching statistics conducting research at the University of Kent. Previously, she taught short courses in applied psychometrics at the University of Cambridge. Her experiences outside of academia included research and test development at the Research Division of the UK largest occupational test publisher SHL Group, where she held senior and principal psychometrician positions for many years.


Anna completed a 5-year Master’s programme in Mathematics with distinction, a Ph.D. in Psychology with distinction, and holds a post-graduate certificate in higher education (PGCHE). Her Ph.D. research led to the development of the Thurstonian Item Response Theory (TIRT) model described as a breakthrough in scoring of forced-choice questionnaires, and received the "Best Dissertation" award from the Psychometric Society for 2010. Applications of this model include the OPQ32r – a TIRT-based Occupational Personality Questionnaire, which is one of the most popular workplace assessment tools in the world, assessing well over million people across 40 countries and 37 languages every year.

 

More recently, Anna has been studying impression management (aka faking) behaviour, and its consequences for validity of test scores. This research has resulted in the development of a ground-breaking model of  'intermittent faking', which is a focus of her current publication activity and grant application development.

 

Anna’s research focuses on psychological measurement and psychometric testing, particularly issues in test validity and test fairness. She specialises in modelling of complex survey and longitudinal data, measurement invariance, multidimensional item response theory (MIRT), test optimisation, and modelling response processes contributing to common biases and impression management. She has extensive experience in analysing large population-based datasets, including mental health data (e.g. from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services), and provides psychometric advice to several organisations in the private and public sectors internationally.
 

Anna has published widely in prestigious and high impact journals, such as Psychological Methods, Organizational Research Methods, Psychological Science, and Psychometrika; and also contributed book chapters, psychometric tests and manuals, applying cutting-edge methodology to areas of high societal significance – workplace, health and education. For her latest publication and citation record, visit Google Scholar. Her publications have been cited close to 3,000 times. She served as an elected member on the Council of the International Test Commission for 8 years, chairing its Research and Guidelines Committee. She also serves as a member of the editorial Board of the International Journal of Testing, and as an ad-hoc reviewer for countless journals in the field of psychometrics.

Work Experience

October 2023 - Present

October 2019 - September 2023

October 2015 - September 2019

May 2012 - September 2015

July 2010 - April 2012

January 2002 - September 2010

January 1998 - October 1999

Professor of Psychometrics

University of Kent, Canterbury, England, United Kingdom

Reader in Psychological Methods and Statistics

My teaching responsibilities within the University of Kent include teaching research methods and statistics at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
My current research focuses on validity of assessments employing the forced-choice response format, Computer Adaptive Testing using multidimensional IRT models, and modelling response biases and faking in questionnaire data.

Senior Lecturer in Psychological Methods and Statistics

University of Kent, Canterbury, England, United Kingdom

Lecturer in Psychological Methods and Statistics

University of Kent, Canterbury, England, United Kingdom

Research Associate, University of Cambridge

My teaching responsibilities within the University of Cambridge included developing and delivering summer schools and workshops covering modern psychometric techniques such as latent trait modelling and its extensions, longitudinal modelling etc. My research focused on modeling response biases in questionnaire data. 

Principal Research Statistician, SHL

Designed and coordinated many research projects, also in collaboration with external academic researchers, in fields of personality, leadership, job analysis, job fit and job performance. A large part of the role was to develop new psychometric tools, support and optimize existing tools, and write technical manuals. My most significant achievement was the development of a new version of the Occupational Personality Questionnaire. The new OPQ32r is the first forced-choice instrument on the market scored using the multidimensional Item Response Theory approach that I have developed.

Senior Consultant, SHL Russia

The role involved test adaptation and test development, managing trials and providing psychometric support and consultancy to clients. Delivering training courses in Occupational Testing (licensed BPS Level A and B) was also a part of the role.

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