Jing Gao recently joined SLTI as a psychometrician. Ms. Gao received an MA in English from Indiana University, a graduate certificate in survey statistics from the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at University of Maryland, and will receive her Ph.D. in September of 2009 in Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation from the University of Maryland, College Park. Ms. Gao specializes in item response theory, test equating, data analysis, and survey methodology. She currently serves on the review panel for Division D, Section 2 for the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
Since joining SLTI, she has coauthored two statistical reports on the DLPT V Constructed Response Tests for the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC). She has also worked on a project for the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA), writing Info-briefs on psychometric issues in score reporting.
In June 2009, Ms. Gao participated in a two-day workshop on the U.S. government Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale, and attended a one-day orientation on item review at the DLIFLC. Ms. Gao was a member of the external item review team for the DLPT V in Chinese.
Prior to joining SLTI, she worked as a research assistant at the University of Maryland for three years. She has worked on a number of projects involving statistical analysis and corpus linguistics, and has taught English at the university level as well.