Interactively Building Test Forms from an IRT Perspective: An Application of R and Shiny (303153)

Keywords: Interactive, Data Analysis, R, Shiny, Form Building

A common task for a data analyst is updating an analysis when the data changes. These tasks have led to integrated analysis documents; commonly employed with R and Rmarkdown. The advantage of these documents comes from little to no change needed in the analysis code to recreate the reporting document. What if this was taken a step further to remove the data analysis from the re-running of the analysis? This can be achieved with the programming language R through an interactive platform called Shiny. The Shiny package offers an interactive web framework where end users do not need to know R to be able to run the analysis. An example is shown with the task of building assessment forms. Items that make up a given test form are commonly swapped due to content, alignment, or statistical concerns before a final form is developed. Using R and Shiny, this process can be done in an interactive environment, where items can be swapped on the fly and the analysis can be updated immediately. This could improve workflow, provide a reduction in errors, and reduce many repetitive tasks that commonly fall to data analysts. Extensions to other interactive or repetitive tasks will be explored.