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Activity Number: 342 - Measurement Challenges and Innovations in Cognitive Aging and Dementia Research: Progress from the MEthods for LOngitudinal Studies of DEMentia (MELODEM) Initiative
Type: Topic-Contributed
Date/Time: Thursday, August 12, 2021 : 10:00 AM to 11:50 AM
Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
Abstract #317642
Title: Co-Calibration of Cognitive Functioning Domains Across Different Countries When There Are No Common Linking Items
Author(s): Alden Gross* and Emma L Nichols
Companies: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Keywords: item response theory; psychometrics; cross-national harmonization; cognitive aging
Abstract:

Modern psychometric methods for cocalibration rely on items in common across studies to derive a common cognitive metric. Such methods are infeasible when there are no overlapping test items, a situation in cross-national research in cognitive aging due to changes necessary to accommodate cultural and linguistic differences. We propose as a solution an approach that entails (1) identifying a common test known to be highly correlated with the cognitive domain of interest in both studies; (2) separately in each study, derive scores via IRT for the cognitive domain of interest; (3) create inverse probability weights (IPW) for membership in one study based on equated scores from the common test in step 1; and (4) using equipercentile equating to equate the domain scores in step 2 to the distribution of the metric in step 3, weighting with IPW. We applied this approach to co-calibrate executive functioning across Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocols (HCAPs) in the US and England. Using this method, the IRT-cocalibrated IRT executive score (gold standard) was correlated with the equipercentile-equated executive score at r=0.80. We discuss limitations and future directions.


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