Ida Marais is a Senior Research Fellow at the GSE Psychometric Laboratory, The University of Western Australia. After graduating with a BSc degree majoring in Computer Science and Psychology, she has worked as a computer analyst/programmer for a number of years before being awarded a University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarship and completing a MSc and PhD in Cognitive Psychology. Since then, Ida has been a researcher and lecturer in the fields of Psychology and Education in New Zealand and Australia. Her research activities focus on psychological and educational measurement, especially the measurement of change over time and simulation of data that violate the Rasch model. Ida's current research investigates the issue of maintaining invariant scales in state, national and international level assessments. She has written and continues to develop a data simulation program to study the implications of specific, various violations of responses according to the Rasch model, and the program is used by colleagues worldwide both for research and teaching of the Rasch model. Ida also jointly coordinates postgraduate units in Rasch measurement and supervises postgraduate students in educational measurement. She consults on a number of projects, including the audit of the Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission test (UMAT) analysis and the analysis of the Australian national assessment Program (NAPLAN).
Sonia Sappl is a Research Assistant at the GSE Psychometric Laboratory, The University of Western Australia. After graduating with a BSc degree majoring in Psychology and Neuroscience, she has completed a Graduate Diploma in Professional Education, and is currently enrolled in a Master of Philosophy (Research) at The University of Western Australia. In her role as a research assistant, Sonia has assisted with the statistical analysis of the National Assessment Program for Science Literacy (NAP-SL) data for calibration and equating.