Measuring Bias
Assistant professor Leah McGuire applies analytical methodologies to diversity issues
Leah McGuire landed a University of Minnesota IDEA Multicultural Research award in March—just six months after joining the Department of Educational Psychology as an assistant professor. McGuire statistically models how different groups of people may react to individual test questions based on their background and identity.
“Analytical procedures can show us whether or not a test question is biased against certain students by ethnicity, gender, age, or whatever,” she explains. “We don’t usually work to see why the bias exists. This research will find features to see why questions may show bias.”
McGuire, who studied applied mathematics at Yale University and earned her Ph.D. in education with a focus on quantitative methods from University of California, Berkeley, grew up in small town Michigan. A close family friend inspired her to study educational measurement. He was both a prominent researcher in educational statistics, and, like McGuire, part of only three multiracial families in town.
“I was delighted to learn from him about how his work used solid methodological approaches to study diversity issues,” she says. “He studied neighborhood effects and student outcomes.”
McGuire’s interest in community and research was ignited by collaborating with the researcher’s wife, who worked with McGuire’s mother in a service-learning center at Michigan State University.
“As a member of the youth advisory board for the service-learning center at a young age, I was able to participate in research projects,” McGuire explains. “I became interested in a research career first through participating in service-learning conferences and workshops.”
This summer McGuire will be collaborating with her former thesis adviser from UC-Berkeley on a research project to model learning over time.
Story by Brigitt Martin | May 2011
