Open source programming: a new hope for psychometric research

Current psychometric research is most often supported by computer software. New research perspectives often imply intensive simulation studies to validate the tested theories or hypotheses, and therefore require accurate, fast and stable implementation. To this regards, open source programming (such as in the R language) is a promising approach allowing for flexible implementation, data generation, replication of studies, and worldwide dissemination. The purpose of this talk is to illustrate how psychometrics and open source programming (with special emphasis on the R language) can interact and contribute to each other, by means of some selected examples. Several topics will be illustrated, among others: why open source programming is (to my opinion) as important as psychometric research; why we need for stable and complete implementation of psychometric and statistical routines for research purposes (for e.g., CAT); how accurate implementation of IRT routines can lead to unexpected theoretical results; why (and how) open source software can be valued as research output. Most examples will arise from the CAT framework and the R package catR for simulating CAT patterns.