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Vita

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Service

I have worked on the following OECD projects as a research analyst - 
1.  Causal Effects of Health on Literacy and Training Participation. (with Clemens Lechner) 
2.  PIAAC Field Trial Study
3. Comparative Analysis of Student Skill Scales in the Study of Social and Emotional Skills (with Clemens Lechner and Matthias Blümke) To top

Research

Broadly, my main research interests are in data quality assessments, latent variable modeling, categorical data analysis, and research methods. I like to use these methodologies to answer pressing research questions in the field of social sciences.
Specifically, my current research interests are:

    Response Quality Assessment
    Measurement Invariance
    Data Visualization
    Modeling Zero-Inflated Count Data

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Publications

Publication

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Journal article

Bhaktha, Nivedita. 2021. " Book Review: Finch, W. H., Bolin, J. E., & Kelley, K. (2019). Multilevel modeling using R. Crc Press. ." Psychometrika.

Bhaktha, Nivedita, and Clemens Lechner. 2021. "To score or not to score?: A simulation study on the performance of test scores, plausible values, and SEM in regression with socio-emotional skill or personality scales as predictors." Frontiers in Psychology 12 679481. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.679481.

Lechner, Clemens, Nivedita Bhaktha, Katharina Groskurth, and Matthias Bluemke. 2021. "Why ability point estimates can be pointless: A primer on using skill measures from large-scale assessments in secondary analyses." Measurement Instruments for the Social Sciences 3 (2). doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s42409-020-00020-5.

Sawyer, Brook E., Ann O’Connell, Nivedita Bhaktha, Laura M. Justice, Julie R. Santoro, and Anna Rhoad Drogalis. 2020. "Does teachers’ self-efficacy vary for different children?: A study of early childhood special educators." Topics in Early Childhood Special Education online first. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0271121420906528.

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Contribution to edited volume

O'Connell, Ann, Nivedita Bhaktha, and Jing Zhang. 2022. "Multilevel Models for Counts.." In Multilevel Modeling Methods with Introductory and Advanced Applications. , Information Age Publishing..

Lo, Meng-Ting, Susie Mauck, Nivedita Bhaktha, and Ann O'Connell. 2022. "Power Analysis and Evidence.." 3rd Edition. In The psychology research handbook: A guide for graduate students and research assistants., Sage.

Lecture

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Conference contribution

Bhaktha, Nivedita, and Clemens Lechner. 2022. "A comparison of three methods for dealing with low-quality response in surveys. ." 2022 Annual Meeting of the National Council of Measurement in Education. , 2022-04-07.

Bhaktha, Nivedita, and Clemens Lechner. 2022. "Handling low quality responses in regression analyses: A simulation study. ." 2022 Annual International Meeting of Psychometric Society, Bologna, Italy., 2022-07-13.

Bhaktha, Nivedita. 2021. "Data Visualization for Exploratory Factor Analysis.." Biennial Conference of the German Psychological Society - Personality Psychology and Psychological Diagnostics (DPPD) Section., 2021-09-14.

Bhaktha, Nivedita, and Clemens Lechner. 2021. "Some Suggestions for Scoring Socio- emotional Skills.." International Meeting of the Psychometric Society., 2021-07-20.

Bhaktha, Nivedita. 2020. "Modeling Zero-Inflated Count Data. Presented at the Conference on Statistical Practice, Sacramento, California, USA." Conference on Statistical Practice.

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Contribution not at conference

Groskurth, Katharina, Nivedita Bhaktha, Matthias Bluemke, Clemens Lechner, and Thorsten Meiser. 2021. "Moving away from fixed cutoffs: What we gain from ROC analysis." Meeting of the working group on structural equation modeling, Online, 2021-03-18.