What did you like best about this year's IOMW?
What changes, if any, would you have made to this year's IOMW?
What suggestions would you offer to the organizers of the next IOMW?

What did you like best about this year's IOMW?

• “I liked the specific focus on measurement problems that are tough to find at broad conference like AERA”

• “Papers, interactions, breadth of content and applications—This was a very well organized conference”

• Emphasis on “practical applications” and “on-going research”

• “I liked the balance between symposia and roundtables”

• “Roundtables worked quite well…I had interesting interactions with the presenters”

• “The opportunity to become familiar with range of applications of Rasch modeling”

• “We had a great group of folks and exciting range of topics”

• “I enjoyed the chance to interact with presenters and participants”

• “Mark and Ray’s talk…and the student and newbie participation”

• “Andrich on scale thickness…Adams on reliability”

• “Excellent opportunity to meet with experts in the field”

• “Well-organized, nice facilities”

• “Quality of presentations was excellent”

• “The logistics seemed to run smoothly”

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What changes, if any, would you have made to this year's IOMW?

• “Maybe have a keynote for each half day”

• “Add invited symposium addressing contentious issues”

• “Assigned discussants for each presentation. Last session with discussant was excellent”

• “Better mix of big names and newbies [in symposia]”

• “More time for senior colleagues to present their ideas, for example, with invited talks”

• “Fewer symposia sessions and more breakout type sessions”

• “Some papers would have worked better as posters. These would have made circulations possible”

• “The roundtables didn’t get enough circulation. Perhaps have more roundtables across multiple time slots”

• “Provide hand-outs for all the presentations”

• “Review presentation slides for clarity”

• “A ‘talker’s’ lounge and set times to ‘just chat’”

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What suggestions would you offer to the organizers of the next IOMW?

Theme

• “Attract more Rasch researchers from the health and clinical sciences”

• “Invite psychometricians who do not usually work on Rasch measurement…organize debates and other discussion across different measurement paradigm”

Format

• “Better organization to allow participants to engage more presentations”

• “More formal presentation of papers, perhaps as posters, before the roundtable discussions”

• “Perhaps have one or two other 2 hour workshops on third day”

• “Accept 2 presentations from same person only if they are markedly different or of exceptional significance”

• “Greet, receive, welcome and reinforce newbies”

• “Provide comment and feedback forms for each presentation”

• “Add a few more formats e.g. poster sessions, meet the author sessions, grad student breakfast”

• “Minimize use of roundtable sessions”

• “For roundtables, a split of time into three 15 minute sessions and 5 minute breaks to allow 3X the variation”

Logistics

• “List back-up hotels on the website”

• “Have a floor mike”

• “Improve communication with audience—too many speakers consistently spoke to the screen”

• “Pay attention to the ways the 2006 conference was planned and implemented”

Food and social events

• “Less expensive dinner”

• “Possibly a wider variety of drinks or snacks for the break to help keep you from dying off. I would be willing to pay an extra $10 for the conference if food was provided”

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