Psychometric Measurement Externship

Education is ever-evolving. And so are we.

We seek passionate people from diverse backgrounds who are committed to helping improve the work of schools as a trusted partner in advancing learning. By joining the Cognia team, you will be immersed in a community of energetic and resourceful people dedicated to a common vision to impact and inspire education providers to advance and enable pathways of success for all learners. At Cognia we have developed a holistic approach to education that empowers schools to create real outcomes and optimize learning for students of all backgrounds, servicing more than 36,000 institutions, 5 million teachers, and 25 million students in 85 countries. When you join Cognia, you join a team of experts passionate about our mission and embracing our core values in everything we do.

Cognia is granting up to two (2) externships (i.e., remote internships) for students working toward PhDs in appropriate graduate study programs. The primary focus of the program centers around an appropriate research project that each student chooses in consultation with Cognia psychometricians and researchers.

The externships are targeted for students whose interests focus on psychometric or measurement issues such as equating, item calibration, statistical models, response time, dimensionality issues, and scaling. For example, recent years have included projects on evaluating raters of open-response items, aberrant response analyses, diagnosing student misconceptions on open-response items, modeling/research related to technology enhanced items or response time behavior, detecting unusual item response behavior in alternate assessments, detection of item parameter drift, and accuracy of routing in multistage tests.

An additional important component of the externship program is to help students gain in-depth knowledge and understanding of the daily activities of Cognia psychometricians via a series of seminars that give a systematic deep dive into our psychometric practices.

The 14-week externship program will encompass:

• A program designed around accomplishing a research project or application, eligible for submission for presentation at a national conference.
• Regular Zoom meetings with mentors around goal setting, monitoring progress, and ensuring project completion.
• A series of seminars from both Cognia psychometricians and other related groups will provide an in-depth knowledge of how psychometrics is applied in a variety of ways in the educational testing industry. A significant proportion of these seminars will occur during a one-week in-person visit to Cognia offices in Portsmouth, NH.
• Externs would work on projects about 20 hours per week (some weeks more, some less).
• Externs will be provided with access to all needed psychometric resources by use of FTP sites or by use of a Cognia laptop.

The 2026 Cognia Externship is a primarily remote program, apart from the 'Extern Festival Week' during which externs will travel to Cognia's offices in New Hampshire for a few days to engage in seminars, presentations, and in-person networking with each other and Cognia personnel.

• Application deadline: Monday, November 17^th, 2025
• Interview window: December 1 - 12, 2025
• Selected applicants will be invited for an interview via Zoom with members of the externship committee
• Decision date: On or before December 19^th, 2025
• Externship start date: Monday, January 26^th, 2026.
• The duration is 14 weeks with an end date of May 1^st, 2026
• Extern Festival Week: One week duration in March 2026 when externs travel to Cognia offices for in-person networking and seminars. Exact dates will be determined based on participants' availability.

The full compensation package includes the following:

• A stipend in the amount of $7000
• Costs associated with the Extern Festival Week. This will include flights/transportation to and from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as well as hotel accommodation and all meals during the week.
• Costs associated with equipment. Cognia will set up and ship a computer and any associated hardware to you and arrange for shipment back to Cognia at the conclusion of the externship.

Candidates enrolled in a psychometric, educational measurement, or other related doctoral program at a fully accredited university/college in the United States are encouraged to apply.

Eligibility Requirements:

• Current enrollment in a relevant doctoral program.
• Completion of at least 2 years of coursework toward the doctorate prior to the internship program start date.
• Currently residing in the United States.

Applications to the Externship program should include (1) a resume or CV and (2) a one-page research interest statement.

The research interest statement should include a description of your research interests, which could include topics you have some experience with but could also describe research interests you have not yet had the opportunity to pursue. Descriptions of some projects of interest to Cognia are also listed below for reference. You are encouraged to describe any of your own research interests as we are open to a variety of projects.

Incomplete applications will not be considered.

For the 2026 Cognia Externship program, our psychometrics team has special interests in research related to the following areas:

• Application and research around generative AI. Projects in this area might include, but are not limited to:
  1. Using AI to generate responses to new test items.
  2. Evaluation of alignment between item content and performance standards.
  3. Item alignment with performance level descriptors to inform evaluation of the performance level descriptors.
• Aberrant Response Analyses: Using innovative methods to analyze large-scale response data to detect and flag unusual responses or response patterns at the individual and/or group level.
• Technology Enhanced Items (TEI): Projects in this area might include investigation of misfitting TEI items and modelling of these items.
• Calibrating and Equating topics:
  1. Calibrating items using smaller sample sizes. For example, calibrating items using the 2 PL model based on a sample size of around 300.
  2. Research on the use of non-representative samples for calibration/equating and how this might affect ability estimates.
• Develop statistic(s) to analyze model-data fit from a DIF perspective
• Multi-level IRT models to study measurement invariance across different populations.
• Psychometric evaluation of multistage tests.
• Analyses and evaluation of multidimensionality, especially as it relates to smaller sample sizes.

If one or more of the projects above align with your interests, indicate in your research interest statement which project(s) and provide some additional details about why you are interested in the project(s) or how you feel you can contribute.

Note: Applicants are NOT required to select any of the above projects. If none interest you, please use your research interest statement to describe any other research interests you might have.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, citizenship, protected veteran status, genetic information or any other characteristics protected by local, state, or federal laws, rules, or regulations. Cognia is an Equal Opportunity Employer.