Introduction: The 4th Methods in Health Psychology symposium at the EHPS in Innsbruck was organised by Alexandra Dima (University of Amsterdam), who together with Chris Gibbons (University of Manchester), Mieke Kleppe (Phillips Research and Eindhoven University of Technology), and Katarzyna Byrka (University of Social Sciences and Humanities of Wroclaw) organised an excellent and inspiring symposium on using Item Response Theory for developing and validating questionnaires and theory testing. The presentations were diverse: from an introduction to IRT to examples of Rasch models and Mokken scale analyses. Prof. Marie Johnston, who has extensive expertise on measurement issues, closed the session as a discussant. A summary of this symposium is presented below. To give you an impression of the relevance of the issues raised: in the well-filled Kaiser-Leopold-Saal, about 90% of the audience indicated to know little about IRT prior to the symposium; after the symposium, about 90% said they would attend an IRT workshop if one would be organised at a future EHPS conference. No doubt this article will be similarly compelling.
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