Margarita Olivera-Aguilar is a research scientist at ETS. She holds a Ph.D. in quantitative psychology from Arizona State University. During her doctoral studies, she focused on the consequences of measurement noninvariance on longitudinal models and mediation models. Prior to joining ETS, she worked as an associate professor in the Psychology department in the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City.
Olivera-Aguilar’s current research focuses on various issues related to educational equity. Specifically, she is working on projects to develop culturally responsive assessments, identify equity indicators for opportunities to learn civics and social and emotional learning, and understand the factors that African American and Hispanic students consider when making career and educational decisions. She has experience constructing new assessments, conducting validity studies for various cognitive and soft-skill assessments, and adapted assessments to other cultures and languages. Her technical expertise includes measurement invariance, factor analysis, finite mixture models, latent growth models, multilevel modeling, and structural equation modeling.