Enhancing Psychometric Analysis with Interactive SIA Modules

ShinyItemAnalysis (SIA) is an R package and shiny application for an interactive presentation of psychometric methods and analysis of multi-item measurements in psychology, education, and social sciences in general. In this article, we present a new feature introduced in the recent version of the package, called "SIA modules", which allows researchers and practitioners to offer new analytical methods for broader use via add-on extensions. SIA modules are designed to integrate with and build upon the SIA interactive application, enabling them to leverage the existing infrastructure for tasks such as data uploading and processing. They can access and further use a range of outputs from various analyses, including models and datasets. Because SIA modules come in R packages (or extend the existing ones), they may come bundled with their datasets, use object-oriented systems, or even compiled code. We illustrate the concepts using sample modules from the newly introduced SIAmodules package and other packages. After providing a general overview of building Shiny applications, we describe how to develop the SIA add-on modules with the support of the new SIAtools package. Finally, we discuss possibilities of future development and emphasize the importance of freely available, interactive psychometric software for dissemination of methodological innovations.