Both testlet design and hierarchical latent traits are fairly common in educational and psychological measurements. This study aimed to develop a new class of higher order testlet response models that consider both local item dependence within testlets and a hierarchy of latent traits. Due to high dimensionality, the authors adopted the Bayesian…

Empirical Bayes (EB) methods are frequently used on hierarchical linear models in practice. This paper provides an overview of parametric EB methods with special emphasis on their application in data-analytic settings. Eight different models with different levels of complexity are described. Comparisons of performance with other methods are…

Operational procedures for the Graduate Record Examinations Validity Study Service are reviewed, with emphasis on the problem of frequent occurrence of negative coefficients in the fitted within-department regressions obtained by the empirical Bayes method of H. I. Braun and D. Jones (1985). Several alterations of the operational procedures are…

"Item models" (LaDuca, Staples, Templeton, & Holzman, 1986) are classes from which it is possible to generate/produce items that are equivalent/isomorphic to other items from the same model (e.g., Bejar, 1996; Bejar, 2002). They have the potential to produce large number of high-quality items at reduced cost. This paper introduces…

Classical statistical methods and the small enrollments in graduate departments have constrained the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) Validity Study Service to providing only validities for single predictors. Estimates of the validity of two or more predictors, used jointly, are considered too unreliable because the corresponding prediction…