Molenaar extended Mokken's original probabilistic-nonparametric scaling models for use with polytomous data. These polytomous extensions of Mokken's original scaling procedure have facilitated the use of Mokken scale analysis as an approach to exploring fundamental measurement properties across a variety of domains in which polytomous ratings are…

The multilevel latent class model (MLCM) is a multilevel extension of a latent class model (LCM) that is used to analyze nested structure data structure. The nonparametric version of an MLCM assumes a discrete latent variable at a higher-level nesting structure to account for the dependency among observations nested within a higher-level unit. In…

A nonparametric tree classification procedure is used to detect differential item functioning for items that are dichotomously scored. Classification trees are shown to be an alternative procedure to detect differential item functioning other than the use of traditional Mantel-Haenszel and logistic regression analysis. A nonparametric…

Recent trends in the analysis of categorical or nominal variables were discussed for univariate, multivariate, and psychometric problems. It was shown that several statistical procedures commonly used with these problems have analogues which can be applied to assessing categorical variables. (Author/CTM)

A study of the ability of different models--including the classification techniques of discriminant analysis, logistic regression, and neural networks--to predict the academic success of master's degree students in business administration suggests that prediction is difficult, but that classification and nonparametric techniques may be…