In qualitative comparative analysis, as with all methods, there is a question about how many cases are needed to make an analysis robust. In deciding on the number of cases, a key consideration is the number of conditions to be analyzed. I suggest that adding cases is preferable to dropping conditions if there are too many conditions relative to…

Fetters et al.'s (2013) mixed methods integration framework uses construction metaphors: building, connecting, merging, and embedding. In a similar vein, this article uses an architectural metaphor and introduces design patterns as building blocks for mixed methods research design. A design pattern embeds one specific design decision into its…

Accurate item parameters and standard errors (SEs) are crucial for many multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) applications. A recent study proposed the Gaussian Variational Expectation Maximization (GVEM) algorithm to improve computational efficiency and estimation accuracy (Cho et al., 2021). However, the SE estimation procedure has yet to…

The randomized response technique (RRT) is an effective method designed to obtain the stigmatized information from respondents while assuring the privacy. In this study, we propose a new two-stage RRT model to estimate the prevalence of sensitive attribute ([pi]). A simulation study shows that the empirical mean and variance of proposed estimator…

Conventional estimators for indirect effects using a difference in coefficients and product of coefficients produce the same results for continuous outcomes. However, for binary outcomes, the difference in coefficient estimator systematically underestimates the indirect effects because of a scaling problem. One solution is to standardize…

Employing nested sequences of models is a common practice when exploring the extent to which one set of variables mediates the impact of another set. Such an analysis in the context of logistic regression models confronts two challenges: (1) direct comparisons of coefficients across models are generally biased due to the changes in scale that…

Background: We have previously presented two educational interventions aimed to diminish causal illusions and promote critical thinking. In both cases, these interventions reduced causal illusions developed in response to active contingency learning tasks, in which participants were able to decide whether to introduce the potential cause in each…

This paper demonstrated how to apply Machine Learning (ML) techniques to analyze student interaction data collected in an online mathematics game. Using a data-driven approach, we examined 1) how different ML algorithms influenced the precision of middle-school students' (N = 359) performance (i.e. posttest math knowledge scores) prediction and 2)…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to determine whether the results obtained from a 25-utterance conversational language sample were as reliable as those obtained from a 50-utterance sample. Method: Robust conversational language samples from 220 children with typically developing language (106 boys, 114 girls) ranging in age from 3;2 to 7;10…

Mixed methods longitudinal studies continue to be rare, yet have potential for transcending the limits of qualitative and quantitative paradigms. This article compares the life stories of 47 young people generated from a cohort study of 6000 children born in 1995. The cases were sampled through an association between two variables--drug use and…

Recruiting participants through gatekeepers has been widely discussed in qualitative research. However, when a sampling frame is not available, surveying through gatekeepers can also be important for quantitative studies. We used three sampling methods to survey guardians of University students: (a) a gatekeeper variant of the time-space sampling,…

This paper demonstrated how to apply Machine Learning (ML) techniques to analyze student interaction data collected in an online mathematics game. Using a data-driven approach, we examined: (1) how different ML algorithms influenced the precision of middle-school students' (N = 359) performance (i.e. posttest math knowledge scores) prediction; and…

Measurements of infants' quotidian experiences provide critical information about early development. However, the role of sampling methods in providing these measurements is rarely examined. Here we directly compare language input from hour-long video-recordings and daylong audio-recordings within the same group of 44 infants at 6 and 7 months. We…

The most widely used formal approach to culture, the cultural consensus theory (CCT) of Romney, Weller, and Batchelder, originally relied on a priori definitions of cultural groups to map their unity and diversity. Retaining key features of classical CCT, we provide techniques to identify two or more cultural subgroups in a sample, whether those…

The National Study of Protest Events (NSPE) employed hypernetwork sampling to generate the first-ever nationally representative sample of protest events. Nearly complete information about various event characteristics was collected from participants in 1,037 unique protests across the United States in 2010 to 2011. The first part of this article…