This note is concerned with the benefits that can result from the use of the maximal reliability and optimal linear combination concepts in educational and psychological research. Within the widely used framework of unidimensional multi-component measuring instruments, it is demonstrated that the linear combination of their components that…

In educational research, nonessential factors are commonly ignored and when accounted for, they are often treated statistically as fixed effects. Yet many researchers in these situations generalize their findings beyond the specific levels selected; however, the analyses may require treating the factor as a random effect. Such inappropriate…

By means of more than a dozen user friendly packages, structural equation models (SEMs) are widely used in behavioral, education, social, and psychological research. As the underlying theory and methods in these packages are vulnerable to outliers and distributions with longer-than-normal tails, a fundamental problem in the field is the…

The present paper suggests that multivariate methods ought to be used more frequently in behavioral research and explores the potential consequences of failing to use multivariate methods when these methods are appropriate. The paper explores in detail two reasons why multivariate methods are usually vital. The first is that they limit the…

Thirty-four papers on educational statistics which were presented at the 1971 AERA Conference are summarized. Six major interest areas are covered: (a) general information; (b) non-parametric methods; (c) errors of measurement and correlation techniques; (d) regression theory; (e) univariate and multivariate analysis; (f) factor analysis. (MS)