Background: Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is a powerful and broadly utilized statistical framework. Researchers employ these models to dissect relationships into direct, indirect, and total effects (Bollen, 1989). These models unpack the "black box" issues within cause-and-effect studies by examining the underlying theoretical…

A necessary step in applying bi-factor models is to evaluate the need for domain factors with a general factor in place. The conventional null hypothesis testing (NHT) was commonly used for such a purpose. However, the conventional NHT meets challenges when the domain loadings are weak or the sample size is insufficient. This article proposes…

Adaptive measurement of change (AMC) is a psychometric method for measuring intra-individual change on one or more latent traits across testing occasions. Three hypothesis tests--a Z test, likelihood ratio test, and score ratio index--have demonstrated desirable statistical properties in this context, including low false positive rates and high…

The most common and well-known meta-regression models work under the assumption that there is only one effect size estimate per study and that the estimates are independent. However, meta-analytic reviews of social science research often include multiple effect size estimates per primary study, leading to dependence in the estimates. Some…

Background: Researchers are often interested in testing the effectiveness of an intervention on multiple outcomes, for multiple subgroups, at multiple points in time, or across multiple treatment groups. The resulting multiplicity of statistical hypothesis tests can lead to spurious findings of effects. Multiple testing procedures (MTPs)…

BASIE is a framework for interpreting impact estimates from evaluations. It is an alternative to null hypothesis significance testing. This guide walks researchers through the key steps of applying BASIE, including selecting prior evidence, reporting impact estimates, interpreting impact estimates, and conducting sensitivity analyses. The guide…

Summary Employing a Wald confidence interval to test hypotheses about population proportions could lead to an increase in Type I or Type II errors unless the hypothesized value, p0, is used in computing its standard error rather than the sample proportion. Whereas the Wald confidence interval to estimate a population proportion uses the sample…

Violations of normality and homogeneity are common in educational data. When this occurs, the use of parametric statistics may be inappropriate. A generalized form of nonparametric analyses based on the Puri and Sen L statistic provides an alternative approach. Using a chi-square distribution, this technique is easy to apply and has significant…

In this article, we present the results of three question design experiments on inter-item correlations, which tested a grid design against a single-item design. The first and second experiments examined the inter-item correlations of a set with five and seven items, respectively, and the third experiment examined the impact of the question design…

There has been much controversy over the null hypothesis significance testing procedure, with much of the criticism centered on the problem of inverse inference. Specifically, p gives the probability of the finding (or one more extreme) given the null hypothesis, whereas the null hypothesis significance testing procedure involves drawing a…

A simulation study is presented to evaluate and compare three methods to estimate the variance of the estimates of the parameters d and "C" of the signal detection theory (SDT). Several methods have been proposed to calculate the variance of their estimators, "d'" and "c." Those methods have been mostly assessed by…

The "Motor-Free Visual Perception Test-fourth edition" (MVPT-4) is a revised version of the "Motor-Free Visual Perception Test-third edition." The MVPT-4 is used to assess the visual-perceptual ability of individuals aged 4.0 through 80+ years via a series of visual-perceptual tasks that do not require a motor response. Test…

In project-based learning (PBL) courses, which are common in design and technology education, instructors regard both the process and the final product to be important. However, conducting an accurate assessment for process feedback is not an easy task because instructors of PBL courses often have to make judgments based on a limited view of group…

Traditional parallel analysis (T-PA) estimates the number of factors by sequentially comparing sample eigenvalues with eigenvalues for randomly generated data. Revised parallel analysis (R-PA) sequentially compares the "k"th eigenvalue for sample data to the "k"th eigenvalue for generated data sets, conditioned on"k"-…

In order to initiate more research on the role of reading motivation during the initial stages of learning to comprehend texts, we developed the "Reading Motivation Questionnaire for Elementary Students" (RMQ-E). The sample comprised 1497 elementary students in Grades 1-3. By means of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, three…