The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on high-stakes testing, including the national benchmark tests in South Africa. Current linear testing formats have been criticized for their limitations, leading to a shift towards Computerized Adaptive Testing [CAT]. Assessments with CAT are more precise and take less time. Evaluation of CAT…

This study evaluated the psychometric quality of a computerized adaptive testing (CAT) version of the general cognitive ability test (GCAT), using a simulation study protocol put forth by Han, K. T. (2018a). For the needs of the analysis, three different sets of items were generated, providing an item pool of 165 items. Before evaluating the…

The recent popularity of models that capture the dynamic coevolution of both network structure and behavior has driven the need for summary indices to assess the adequacy of these models to reproduce dynamic properties of scientific or practical importance. Whereas there are several existing indices for assessing the ability of the model to…

Many poverty measures are estimated by using sample data collected from social surveys. Two examples are the poverty gap and the poverty severity indices. A novel method for the estimation of these poverty indicators is described. Social surveys usually contain different variables, some of which can be used to improve the estimation of poverty…

Recent research has shown that over-extraction of latent classes can be observed in the Bayesian estimation of the mixed Rasch model when the distribution of ability is non-normal. This study examined the effect of non-normal ability distributions on the number of latent classes in the mixed Rasch model when estimated with maximum likelihood…

People often accommodate to each other's speech by aligning their linguistic production with their partner's. According to an influential theory, the Interactive Alignment Model, alignment is the result of priming. When people perceive an utterance, the corresponding linguistic representations are primed and become easier to produce. Here we…

Two-phase designs in epidemiological studies of autism prevalence introduce methodological complications that can severely limit the precision of resulting estimates. If the assumptions used to derive the prevalence estimate are invalid or if the uncertainty surrounding these assumptions is not properly accounted for in the statistical inference…

For many scientists, researchers and students Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation is an important and necessary tool to perform Bayesian analyses. The simulation is often presented as a mathematical algorithm and then translated into an appropriate computer program. However, this can result in overlooking the fundamental and deeper…

Determining word meanings that ought to be taught or introduced is important for educators. A sequence for vocabulary growth can be inferred from many sources, including testing children's knowledge of word meanings at various ages, predicting from print frequency, or adult-recalled Age of Acquisition. A new approach, Word Maturity, is based on…

Tuberculosis (TB) is a potentially fatal disease spread by an airborne pathogen infecting approximately one third of the globe. For decades, contact tracing (CT) has served a key role in the control of TB and many other notifiable communicable diseases. Unfortunately, CT is a labor-intensive and time-consuming process and is often conducted by a…

One prominent approach in the exploration of the variations in project team performance has been to study two components of the aggregate personalities of the team members: conscientiousness and agreeableness. A second line of research, known as self-categorisation theory, argues that identifying as team members and the team's performance norms…

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…

This study presents a new approach to estimation of a nonlinear growth curve component with fixed and random effects in multilevel modeling. This approach can be used to estimate change in longitudinal data, such as day-of-the-week fluctuation. The motivation of the new approach is to avoid spurious estimates in a random coefficient regression…

Data from two samples of 32,862 and 6,757 males, respectively, from the Danish draft board indicate that gains in intelligence test scores are continuing and are concentrated among lower intelligence levels. Monte Carlo simulations suggested that this distributional change did not result from a ceiling effect in the test. (SLD)

This study presents an overview of Monte Carlo studies in discriminant analysis. Some common questions about the use of Monte Carlo techniques are answered through a brief literature review of articles on discriminant analysis in which Monte Carlo methods are used. The articles cover many research points, such as comparing error rate estimates,…