Advice on case selection in small-"N" research emphasizes controlling for confounding variables to facilitate inferential tests of a cross-case pattern. Yet many researchers embrace the "mechanismic worldview" and aim to construct explanations. Explanations differ from inferences because one explains an outcome at the…

It is nearly impossible today to discuss education without considering testing and evaluation. In the opening article of this volume, professors Baird, Andrich, Hopfenbeck, and Stobart (2017) lay out the challenge of putting learning and teaching first, tracing the development of the science of educational assessment and raising the question…

In this commentary, University of North Carolina's associate dean of research and assessment at the School of Education Terry Ackerman poses questions and shares his thoughts on David Thissen's essay, "Bad Questions: An Essay Involving Item Response Theory" (this issue). Ackerman begins by considering the two purposes of Item Response…

The notion that there is often no clear distinction between factorial and typological models (von Davier, Naemi, & Roberts, this issue) is sound. As von Davier et al. state, theory often indicates a preference between these models; however the statistical criteria by which these are delineated offer much less clarity. In many ways the procedure…

David Thorne's (2010) article, "The Identities Hidden In The Matching Laws, And Their Uses" performs a valuable service in pointing out alternative expressions of matching. However, some identities tend to obscure rather than illuminate empirical relationships. Three such problematic instances are discussed: interresponse time as a function of…

On the basis of earlier findings, we (Fiedler & Kareev, 2006) presented a statistical decision model that explains the conditions under which small samples of information about choice alternatives inform more correct choices than large samples. Such a small-sample advantage (SSA) is predicted for choices, not estimations. It is contingent on high…

It is well documented that studies reporting statistically significant results are more likely to be published than are studies reporting nonsignificant results--a phenomenon called "publication bias". Publication bias in meta-analytic reviews should be identified and reduced when possible. Ferguson and Brannick (2012) argued that the inclusion of…

Elwin, Juslin, Olsson, and Enkvist (2007) and Henriksson, Elwin, and Juslin (2010) offered the constructivist coding hypothesis to describe how people code the outcomes of their decisions when availability of feedback is conditional on the decision. They provided empirical evidence only for the 0.5 base rate condition. This commentary argues that…

How can we reduce ethnic friendship segregation in ethnically heterogeneous schools? The Common Ingroup Identity Model suggests that interethnic friendships are promoted by those intervention programs that focus on the interests students have in common. The authors argue that the outcome of these common interest interventions may crucially depend…

Maris and Bechger's article is an exercise in technical virtuosity and provides much to be learned by students of psychometrics. In this commentary, the author begins with making two observations. The first is that the title, "On Interpreting the Model Parameters for the Three Parameter Logistic Model," belies the generality of parts of Maris and…

Fiedler and Kareev (2006) showed that small samples can, in principle, outperform large samples in terms of the quality of contingency-based binary choice. The 1st part of this comment critically examines these authors' claim that this small sample advantage (SSA) contradicts Bernoulli's law of large numbers and concludes that this claim is…

The author begins his essay by stating that Richard Shusterman advises us that the 20th century scholarly community has not just ignored the value that can come to one's life as a function of paying close attention to the body and its immediate sensual qualities, it has trained us to eschew its character-enhancing sensual natures in favor of more…

In the May 2010 issue of "Psychological Bulletin," R. E. McGrath, M. Mitchell, B. H. Kim, and L. Hough published an article entitled "Evidence for Response Bias as a Source of Error Variance in Applied Assessment" (pp. 450-470). They argued that response bias indicators used in a variety of settings typically have insufficient data to support such…

On the third floor of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), in Washington, D.C., inside a glass case, lie thousands of shoes. Old and mismatched, moldering after sixty years, they are what remains of countless Jews who were told to disrobe and who were subsequently murdered at Majdanek, Poland, during the final years of the…

The problems of the formation of the professional and personality qualities of graduates of higher educational institutions became especially relevant during the period in which Russia was making the transition to the new economic course of action, the system of market relations. However, the roots of these problems are to be found in the…