There is increasing interest in using factor scores in structural equation models and there have been numerous methodological papers on the topic. Nevertheless, sum scores, which are computed from adding up item responses, continue to be ubiquitous in practice. It is therefore important to compare simulation results involving factor scores to…

What is this report about? This report presents the largest empirical evaluation of test equating methods ever conducted. Equating is the process of identifying scores on different test forms that can be treated as equivalent. Whilst various equating methods are available, there remains no consensus on which are most effective under which…

This study incorporates a random forest (RF) approach to probe complex interactions and nonlinearity among predictors into an item response model with the goal of using a hybrid approach to outperform either an RF or explanatory item response model (EIRM) only in explaining item responses. In the specified model, called EIRM-RF, predicted values…