One of the main objectives of international large-scale assessments is to make comparisons between different countries, education policies, education systems, or subgroups. One of the main criteria for making comparisons between different groups is to ensure measurement invariance. The purpose of this study was to test the measurement invariance…

In educational and psychological research, it is common to use latent factors to represent constructs and then to examine covariate effects on these latent factors. Using empirical data, this study applied three approaches to covariate effects on latent factors: the multiple-indicator multiple-cause (MIMIC) approach, multiple group confirmatory…

Measurement invariance is crucial for making valid comparisons across different groups (Kline, 2016; Vandenberg, 2002). To address the challenges associated with invariance testing such as large sample size requirements, the complexity of the model, etc., applied researchers have incorporated parcels. Parcels have been shown to alleviate skewness,…

Multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) models have generated increasing interest in the psychometrics literature. Efficient approaches for estimating MIRT models with dichotomous responses have been developed, but constructing an equally efficient and robust algorithm for polytomous models has received limited attention. To address this gap,…