Conventional estimators for indirect effects using a difference in coefficients and product of coefficients produce the same results for continuous outcomes. However, for binary outcomes, the difference in coefficient estimator systematically underestimates the indirect effects because of a scaling problem. One solution is to standardize…

Structural equation models comprise a large class of popular statistical models, including factor analysis models, certain mixed models, and extensions thereof. Model estimation is complicated by the fact that we typically have multiple interdependent response variables and multiple latent variables (which may also be called random effects or…

Background: We have previously presented two educational interventions aimed to diminish causal illusions and promote critical thinking. In both cases, these interventions reduced causal illusions developed in response to active contingency learning tasks, in which participants were able to decide whether to introduce the potential cause in each…

Given the necessity to bridge the gap between what happened and what is likely to happen, this paper aims to explore how to apply Bayesian inference to cost-effectiveness analysis so as to capture the uncertainty of a ratio-type efficiency measure. The first part of the paper summarizes the characteristics of the evaluation data that are commonly…

How can humans acquire relational representations that enable analogical inference and other forms of high-level reasoning? Using comparative relations as a model domain, we explore the possibility that bottom-up learning mechanisms applied to objects coded as feature vectors can yield representations of relations sufficient to solve analogy…

Proposed a new nonlinear structural equation model with fixed covariates to deal with some complicated substantive theory and developed a Bayesian path sampling procedure for model comparison. Illustrated the approach with an illustrative example using data from an international study. (SLD)

A linear classification rule (used with equal covariance matrices) was contrasted with a quadratic rule (used with unequal covariance matrices) for accuracy of internal and external classification. The comparisons were made for seven situations which resulted from combining three data conditions (equal and unequal covariance matrices, minimal and…

Large-scale educational assessments such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) sample examinees to whom an exam will be administered. In most situations the sampling design is not a simple random sample and must be accounted for in the estimating model. After reviewing the current operational estimation procedure for NAEP, this…

Unlike the past models guiding cross-cultural psychological research, a new paradigm facilitates multiple level investigations by incorporating both culture-specific (nested) and culture-general (crossed) independent variables within its partially-hierarchical framework. Based upon the generalizability analysis, this model generates sequential…