Correlational analyses are one of the most popular quantitative methods, yet also one of the mostly frequently misused methods in social and behavioral research, especially when analyzing ordinal data from Likert or other rating scales. Although several correlational analysis options have been developed for ordinal data, there seems to be a lack…

The capacity of Bayesian methods in estimating complex statistical models is undeniable. Bayesian data analysis is seen as having a range of advantages, such as an intuitive probabilistic interpretation of the parameters of interest, the efficient incorporation of prior information to empirical data analysis, model averaging and model selection.…

The precision of the group-based item-response theory (IRT) model applied to school ability estimation is described, assuming use of Bayesian estimation with precision represented by the standard deviation of the posterior distribution. Similarities with and differences between the school-based model and the individual-level IRT are explored. (SLD)