Post-instrument covariates are often included as controls in instrumental variable (IV) analyses to address a violation of the exclusion restriction. However, we show that such analyses are subject to biases unless strong assumptions hold. Using linear constant-effects models, we present asymptotic bias formulas for three estimators (with and…

Obtaining reliable and timely estimates of migration flows is critical for advancing the migration theory and guiding policy decisions, but it remains a challenge. Digital data provide granular information on time and space, but do not draw from representative samples of the population, leading to biased estimates. We propose a method for…

In random-effects meta-analysis the between-study variance ([tau][superscript 2]) has a key role in assessing heterogeneity of study-level estimates and combining them to estimate an overall effect. For odds ratios the most common methods suffer from bias in estimating [tau][superscript 2] and the overall effect and produce confidence intervals…

When estimating causal effects, unmeasured confounding and model misspecification are both potential sources of bias. We propose a method to simultaneously address both issues in the form of a semi-parametric sensitivity analysis. In particular, our approach incorporates Bayesian Additive Regression Trees into a two-parameter sensitivity analysis…

Randomized experiments are commonly used to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions. The goal of the present investigation is to develop small-sample corrections for multiple contrast hypothesis tests (i.e., F-tests) such as the omnibus test of meta-regression fit or a test for equality of three or more levels of a categorical…

The purpose of this study was to explore the degree of grain size of the attributes and the sample sizes that can support accurate parameter recovery with the General Diagnostic Model (GDM) for a large-scale international assessment. In this resampling study, bootstrap samples were obtained from the 2003 Grade 8 TIMSS in Mathematics at varying…

This article advocates biased spinners as an engaging context for statistics students. Calculating the probability of a biased spinner landing on a particular side makes valuable connections between probability and other areas of mathematics. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

Propensity score analysis (PSA) is a methodological technique which may correct for selection bias in a quasi-experiment by modeling the selection process using observed covariates. Because logistic regression is well understood by researchers in a variety of fields and easy to implement in a number of popular software packages, it has…

Latent interaction models and mixture models have received considerable attention in social science research recently, but little is known about how to handle if unobserved population heterogeneity exists in the endogenous latent variables of the nonlinear structural equation models. The current study estimates a mixture of latent interaction…

Previous studies have suggested that dorsal hippocampal areas CA3 and CA1 are both involved in representing sequences of events that compose unique episodes. However, it is uncertain whether the contribution of CA3 is restricted to spatial information, and it is unclear whether CA1 encodes order per se or contributes by an active maintenance of…

Estimates of the mean and standard deviation of the tetrachoric correlation are compared with their expected values in several two by two tables. Significant bias in the mean is found when the minimum cell frequency is less than five. Three formulas for the standard deviation are discussed. (Author/JKS)

The feature that makes item response theory (IRT) models the models of choice for many psychometric data analysts is parameter invariance, the equality of item and examinee parameters from different populations. Using the well-known fact that item and examinee parameters are identical only up to a set of linear transformations specific to the…

Psychophysicists neglect to consider how error should be characterized in applications of the power law. Failures of the power law to agree with certain theoretical predictions are examined. A power law with lognormal product structure is proposed and approximately unbiased parameter estimates given for several common estimation situations.…

A method is presented for approximating the amount of bias in estimators with complex sampling distributions that are influenced by a variety of properties. The model is illustrated in the contexts of the bootstrap method and redundancy analysis. (SLD)

Graphing and statistics software permitting users to fit polynomial curves to scatter plots of data may display the equation generating the curve with numerical coefficients that have been rounded off to a few decimal places. The round-off error can produce anomalous findings due to systematic and extreme distortions of the fitted curve.…