Categorical data become increasingly ubiquitous in the modern big data era. In this dissertation, we propose novel statistical learning and inference methods for large-scale categorical data, focusing on latent variable models and their applications to psychometrics. In psychometric assessments, the subjects' underlying aptitude often cannot be…

Classroom quality measures, such as the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Revised (ECERS-R), are widely used in research, practice, and policy. Increasingly, these uses have been for purposes not originally intended, such as contributing to consequential policy decisions. The current study adds to the recent evidence of problems with the…

Classroom quality measures, such as the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Revised (ECERS-R), are widely used in research, practice, and policy. Increasingly, these uses have been for purposes not originally intended, such as contributing to consequential policy decisions. The current study adds to recent evidence of problems with the…

The potential of the Rasch model to develop scores, on a ratio scale, suitable for interindividual comparisons, from intact groups with disparate distribution characteristics was investigated. The specific problems studied were: (1) the effects of skewed test score distributions on the ability parameter of the Rasch measurement model; (2) the…

This report is an integral part of the publication series of the Youth in Transition study, a nationwide panel survey of adolescent boys, which attempts to discover and document how the contemporary social environments affect the development of young men during their high school years. Four waves of data were gathered from 2,213 boys comprising…

Assessing fit of psychometric models has always been an issue of enormous interest, but there exists no unanimously agreed upon item fit diagnostic for the models. Bayesian networks, frequently used in educational assessments (see, for example, Mislevy, Almond, Yan, & Steinberg, 2001) primarily for learning about students' knowledge and…