This article is concerned with the assumption of linear temporal development that is often advanced in structural equation modeling-based longitudinal research. The linearity hypothesis is implemented in particular in the popular intercept-and-slope model as well as in more general models containing it as a component, such as longitudinal…

Background/Context: Social network methodology is particularly relevant to the types of social structures found in education research. The current study develops a finite mixture approach for clustering ensembles of networks (NetMix). Following a structural equation modeling framework, NetMix simultaneously estimates a measurement model comprised…

Structured means analysis is a very useful approach for testing hypotheses about population means on latent constructs. In such models, a z test is most commonly used for testing the statistical significance of the relevant parameter estimates or of the differences between parameter estimates, where a z value is computed based on the asymptotic…

The debate about the role of attitude in the technology acceptance model (TAM) seems to have re-emerged in two prestigious journals in the field of educational technology. Among the publications on this debate, there are authors in favour of excluding the attitude of TAM, whereas others are in favour of including it. These opinions are derived…

Gifted underachievement represents a frustrating loss of potential for society. Although attempts have been made to develop interventions to reverse gifted underachievement, the theoretical underpinnings of these interventions have yet to be empirically validated. The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of the…

Classroom context and climate are inherently classroom-level (L2) constructs, but applied researchers sometimes--inappropriately--represent them by student-level (L1) responses in single-level models rather than more appropriate multilevel models. Here we focus on important conceptual issues (distinctions between climate and contextual variables;…

Researchers in career and technical education often ignore more effective ways of reporting and treating missing data and instead implement traditional, but ineffective, missing data methods (Gemici, Rojewski, & Lee, 2012). The recent methodological, and even the non-methodological, literature has increasingly emphasized the importance of…

Recent missing data studies have argued in favor of an "inclusive analytic strategy" that incorporates auxiliary variables into the estimation routine, and Graham (2003) outlined methods for incorporating auxiliary variables into structural equation analyses. In practice, the auxiliary variables often have missing values, so it is reasonable to…

Analyzing problem-behavior trajectories can be difficult. The data are generally categorical and often quite skewed, violating distributional assumptions of standard normal-theory statistical models. In this article, the authors present several currently available modeling options, all of which make appropriate distributional assumptions for the…

The management literature provides a variety of recommendations as to how workers' customer orientation might be improved, including through training. Crucial factors in the process of transferring the contents of service quality training programs to practice, however, have not yet been sufficiently analysed. This study proposes and tests a model…

This paper examines the estimation of two-stage clustered RCT designs in education research using the Neyman causal inference framework that underlies experiments. The key distinction between the considered causal models is whether potential treatment and control group outcomes are considered to be fixed for the study population (the…

Amos 5.0 (Arbuckle, 2003) permits exploratory specification searches for the best theoretical model given an initial model using the following fit function criteria: chi-square (C), chi-square--df (C--df), Akaike Information Criteria (AIC), Browne-Cudeck criterion (BCC), Bayes Information Criterion (BIC) , chi-square divided by the degrees of…

Using an approach to the analysis of missing data, this study investigated developmental trends in alcohol, marijuana, and cigarette use among 750 adolescents across 5 years using multiple-group latent growth modeling. Latent variable structural equation modeling and missing data approaches to studying developmental change are explored. (SLD)

Over the past 3 decades we have witnessed an increase in the complexity of theoretical models that attempt to explain development in a number of behavioral domains. The conceptual movement to examine behavior from both developmental and contextual perspectives parallels recent methodological advances in the analysis of change. These new analysis…

In the No Child Left Behind Act and the What Works Clearinghouse, the federal government has attempted to establish guidelines for the type of education research that U.S. schools should consider in selecting instructional programs and resources. The government's clear preference for the medical model--a powerful research design in such fields as…