The authors discuss empirically determined competence areas to K-12 computer science education, emphasizing the cognitive level of competence. The results of a questionnaire with 120 professors of computer science serve as a database. By using multi-dimensional scaling and cluster analysis, four competence areas to computer science education…

A general program for item-response analysis is described that uses the stabilized Newton-Raphson algorithm. This program is written to be compliant with Fortran 2003 standards and is sufficiently general to handle independent variables, multidimensional ability parameters, and matrix sampling. The ability variables may be either polytomous or…

The study of confusion data is a well established practice in psychology. Although many types of analytical approaches for confusion data are available, among the most common methods are the extraction of 1 or more subsets of stimuli, the partitioning of the complete stimulus set into distinct groups, and the ordering of the stimulus set. Although…

Provided is a description of three methods for testing certain types of a priori hypotheses about differences among covariance matrices. Briefly outlined are procedures for using two computer programs, COFAMM and LISREL, for testing such hypotheses. Also provided are examples of application of the methods to a meaningful data set. (Author/BW)

Standardization procedures in discriminant analysis are discussed. Three leading software packages--SPSSX, BMDP, and SAS--are compared in terms of their calculations of unstandardized and standardized discriminant coefficients. Estimation procedures are described for each. Arguments are presented for within-group, rather than total, variance…

The test proposed by Brien, Venables, and Mayo (1984), endorsed by Silver and Dunlap, and supported by computer software that they developed is not a proper test for multivariate independence. A revised appraisal is suggested for the Silver and Dunlap results. (SLD)

Since computer programs have been available for estimating and testing linear causal models, these models have been used increasingly in the behavioral sciences. This paper discusses the problem that very different causal structures may fit the same set of data equally well. (Author/LMO)

The Second International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM2009) was held at the University of Cordoba, Spain, on July 1-3, 2009. EDM brings together researchers from computer science, education, psychology, psychometrics, and statistics to analyze large data sets to answer educational research questions. The increase in instrumented…