The purpose of this study is to develop a nonparametric DIF method that (a) compares focal groups directly to the composite group that will be used to develop the reported test score scale, and (b) allows practitioners to explore for DIF related to focal groups stemming from multicategorical variables that constitute a small proportion of the…

Finland and Shanghai are strong performers in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The current study explored the similarities and differences in educational effectiveness between these 2 strong performers. To this end, 14 predictors representing student background and school process characteristics were selected from the PISA…

The short-term emphasis engendered by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has focused research predominantly on unraveling the complexities and uncertainties in assessing short-term results, rather than developing methods and assessing results over the longer term. In this paper we focus on estimating long-term gains and address questions important to…

Relative weight analysis is a procedure for estimating the relative importance of correlated predictors in a regression equation. Because the sampling distribution of relative weights is unknown, researchers using relative weight analysis are unable to make judgments regarding the statistical significance of the relative weights. J. W. Johnson…

This paper reports the results of a Monte Carlo investigation of Type I errors in the single group repeated measures design where multiple measures are collected from each observational unit at each measurement occasion. The Type I error of three multivariate tests were examined. These were the doubly multivariate F test, the multivariate mixed…