Over the last four decades, meta-analysis has proven to be a vital analysis strategy in educational research for synthesizing research findings from different studies. When synthesizing studies in a meta-analysis, it is common to assume that the true underlying effect varies from study to study, as studies will differ in design, participants,…

In education, sample characteristics can be complex due to the nested structure of students, teachers, classrooms, schools, and districts. In the past, not many considerations were given to such complex sampling schemes in statistical power analysis. More recently in the past two decades, however, education scholars have developed tools to conduct…

High dimensional multivariate data, where the number of variables approaches or exceeds the sample size, is an increasingly common occurrence for social scientists. Several tools exist for dealing with such data in the context of univariate regression, including regularization methods such as Lasso, Elastic net, Ridge Regression, as well as the…

Multilevel modeling has grown in use over the years as a way to deal with the nonindependent nature of observations found in clustered data. However, other alternatives to multilevel modeling are available that can account for observations nested within clusters, including the use of Taylor series linearization for variance estimation, the design…

Evaluators of education interventions are increasingly designing studies to detect impacts much smaller than the 0.20 standard deviations that Cohen (1988) characterized as "small." While the need to detect smaller impacts is based on compelling arguments that such impacts are substantively meaningful, the drive to detect smaller impacts…

A common question asked by researchers using regression models is, What sample size is needed for my study? While there are formulae to estimate sample sizes, their assumptions are often not met in the collected data. A more realistic approach to sample size determination requires more information such as the model of interest, strength of the…

The authors compared the effects of using the true Multilevel Latent Growth Curve Model (MLGCM) with single-level regular and design-based Latent Growth Curve Models (LGCM) with or without the higher-level predictor on various criterion variables for multilevel longitudinal data. They found that random effect estimates were biased when the…

Bayesian techniques have become increasingly present in the social sciences, fueled by advances in computer speed and the development of user-friendly software. In this paper, we forward the use of Bayesian Asymmetric Regression (BAR) to monitor intervention responsiveness when using Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) to assess oral reading…

Educational researchers commonly use the rule of thumb of "design effect smaller than 2" as the justification of not accounting for the multilevel or clustered structure in their data. The rule, however, has not yet been systematically studied in previous research. In the present study, we generated data from three different models…

Regression discontinuity design is an alternative to randomized experiments to make causal inference when random assignment is not possible. This article first presents the formal identification and estimation of regression discontinuity treatment effects in the framework of Rubin's causal model, followed by a thorough literature review of…

A key issue in quasi-experimental studies and also with many evaluations which required a treatment effects (i.e. a control or experimental group) design is selection bias (Shadish el at 2002). Selection bias refers to the selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis such that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby ensuring that…

The present study compared the performance of five missing data treatment methods within a Cross-Classified Random Effects Model environment under various levels and patterns of missing data given a specified sample size. Prior research has shown the varying effect of missing data treatment options within the context of numerous statistical…

The paper obtains consistent standard errors (SE) and biases of order O(1/n) for the sample standardized regression coefficients with both random and given predictors. Analytical results indicate that the formulas for SEs given in popular text books are consistent only when the population value of the regression coefficient is zero. The sample…

The Type I error rates and the power of IRT likelihood ratio test and cumulative logit ordinal logistic regression procedures in detecting differential item functioning (DIF) for polytomously scored items were investigated in this Monte Carlo simulation study. For this purpose, 54 simulation conditions (combinations of 3 sample sizes, 2 sample…

To date, there have been no studies comparing parametric and nonparametric Item Characteristic Curve (ICC) estimation methods on the effectiveness of Person-Fit Statistics (PFS). The primary aim of this study was to determine if the use of ICCs estimated by nonparametric methods would increase the accuracy of item response theory-based PFS for…