The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the enabling role that agent based simulation plays in business and policy. The aforementioned issue has been addressed in this dissertation through three distinct, but related essays. The first essay is a literature review of different research applications of agent based simulation in various…

This paper extends single-level missing data methods to efficient estimation of a "Q"-level nested hierarchical general linear model given ignorable missing data with a general missing pattern at any of the "Q" levels. The key idea is to reexpress a desired hierarchical model as the joint distribution of all variables including…

Since heterogeneity between reliability coefficients is usually found in reliability generalization studies, moderator analyses constitute a crucial step for that meta-analytic approach. In this study, different procedures for conducting mixed-effects meta-regression analyses were compared. Specifically, four transformation methods for the…

Since the founding of the Nation, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have been a source of inspirational discoveries and transformative technological advances, helping the United States develop the world's most competitive economy and preserving peace through strength. The pace of innovation is accelerating globally, and with…

Problem Statement: Learning-teaching activities bring along the need to determine whether they achieve their goals. Thus, multiple choice tests addressing the same set of questions to all are frequently used. However, this traditional assessment and evaluation form contrasts with modern education, where individual learning characteristics are…

Studying the rate of return for rural residents in minority areas can give a good explanation for the problems of children enrolling in school and dropping out. On the whole, the education rate of return for rural residents in northwest minority areas is low, the Mincer function estimate is 2%, and the Heckman model estimate is 2.49%. The rate of…

The current study applied the person-fit statistic, l[subscript z], to data from a Canadian provincial achievement test to explore the usefulness of conducting person-fit analysis on large-scale assessments. Item parameter estimates were compared before and after the misfitting student responses, as identified by l[subscript z], were removed. The…

The purpose of this study was to compare subgroups of students with various forms of learning difficulties (< 25th percentile) on cognitive and mathematics characteristics. Students with mathematics difficulty (MD, n = 105), reading difficulty (RD, n = 65), both (MDRD, n = 87), or neither (NoLD, n = 403) were evaluated on an array of cognitive…

Understanding an arithmetic operation implies, at minimum, knowing the direction of effects that the operation produces. However, many children and adults, even those who execute arithmetic procedures correctly, may lack this knowledge on some operations and types of numbers. To test this hypothesis, we presented preservice teachers (Study 1),…

The demand for distance education has been increasing at a rapid pace all around the world. This, in turn, places a special importance on the need for the development of more distance education systems. However, there is an alarming rise in the number of distance education students that drop out of the system without asking for any help. The…

(Purpose) The purpose of this paper is to present an easy-to-understand primer on three important concepts of factor analysis: Factor scores, structure coefficients, and communality coefficients. Given that statistical analyses are a part of a global general linear model (GLM), and utilize weights as an integral part of analyses (Thompson, 2006;…

The Burr families (Type III and Type XII) of distributions are traditionally used in the context of statistical modeling and for simulating non-normal distributions with moment-based parameters (e.g., Skew and Kurtosis). In educational and psychological studies, the Burr families of distributions can be used to simulate extremely asymmetrical and…

The Isoperimetric Quotient, or IQ, introduced by G. Polya, characterizes the degree of sphericity of a convex solid. This paper obtains closed form expressions for the surface area and volume of any Archimedean polyhedron in terms of the integers specifying the type and number of regular polygons occurring around each vertex. Similar results are…

Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is a widely used method for estimating body composition, yet issues concerning its validity persist in the literature. The purpose of this study was to validate percentage of body fat (BF) values estimated from BIA and skinfold (SF) with those obtained from hydrodensitometry (HD). Percent BF values measured…

In this article we explore the consequences of modifying the common definition of a parabola by considering the locus of all points equidistant from a focus and (not necessarily linear) directrix. The resulting derived curves, which we call "generalized parabolas," are often quite beautiful and possess many interesting properties. We show that…