Mokken scale analysis is a probabilistic nonparametric approach that offers statistical and graphical tools for evaluating the quality of social science measurement without placing potentially inappropriate restrictions on the structure of a data set. In particular, Mokken scaling provides a useful method for evaluating important measurement…

Computational techniques comparing co-occurrences of city names in texts allow the relative longitudes and latitudes of cities to be estimated algorithmically. However, these techniques have not been applied to estimate the provenance of artifacts with unknown origins. Here, we estimate the geographic origin of artifacts from the Indus Valley…

Data mining methods for classification and regression are becoming increasingly popular in various scientific fields. However, these methods have not been explored much in educational measurement. This module first provides a review, which should be accessible to a wide audience in education measurement, of some of these methods. The module then…

Unless strong assumptions are made, nonparametric identification of principal causal effects can only be partial and bounds (or sets) for the causal effects are established. In the presence of a secondary outcome, recent results exist to sharpen the bounds that exploit conditional independence assumptions. More general results, though not embedded…

The authors investigated predictor variables for the Counselor Preparation Comprehensive Examination (CPCE) to examine whether academic variables, demographic variables, and test version were associated with graduate counseling students' CPCE scores. Multiple regression analyses revealed all 3 variables were statistically significant predictors of…

Teaching probability and statistics is more than teaching the mathematics itself. Historically, the mathematics of probability and statistics was first developed through analyzing games of chance such as the rolling of dice. This article makes the case that the understanding of probability and statistics is dependent upon building a…

The impact of response styles such as extreme response style (ERS) on trait estimation has long been a matter of concern to researchers and practitioners. This simulation study investigated three methods that have been proposed for the correction of trait estimates for ERS effects: (a) mixed Rasch models, (b) multidimensional item response models,…

Although immediacy is one of the necessary criteria to show strong evidence of a causal relation in SCDs, no inferential statistical tool is currently used to demonstrate it. We propose a Bayesian unknown change-point model to investigate and quantify immediacy in SCD analysis. Unlike visual analysis that considers only 3-5 observations in…

Background: Both education policies and curriculum documents identify the personal development of students as a key objective of modern education. Physical education (PE) in particular has been cited as a subject that can promote students' life skills development and psychological well-being. However, little research has investigated the processes…

School socio-economic compositional (SEC) effects have been influential in educational research predicting a range of outcomes and influencing public policy. However, some recent studies have challenged the veracity of SEC effects when applying residualised-change and fixed effects models and simulating potential measurement errors in hierarchical…

This article presents a case-study of two distance learning courses, in order to address the question of universal adoption of mobile devices and applications by students, and the impact of these devices in personal learning environments (PLEs). First, a critical discussion of the value of these concepts in the current technological context was…

Since many decisions in politics, economics, and social sciences are based on statistics, statistical literacy is a key component for an active citizen. Statistical skills and statistical reasoning can already be enhanced in primary school. Therefore, not only in Germany, statistics is an element of the primary-school curriculum, which usually…

Case-based Learning (CBL) is perceived as an effective pedagogical approach to improving students' ability to transfer knowledge, concepts and skills learned in schools to real-life contexts This study offers a new instrument that captures students' perceptions of CBL skills and their ability to transfer the knowledge and skills that they acquire…

This completely updated edition of "The Almanac of American Education" helps users understand and compare the quality of education at the national, state, and county levels. Compiled from official U.S. government sources, this book contains historical and current data, insightful analysis, and useful graphs that provide compelling…

This brief explores the state of the full-time health professions faculty workforce by examining: overall growth in the number of full-time health professions faculty relative to all other disciplines; the percentage of full-time positions that are non-tenure-track versus tenure-track; faculty composition in the health professions compared to all…