A difference equation model of a university budget system is proposed and analyzed. The conditions for first-order and second-order dynamic equilibrium are determined, and it is shown that first-order equilibrium provides a useful criterion for financial health. (Author/JG)

Deals with decision-making in the light of monetary values, with emphasis on minimizing educational losses. (Author)

The Activity Vector Analysis is a short personality measure, widely used in industry for personnel selection, placement and assessment. This paper questions the statistical basis of the measure as it has appeared in the literature. Recommendations are made for revision of the measure and for resolution of theoretical incongruencies. (Author/JKS)

Recent advances in item analysis have provided greater capabilities for the analysis of tests, but have also significantly increased the gap between the theory and practice of item analysis. This paper traces the lines of development in item analysis under latent trait theory. (MV)

Treats the proportion of dropouts from secondary schools as leading indicators of the educational system's performance and reviews the use of certain variables for the prediction of dropout flows. The underlying relationships are studied in the form of a two-equation econometric model. (Author/IRT)

Proposes a mathematical model using the probability formalism to explain why a geometrical law is observed in distributions related to library circulation data. Highlights include techniques based on convolution theory; Lotka's law; and Bradford's law. (Author/LRW)

Demonstrates the use of a general model for latent variable growth analysis that takes into account cluster sampling. Multilevel Latent Growth Modeling was used to analyze longitudinal and multilevel data for adolescent and parent substance use measured at four annual time points for 435 families. (SLD)

H. H. Chang and W. F. Stout (1993) presented a derivation of the asymptotic posterior normality of the latent trait given examinee responses under nonrestrictive nonparametric assumptions for dichotomous item response (IRT) theory models. This paper presents an extension of their results to polytomous IRT models and defines a global information…

The concomitant-variable latent-class model is described for situations with continuous explanatory variables, and an EM estimation procedure to estimate the model is presented. The model is applied to the study of crime among ethnic groups in the Netherlands, and its utility is demonstrated. (SLD)

A heuristic example is presented in which parsimony as typically operationalized in indices of fit may not be desirable. In a simplex model of longitudinal data, the failure to include correlated uniquenesses relating to the same indicators on different occasions will typically lead to systematically inflated estimates of stability. (SLD)

Develops a theoretical model to evaluate universities' preference for teaching or research, using data from 25 British research universities for 1985-86 and 1991-92. Universities' utility functions have changed slightly; the relative weight attached to research has risen, whereas that attached to teaching has fallen. Institutional specialization…

Developed procedures for constructing a retrospective person-period data set from cross-sectional data and discusses modeling strategies for estimating multilevel discrete-time event history models. Applied the methods to the analysis of cigarette use by 1,979 urban adolescents. Results show the influence of the racial composition of the…

Studied the efficiency and robustness of alternative estimators of regression coefficients for three-level data. A simulation study shows that, as expected, the hierarchical model analyses produced more efficient point estimates than did analyses that ignored the covariance structure in the data, even when the normality assumption was violated.…

Following a brief discussion of test construction by linear programing, the results of a study by F. B. Baker and others (1988) with respect to a uniform target is replicated. It is demonstrated that the result depends on characteristics of the item pool. (SLD)

This paper makes the point that descriptive and inferential measures of nonnormality and graphic displays of the frequency distribution of important variables should be routine in research reporting. This point is particularly true for research involving measures with nonarbitrary metrics where the distribution shape is unaffected by measurement…