Multiple imputation is widely accepted as the method of choice to address item-nonresponse in surveys. However, research on imputation strategies for the hierarchical structures that are typically found in the data in educational contexts is still limited. While a multilevel imputation model should be preferred from a theoretical point of view if…

In educational measurement, responses of students on items are used not only to measure the ability of students, but also to evaluate and compare the performance of schools. Analysis should ideally account for the multilevel structure of the data, and school-level processes not related to ability, such as working climate and administration…

In this article, the change in examinee effort during an assessment, which we will refer to as persistence, is modeled as an effect of item position. A multilevel extension is proposed to analyze hierarchically structured data and decompose the individual differences in persistence. Data from the 2009 Program of International Student Achievement…

In this article, a proposed Bayesian extension of the generalized beta spatial regression models is applied to the analysis of the quality of education in Colombia. We briefly revise the beta distribution and describe the joint modeling approach for the mean and dispersion parameters in the spatial regression models' setting. Finally, we…

The evaluation of the formative process in the University system has been assuming an ever increasing importance in the European countries. Within this context, the analysis of student performance and capabilities plays a fundamental role. In this work, the authors propose a multivariate latent growth model for studying the performances of a…

When studying educational aspirations of adolescents, it is unrealistic to assume that the aspirations of pupils are independent of those of their friends. Considerable attention has also been given to the study of peer influence in the educational and behavioral literature. Typically, in empirical studies, the friendship networks have either been…

In the human sciences, ability tests or psychological inventories are often repeatedly conducted to measure growth. Standard item response models do not take into account possible autocorrelation in longitudinal data. In this study, the authors propose an item response model to account for autocorrelation. The proposed three-level model consists…

This paper focuses on two likelihood-based indices of person fit, the index "l[subscript z]" and the Snijders's modified index "l[subscript z]*". The first one is commonly used in practical assessment of person fit, although its asymptotic standard normal distribution is not valid when true abilities are replaced by sample ability estimates. The…

The traditional approach to measuring segregation is based upon descriptive, non-model-based indices. A recently proposed alternative is multilevel modeling. The authors further develop the argument for a multilevel modeling approach by first describing and expanding upon its notable advantages, which include an ability to model segregation at a…

In this article, the authors suggest a profile-likelihood approach for estimating complex models by maximum likelihood (ML) using standard software and minimal programming. The method works whenever setting some of the parameters of the model to known constants turns the model into a standard model. An important class of models that can be…

We extend a recent didactic by Magis, Raiche, and Beland on the use of the l[subscript z] and l[subscript z]* person-fit statistics. We discuss a number of possibly confusing details and show that it is important to first investigate item response theory model fit before assessing person fit. Furthermore, it is argued that appropriate…

An extension of the latent Markov Rasch model is described for the analysis of binary longitudinal data with covariates when subjects are collected in clusters, such as students clustered in classes. For each subject, a latent process is used to represent the characteristic of interest (e.g., ability) conditional on the effect of the cluster to…

The preference scaling of a group of subjects may not be homogeneous, but different groups of subjects with certain characteristics may show different preference scalings, each of which can be derived from paired comparisons by means of the Bradley-Terry model. Usually, either different models are fit in predefined subsets of the sample or the…

This article proposes a multilevel model for the assessment of school effectiveness where the intake achievement is a predictor and the response variable is the achievement in the subsequent periods. The achievement is a latent variable that can be estimated on the basis of an item response theory model and hence subject to measurement error.…

The article considers a test of specification for quantile regressions. The test relies on the increase of the objective function and the worsening of the fit when unnecessary constraints are imposed. It compares the objective functions of restricted and unrestricted models and, in its different formulations, it verifies (a) forecast ability, (b)…