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The paper proposes a new latent variable model for the simultaneous (two-way) detection of outlying individuals and items for item-response-type data. The proposed model is a synergy between a factor model for binary responses and continuous response times that captures normal item response behaviour and a latent class model that captures the outlying individuals and items. A statistical decision framework is developed under the proposed model that provides compound decision rules for controlling local false discovery/nondiscovery rates of outlier detection. Statistical inference is carried out under a Bayesian framework, for which a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is developed. The proposed method is applied to the detection of cheating in educational tests due to item leakage using a case study of a computer-based nonadaptive licensure assessment. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by simulation studies.

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-aja-10.1177_15333175211070912 for Reassessing Diabetes and APOE Genotype as Potential Interacting Risk Factors for Alzheimer���s Disease by Kaushik Ravipati, Yunxiao Chen and Joseph R. Manns in American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease & Other Dementias��

International large-scale assessments (ILSAs) play an important role in educational research and policy making. They collect valuable data on education quality and performance development across many education systems, giving countries the opportunity to share techniques, organisational structures and policies that have proven efficient and successful. To gain insights from ILSA data, we identify non-cognitive variables associated with students' academic performance. This problem has three analytical challenges: 1) students' academic performance is measured by cognitive items under a matrix sampling design; 2) there are often many missing values in the non-cognitive variables; and 3) multiple comparisons due to a large number of non-cognitive variables. We consider an application to data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), aiming to identify non-cognitive variables associated with students' performance in science. We formulate it as a variable selection problem under a latent variable model and further propose a knockoff method that conducts variable selection with a controlled error rate for false selections. Keywords: Model-X knockoffs, item response theory, missing data, variable selection, international large-scale assessment

Establishing the invariance property of an instrument (e.g., a questionnaire or test) is a key step for establishing its measurement validity. Measurement invariance is typically assessed by differential item functioning (DIF) analysis, i.e., detecting DIF items whose response distribution depends not only on the latent trait measured by the instrument but also the group membership. DIF analysis is confounded by the group difference in the latent trait distributions. Many DIF analyses require to know several anchor items that are DIF-free and then draw inference on whether each of the rest is a DIF item, where the anchor items are used to calibrate the latent trait distributions. In this paper, we propose a new method for DIF analysis under a multiple indicators and multiple causes (MIMIC) model for DIF. This method adopts a minimal L1 norm condition for identifying the latent trait distributions. It can not only accurately estimate the DIF effects of individual items without requiring prior knowledge about an anchor set, but also draw valid statistical inference, which yields accurate detection of DIF items. The inference results further allow us to control the type-I error for DIF detection. We conduct simulation studies to evaluate the performance of the proposed method and compare it with the anchor-set-based likelihood ratio test approach and the LASSO approach. The proposed method is further applied to analyzing the three personality scales of Eysenck personality questionnaire - revised (EPQ-R).

Multidimensional unfolding methods are widely used for visualizing item response data. Such methods project respondents and items simultaneously onto a low-dimensional Euclidian space, in which respondents and items are represented by ideal points, with person-person, item-item, and person-item similarities being captured by the Euclidian distances between the points. In this paper, we study the visualization of multidimensional unfolding from a statistical perspective. We cast multidimensional unfolding into an estimation problem, where the respondent and item ideal points are treated as parameters to be estimated. An estimator is then proposed for the simultaneous estimation of these parameters. Asymptotic theory is provided for the recovery of the ideal points, shedding lights on the validity of model-based visualization. An alternating projected gradient descent algorithm is proposed for the parameter estimation. We provide two illustrative examples, one on users' movie rating and the other on senate roll call voting.