Bayesian Psychometric Modeling

Roy Levy is an associate professor of measurement and statistical analysis in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. His primary research and teaching interests include methodological developments and applications of psychometrics and statistics to assessment, education, and the social sciences. He has received awards from the President of the United States, Division D of the American Educational Research Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education.Robert J. Mislevy is the Frederic M. Lord Chair in Measurement and Statistics at Educational Testing Service. He was previously a professor of measurement and statistics at the University of Maryland and an affiliated professor of second language acquisition and survey methodology. His research applies developments in statistics, technology, and psychology to practical problems in assessment, including the development of multiple-imputation analysis in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and has been a president of the Psychometric Society. He has received awards from the National Council on Measurement in Education and Division D of the American Educational Research Association.

• FOUNDATIONS: Overview of Assessment and Psychometric Modeling. Introduction to Bayesian Inference. Conceptual Issues in Bayesian Inference. Normal Distribution Models. Markov Chain Monte Carlo Estimation. Regression. PSYCHOMETRICS: Canonical Bayesian Psychometric Modeling. Classical Test Theory. Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Model Evaluation. Item Response Theory. Missing Data Modeling. Latent Class Analysis. Bayesian Networks. Conclusion. Appendices. References. Index.

"One true asset of this book is the impeccable organization. The topics build upon one another nicely, with the most basic of models (i.e., the true score model) presented first. The flow of the chapters was well designed, with model complexity increasing steadily through the topics. The authors introduced latent variable modeling using continuous latent variables (e.g., confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory). Then, they extended this idea into the incorporation of categorical latent variables (e.g., latent class modeling and Bayes networks). Within each chapter, the most common priors were presented and described for each model. The description and illustration of implementing priors for continuous and categorical latent variable models were done particularly well…The authors successfully incorporated examples throughout the entire text. These examples were quite detailed and included everything from model specification, annotated software syntax, diagnostics, results, and interpretation. Many examples use publicly available data. Not only does this feature make replication possible for the results, but it is also an added benefit for students using this as a course textbook. One could easily walk through the steps in this book and conduct analyses from all of the model-based chapters included...Given the strong emphasis on examples and detailed descriptions throughout the book, we highly recommend this as a textbook for graduate-level courses on Bayesian statistics or psychometrics. The authors effectively balanced the content regarding general Bayesian inference and specific psychometric models. Therefore, the book can be used as either the main text for a standalone course on Bayesian psychometrics or as supplementary reading for a course focusing on a particular model (e.g., factor analysis)."—Sarah Depaoli and Yang Liu in Psychometrika, June 2018"This book is a great contribution to the field of Bayesian psychometrics. It