Roy Levy

The primary goal of this project was to develop a user-friendly stand-alone software package that accommodates missing data in two- and three-level data structures. Missing data are a frequent occurrence in education research, and they pose a number of challenges for multilevel analyses that do not arise in single-level analyses.

This project developed statistical procedures for conducting dimensionality analysis in the context of multidimensional item response theory that are generalizable to a broad class of related latent variable statistical models. Psychometric models are motivated by the fact that what is of most interest cannot be directly observed and so use latent variables to represent constructs. Observed variables then serve as indicators of the underlying constructs. Popular item response theory (IRT) an...

"Active learning" is often defined as engaging students in more meaningful learning. A variety of concrete activities are offered in the literature for ways that students can be more cognitively engaged while learning in a variety of instructional contexts, such as asking questions and taking notes. However, there are no criteria for determining what constitutes a cognitively engaging activity. Also, there are no recommendations for which student activities are more engaging than others no...

The increased demand for accountability in education focused on improved student academic performance has led to many questions about the most accurate method for capturing individual student progress, particularly for students with disabilities. In addition, although a substantial amount of research exists about the characteristics of students with disabilities and about assessment of their abilities and skills for purposes of classification and intervention, far less is known about the nat...