Article history: Received 8 January 2011 Received in revised form 11 February 2011 Accepted 11 March 2011 Available online xxxx Mental chronometry (MC) studies cognitive processes measured by time. It provides an absolute, ratio scale. The limitations of instrumentation and statistical analysis caused the early studies in MC to be eclipsed by the ‘paper-and-pencil’ psychometric tests started by...

This tutorial was written as an introduction to the basics of item response theory (IRT) modeling and its applications to health outcomes measurement for the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Outcomes Measurement Working Group (COMWG). In no way this tutorial is meant to replace any text on measurement theory, but only serve as a stepping-stone for health care researchers to learn this methodo...

Economists have long been puzzled by the observations that during peacetime industrial market economies display recurrent, large fluctuations in output and employment over relatively short time periods. Not uncommon are changes as large as 10 percent within only a couple of years. These observations are considered puzzling because the associated movements in labor's marginal product are small. ...

Interpreting measurements of physical systems consists in part of constructing an account of "what's happening" in terms of our commonsense physical theories. Since most systems involve change, qualitative dynamics plays a central role in such deductions. This paper presents a theory of measurement interpretation at an instant, based on Qualitative Process Theory. Appropriate notions of measure...

Calibration has become a standard tool of macroeconomics. This paper extends and refines the calibration methodology along several important dimensions. First, accounting for home production is important both in measuring calibration targets and in organizing the data in a model-consistent fashion. For this reason, thinking about home production is important even if the model under consideratio...

Illusory conjunctions refer to the incorrect perceptual combination of correctly perceived features, such as color and shape. Research on the phenomenon has been hampered by the lack of a measurement theory that accounts for guessing features, as well as the incorrect combination of correctly perceived features. Recently, several investigators have suggested using multinomial models as a tool f...

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In this review, we examine studies that use item response theory (IRT) to explore the psychometric properties of clinical measures. Next, we consider how IRT has been used in clinical research for: scale linking, computerized adaptive testing, and differential item functioning analysis. Finally, we consider the scale properties of IRT trait scores. We conclude that there are notable differences...