No abstract

A central assumption that is implicit in estimating item parameters in item response theory (IRT) models is the normality of the latent trait distribution, whereas a similar assumption made in categorical confirmatory factor analysis (CCFA) models is the multivariate normality of the latent response variables. Violation of the normality assumption can lead to biased parameter estimates. Although previous studies have focused primarily on unidimensional IRT models, this study extended the literature by considering a multidimensional IRT model for polytomous responses, namely the multidimensional graded response model. Moreover, this study is one of few studies that specifically compared the performance of full-information maximum likelihood (FIML) estimation versus robust weighted least squares (WLS) estimation when the normality assumption is violated. The research also manipulated the number of nonnormal latent trait dimensions. Results showed that FIML consistently outperformed WLS when there were one or multiple skewed latent trait distributions. More interestingly, the bias of the discrimination parameters was non-ignorable only when the corresponding factor was skewed. Having other skewed factors did not further exacerbate the bias, whereas biases of boundary parameters increased as more nonnormal factors were added. The item parameter standard errors recovered well with both estimation algorithms regardless of the number of nonnormal dimensions.

The question of how job insecurity affects workplace behaviors has been the source of debate in the academic literature as well as in the popular press. The current study leverages and expands ideas from the Conservation of Resources theory about resource investment to examine how and when job insecurity is associated with behaviors indicative of promotive or protective job preservation strategies aimed at social or task targets. We present two studies. The first study takes a longitudinal approach to examine the bidirectional relationships between job insecurity and job performance, counterproductive work behaviors, knowledge hiding, and self-presentation ingratiatory behavior. The second study examines job preservation motivation as a mechanism linking job insecurity to these work behaviors, and it considers specific elements of threats as moderators (i.e., perceived threat controllability, perceived threat proximity). Together these studies suggest that job insecurity is associated with strategic behavior when employees are facing proximal threats to their jobs; however, these efforts are rarely in the best interest of organizations.

This large cohort study confirmed that both birth order and gender may pose independent influences on BCT scores; moreover, such influences are significantly modified by parental educational attainment.

Criterion-related profile analysis (CPA) Lately, there has been much interest in subscores, because they can potentially provide diagnostically useful information. A subscore refers to a score on one test in a test battery or one section of a single test. A score profile x p = (X 1 , X 2 , . . . , X V ) is the vector of V subscores for person p, where p = 1, . . . , P and v = 1, . . . , V, and the total for person p is a sum of the subscores X p = v X pv . Recent literature shows at least three lines of subscore research. First, researchers have proposed methods that yield subscores with improved psychometric properties, usually reliability (de la Torre