The research articles in this volume cover timely quantitative psychology topics, including new methods in item response theory, computerized adaptive testing, cognitive diagnostic modeling, and psychological scaling. Topics within general quantitative methodology include structural equation modeling, factor analysis, causal modeling, mediation, missing data methods, and longitudinal data analysis. These methods will appeal, in particular, to researchers in the social sciences. The 80th annual meeting took place in Beijing, China, between the 12th and 16th of July, 2015. Previous volumes to showcase work from the Psychometric Society's Meeting are New Developments in Quantitative Psychology: Presentations from the 77th Annual Psychometric Society Meeting (Springer, 2013), Quantitative Psychology Research: The 78th Annual Meeting of the Psychometric Society (Springer, 2015), and Quantitative Psychology Research: The 79th Annual Meeting of the Psychometric Society, Wisconsin, USA, 2014 (Springer, 2015).

The 77th Annual International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS) brought together quantitative researchers who focus on methods relevant to psychology. The conference included workshops, invited talks by well-known scholars, and presentations of submitted papers and posters. It was hosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and took place between the 9th and 12th of July, 2012. The chapters of this volume are based on presentations from the meeting and reflect the latest work in the field. Topics with a primarily measurement focus include studies of item response theory, computerized adaptive testing, cognitive diagnostic modeling, and psychological scaling. Additional psychometric topics relate to structural equation modeling, factor analysis, causal modeling, mediation, missing data methods, and longitudinal data analysis, among others. The papers in this volume will be especially useful for researchers (graduate students and other quantitative researchers) in the social sciences who use quantitative methods, particularly psychologists. Most readers will benefit from some prior knowledge of statistical methods in reading the chapters.

The 78th Annual International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS) built on the Psychometric Society's mission to share quantitative methods relevant to psychology. The chapters of this volume present cutting-edge work in the field. Topics include studies of item response theory, computerized adaptive testing, cognitive diagnostic modeling and psychological scaling. Additional psychometric topics relate to structural equation modeling, factor analysis, causal modeling, mediation, missing data methods and longitudinal data analysis, among others. The papers in this volume will be especially useful for researchers (graduate students and other quantitative researchers) in the social sciences who use quantitative methods, particularly psychologists. Prior knowledge of statistical methods is recommended for the best use of this volume. The conference took place in Arnhem, The Netherlands between July 22nd and 26th, 2013. This is the second volume to showcase the Psychometric Society Meeting. The first is New Developments in Quantitative Psychology: Presentations from the 77th Annual Psychometric Society Meeting (Springer, 2014).

Categorical data are quantified as either nominal variables--distinguishing different groups, for example, based on socio-economic status, education, and political persuasion--or ordinal variables--distinguishing levels of interest, such as the preferred politician or the preferred type of punishment for committing burglary. This new book is a collection of up-to-date studies on modern categorical data analysis methods, emphasizing their application to relevant and interesting data sets. This volume concentrates on latent class analysis and item response theory. These methods use latent variables to explain the relationships among observed categorical variables. Latent class analysis yields the classification of a group of respondents according to their pattern of scores on the categorical variables. This provides insight into the mechanisms producing the data and allows the estimation of factor structures and regression models conditional on the latent class structure. Item response theory leads to the identification of one or more ordinal or interval scales. In psychological and educational testing these scales are used for individual measurement of abilities and personality traits. The focus of this volume is applied. After a method is explained, the potential of the method for analyzing categorical data is illustrated by means of a real data example to show how it can be used effectively for solving a real data problem. These methods are accessible to researchers not trained explicitly in applied statistics. This volume appeals to researchers and advanced students in the social and behavioral sciences, including social, developmental, organizational, clinical and health psychologists, sociologists, educational and marketing researchers, and political scientists. In addition, it is of interest to those who collect data on categorical variables and are faced with the problem of how to analyze such variables--among themselves or in relation to metric variables.

The 77th Annual International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS) brought together quantitative researchers who focus on methods relevant to psychology. The conference included workshops, invited talks by well-known scholars, and presentations of submitted papers and posters. It was hosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and took place between the 9th and 12th of July, 2012. The chapters of this volume are based on presentations from the meeting and reflect the latest work in the field. Topics with a primarily measurement focus include studies of item response theory, computerized adaptive testing, cognitive diagnostic modeling, and psychological scaling. Additional psychometric topics relate to structural equation modeling, factor analysis, causal modeling, mediation, missing data methods, and longitudinal data analysis, among others. The papers in this volume will be especially useful for researchers (graduate students and other quantitative researchers) in the social sciences who use quantitative methods, particularly psychologists. Most readers will benefit from some prior knowledge of statistical methods in reading the chapters.

The 78th Annual Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS) builds on the Psychometric Society's mission to share quantitative methods relevant to psychology. The chapters of this volume present cutting-edge work in the field. Topics include studies of item response theory, computerized adaptive testing, cognitive diagnostic modeling, and psychological scaling. Additional psychometric topics relate to structural equation modeling, factor analysis, causal modeling, mediation, missing data methods, and longitudinal data analysis, among others. The papers in this volume will be especially useful for researchers in the social sciences who use quantitative methods. Prior knowledge of statistical methods is recommended. The 78th annual meeting took place in Arnhem, The Netherlands between July 22nd and 26th, 2013. The previous volume to showcase work from the Psychometric Society's Meeting is New Developments in Quantitative Psychology: Presentations from the 77th Annual Psychometric Society Meeting (Springer, 2014).

The research articles in this volume cover timely quantitative psychology topics, including new methods in item response theory, computerized adaptive testing, cognitive diagnostic modeling, and psychological scaling. Topics within general quantitative methodology include structural equation modeling, factor analysis, causal modeling, mediation, missing data methods, and longitudinal data analysis. These methods will appeal, in particular, to researchers in the social sciences. The 80th annual meeting took place in Beijing, China, between the 12th and 16th of July, 2015. Previous volumes to showcase work from the Psychometric Society's Meeting are New Developments in Quantitative Psychology: Presentations from the 77th Annual Psychometric Society Meeting (Springer, 2013), Quantitative Psychology Research: The 78th Annual Meeting of the Psychometric Society (Springer, 2015), and Quantitative Psychology Research: The 79th Annual Meeting of the Psychometric Society, Wisconsin, USA, 2014 (Springer, 2015).