Item Response Models are used to investigate many psychological constructs and provide psychometric latent traits and test and scale characteristics for optimal measurement.
Relationships of Personality with Pain Experiences
Some recent applied work involves studying the relationship between pain experiences and personality characteristics in chronic pain sufferers (add links to presentations?). Using item response models and confirmatory factor analysis, differential relationships for many personality variables have been found between those who report consistently high levels of pain versus those who do not. Investigations continue to examine relationships with catastrophizing, affect, support, and locus of control.
Obtaining Ideal Rescoring Combinations for Lengthy Rating Scales
Recent technical work involves developing procedures for reducing overly-burdensome self-report rating scales of attitudes, beliefs, and experiences. Many self-report scales offer numerous (e.g., 0-10) categories to respondents. Although the rationale behind building these lengthy scales is "more is better", giving more options often ends up being much worse. Procedures involving the evaluation of Rasch partial credit model item fit, reliability, variability, and separation for various reductions of scale categories provide an efficient method of determining ideal scoring for optimal estimation of trait level.
Social desirability, faking good, and willful falsifications
Abstract coming soon...