Differential item functioning (DIF) can lead to an unfair advantage or disadvantage for certain subgroups in educational and psychological testing. Therefore, a variety of statistical methods has been suggested for detecting DIF in the Rasch model. Most of these methods are designed for the...

Research on subjective wellbeing typically assumes that responses to survey questions are comparable across respondents and across time. However, if this assumption is violated, standard methods in empirical research may mislead. I address this concern with three contributions. First, I give a...

Nur wenige Studien geben Aufschluss über den Gesundheitszustand der in Deutschland lebenden Migrantenbevölkerung und beschränken sich meist auf rein medizinische Kriterien. Die vorliegende Arbeit vergleicht auf Grundlage von Daten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) den Gesundheitszustand...

Measurement invariance is a fundamental assumption in item response theory models, where the relationship between a latent construct (ability) and observed item responses is of interest. Violation of this assumption would render the scale misinterpreted or cause systematic bias against certain...

Dynamic models for credit rating transitions are important ingredients for dynamic credit risk analyses. We compare the properties of two such models that have recently been put forward. The models mainly differ in their treatment of systematic risk, which can be modeled either using discrete...

With more than a fifth of the population being foreign citizens, Switzerland offers an ideal case to study the migrant health gap and the role of labour market status on the migrants' health. This paper examines the potential health gaps between Swiss nationals and different migrant groups (from...

We introduce a new latent variable model with count variable indicators, where usual linear parametric effects of covariates, nonparametric effects of continuous covariates and spatial effects on the continuous latent variables are modelled through a geoadditive predictor. Bayesian modelling of...

In this article we introduce a latent variable model (LVM) for mixed ordinal and continuous responses, where covariate effects on the continuous latent variable are modelles through a flexible semiparametric predictor. We extend existing LVM with simple linear covariate effects by including...

We design a statistical model for measuring the homogeneity of a financial network that evolves over time. Our model focuses on the level of diversi- fication of financial institutions; that is, whether they are more inclined to distribute their assets equally among partners, or if they rather...

Surveys in many different research fields rely on sequences of Likert scale questions to assess individuals' general attitudes toward a set of related topics. Most analyses of responses to such a series do not take into account the potential measurement error introduced by the context effect we...