Ed Merkle

Assistant Professor 28A McAlester Hall 573.882.4174 merklee@missouri.edu

My interests blend psychometrics with mathematical psychology, yielding some research that falls squarely into one of these areas and some research that is a combination of the two. On the psychometric side, I am developing new tests of measurement invariance and studying model evaluation measures. This work can help us decide whether educational tests of ability (or other scales) consistently assign scores to diverse groups of individuals.

On the mathematical psychology side, I am interested in subjective probability, forecast aggregation, and forecast evaluation. I am developing models that can yield improved forecasts on diverse topics, from world political events to laboratory category learning studies.

My work has been funded through grants from the National Science Foundation and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.

For more detail on my work on statistical methods for assessing measurement invariance in psychometric models (including papers and R code), see here.

Merkle, E. C., Fan, J., & Zeileis, A. (accepted). Testing for measurement invariance with respect to an ordinal variable. Psychometrika.

Merkle, E. C. & Zeileis, A. (2013). Tests of measurement invariance without subgroups: A generalization of classical methods. Psychometrika, 78, 59-82.

Preacher, K. J. & Merkle, E. C. (2012). The problem of model selection uncertainty in structural equation modeling. Psychological Methods, 17, 1-14.

Smithson, M., Merkle, E. C., & Verkuilen, J. (2011). Beta regression finite mixture models of polarization and priming. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 36, 804-831.

Merkle, E. C. (2011). A comparison of imputation methods for Bayesian factor analysis models. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 36, 257-276.

Merkle, E. C., Smithson, M., & Verkuilen, J. (2011). Hierarchical models of simple mechanisms underlying confidence in decision making. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 55, 57-67.

Merkle, E. C. & Steyvers, M. (2011). A psychological model for aggregating judgments of magnitude. In Salerno, J. et al (Eds.), Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction (SBP) 2011 (pp. 236-243). Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6589.

Merkle, E. C. & Shaffer, V. A. (2011). Binary recursive partitioning: Background, methods, and application to psychology. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 64, 161-181.

Merkle, E. C. (2009). The disutility of the hard-easy effect in choice confidence. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 204-213.

Merkle, E. C., Sieck, W. R., & Van Zandt, T. (2008). Response error and processing biases in confidence judgment. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 21, 428-448.

Sieck, W. R., Merkle, E. C., & Van Zandt, T. (2007). Option fixation: A cognitive contributor to overconfidence. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 103, 68-83. Article summary: "Why overconfidence occurs"

Merkle, E. C. & Van Zandt, T. (2006). An application of the Poisson race model to confidence calibration. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135, 391-408.