Dr. Daniel Bolt

Daniel Bolt, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Quantitative Methods

PhD, 1999, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Dr. Bolt joined the department in the spring of 1999, coming from the Laboratory for Educational and Psychological Measurement at the University of Illinois. In addition to his own research, he collaborates on various projects related to the development and statistical analysis of educational and psychological tests. Dr. Bolt teaches courses in test theory, factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and hierarchical linear modeling.

RESEARCH STATEMENT

"My interests are in the theory and application of psychometric methods in education and psychology. I am especially interested in the application of latent variable models for purposes of test validation, assessment of individual differences, and cognitive diagnosis. Most of my research is in item response theory (IRT), including its application to issues such as differential item functioning and test dimensionality assessment. I am also interested in the development of nonparametric IRT methods, which relax certain modeling assumptions and have the potential to increase the flexibility and efficiency of IRT in many testing applications."

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

Li, Y., Bolt, D.M. & Fu, J. (2006). A comparison of alternative models for testlets. Applied Psychological Measurement, 30, 3-21.

Bolt, D.M., & Gierl, M.J. (2006). Application of a regression correction procedure to three nonparametric tests of DIF: Implications for local and global DIF detection. Journal of Educational Measurement, 43, 31 3-333.

Gunther, A.C., Bolt, D., Borzedkowski, D.L., Liebhard, J.L., & Dillard, J. (2006) Presumed influence on peers: How mass media messages indirectly affect adolescent smoking. Journal of Communication, 56, 52-68.

Wampold, B.E., & Bolt, D.M. (2006). Therapist effects: Clever ways to make them (and everything else) disappear. Psychotherapy Research, 16, 184-187.

Kim, D.M., Wampold, B.E. & Bolt, D.M. (2006). Therapist effects in psycholtherapy: Random effects modeling of the NIMH TDCRP data. Psychotherapy Research, 16, 161-172.

Mroch, A. & Bolt, D.M. (2006). A simulation comparison of parametric and nonparametric dimensionality detection procedures. Applied Measurement in Education, 19, 67-9 1 .

Bolt, D.M. (2005). Limited and full-information IRT estimation. In A. Maydeu-Olivares and J. McArdle (Eds.), Contemporary Psychometrics (pp.27-71). Lawrence-Erlbaum.

Li, Y., Bolt, D.M. & Fu, J. (2005). A test characteristic curve linking method for the testlet model. Applied Psychological Measurement, 29, 340-356.

Bolt, D.M., Cohen, A.S., & Wollack, J.A. (2002). Item parameter estimation under conditions of test speededness: Application of a mixture Rasch model with ordinal constraints. Journal of Educational Measurement, 39, 331-348.

Bolt, D.M., Hare, R.D., Vitale, J. E., & Newman, J.P. (2004). A multigroup item response theory analysis of the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised. Psychological Assessment, 16, 155-168.

Bolt, D.M. & Lall, V.F. (2003). Estimation of compensatory and noncompensatory multidimensional item response models using Markov chain Monte Carlo. Applied Psychological Measurement, 29, 395-414.

Bolt, D.M. (2002). A Monte Carlo comparison of parametric and nonparametric polytomous DIF detection methods. Applied Measurement in Education, 15, 113-141.

Bolt, D.M., Cohen, A.S., & Wollack, J.A. (2001). A mixture item response model for multiple-choice data. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 26, 381-409.

Bolt, D.M. (2001). Conditional covariance-based representation of multidimensional test structure. Applied Psychological Measurement, 25, 244-257.

CONTACT DR. BOLT:

Address: Room 1086 Educational Sciences Building

Phone: (608) 262-4938

Email: dmbolt@wisc.edu