My current methodological research interests focus on problems related to Bayesian hypothesis testing, Bayesian variable selection in ultra-high dimensional spaces, and latent variable models for ordinal and rank data analyses. In the areas of hypothesis testing and variable selection, I am particularly interested in exploring efficiencies that can be gained through the use of non-local prior densities to specify either alternative hypotheses in hypothesis testing problems or the non-null distributions of regression coefficients in variable selection problems. My research on ordinal and rank data modeling finds application in evaluating the intelligence of non-human primate species and in educational assessment. Applied problems that currently interest me include statistical studies of the impacts of college admission policies on diversity of college campuses and graduation rates and developing more meaningful instruments to evaluate undergraduate and graduate teaching. More generally, I am interested in studying the impact that assessment procedures have on educational processes. Finally, I am intrigued by the problem of performing inference in agent models used in sociology and psychology.
