This article considers the identification conditions of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models for ordered categorical outcomes with invariance of different types of parameters across groups. The current practice of invariance testing is to first identify a model with only configural invariance and then test the invariance of parameters based on this identified baseline model. This approach is not optimal because different identification conditions on this baseline model identify the scales of latent continuous responses in different ways. Once an invariance condition is imposed on a parameter, these identification conditions may become restrictions and define statistically non-equivalent models, leading to different conclusions. By analyzing the transformation that leaves the model-implied probabilities of response patterns unchanged, we give identification conditions for models with invariance of different types of parameters without referring to a specific parametrization of the baseline model. Tests based on this approach have the advantage that they do not depend on the specific identification condition chosen for the baseline model.

The $\theta$\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$\theta $$\end{document} metric in item response theory is often not the most useful metric for score reporting or interpretation. In this paper, I demonstrate that the filtered monotonic polynomial (FMP) item response model, a recently proposed nonparametric item response model (Liang & Browne in J Educ Behav Stat 40:5–34, 2015), can be used to specify item response models on metrics other than the $\theta$\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$\theta $$\end{document} metric. Specifically, I demonstrate that any item response function (IRF) defined within the FMP framework can be re-expressed as another FMP IRF by taking monotonic transformations of the latent trait. I derive the item parameter transformations that correspond to both linear and nonlinear transformations of the latent trait metric. These item parameter transformations can be used to define an item response model based on any monotonic transformation of the $\theta$\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$\theta $$\end{document} metric, so long as the metric transformation is approximated by a monotonic polynomial. I demonstrate this result by defining an item response model directly on the approximate true score metric and discuss the implications of metric transformations for applied testing situations.

It is known that a family of fixed-effects item response models with equal discrimination and different guessing parameters has no model identifiability. For this family, some types of information including the Fisher information and a new one are maximized to have model identification. The conditions of monotonicity of these types of information with respect to a tuning parameter are given. In the case of the logistic model with guessing parameters, it is shown that maxima do not exist under some parametrization, where negative lower asymptote can be employed without changing the probabilities of correct responses by examinees.

Generally, the Force-State Mapping (FSM) is an effective method to identify the parameters of nonlinear joints provided that the joint model is exactly known in advance. However, the variation of the non-linear joints is so large that the mathematical models of non-linear joints generally are not known in advance. Therefore, the model and the parameters of a non-linear joint should be identified simultaneously in practice. In this work, a new identification procedure which was based on the FSM method in frequency domain was proposed to identify the mathematical model and parameters of a non-linear joint simultaneously. Generally, there are many feasible combinations of models and parameters which can satisfy the measurement data within an allowable range of error. In this work, an iteration procedure was used to update the feasible models to result in an optimal model with its parameters. The simulation results show that a proper mathematical model and accurate parameters can be identified simultaneously by the new procedure even that the measurement data are contaminated by noise.

An approach to time series model identification is described which involves the simultaneous use of frequency, time and quantile domain algorithms; the approach is called quantile spectral analysis. It proposes a framework to integrate the analysis of long-memory (non-stationary) time series with the analysis of short-memory (stationary) time series.