R. J. de Ayala, PhD, is Professor of Quantitative, Qualitative, and Psychometric Methods and Director of the Institutional Research Master's Program in the College of Educational and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL). His research interests include psychometrics, item response theory, computerized adaptive testing, applied statistics, and multilevel models. His work has appeared in Applied Psychological Measurement, Applied Measurement in Education, the British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, Educational and Psychological Measurement, the Journal of Applied Measurement, and the Journal of Educational Measurement. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association’s Division 5: Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics and of the American Educational Research Association. He is a recipient of a Big 12 Faculty Fellowship and holds a Gallup Research Professorship at UNL.