Kentaro Yamamoto

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Kentaro Yamamoto

Kentaro Yamamoto is Deputy Director of the Center for Global Assessment  

in ETS’s Research & Development Division in Princeton, NJ.

Yamamoto joined ETS in 1987 as a research scientist in the Division of Statistics and Psycho-

metrics research. His accomplishments include the development of a computer model that 

combines continuous and discrete item response models, specifically, item response theoretic 

and latent class models. It has been applied, successfully, to several diagnostic and speeded 

tests. He also contributed to the development of analysis methods for the National Assessment 

of Educational Progress.

Yamamoto has extensive experience in the analysis design of national and international 

adult literacy projects. From 1992 to 1994, he designed the first International Adult Literacy 

Survey (IALS) and directed data analysis. He has also contributed overall and analysis 

design to the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey and directed its data analysis since 1998. 

He has worked on a number of international adult literacy projects, including work with 

the governments of Mexico and Portugal. He provided analysis design for the main Literacy 

Assessment and Monitoring Programme survey for the UNESCO Institute of Statistics and 

serves as a technical advisor to UNESCO’s Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of 

Quality in Education.

He received a B.A. in psychology and counseling from Columbia Christian College and an M.S. 

in psychology from Portland State University. He also received an M.S. in statistics and a Ph.D. 

in educational psychology from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign).

Dr. Yamamoto has authored or co-authored a number of book chapters, research reports and 

articles. They include:

Reporting Test Outcomes Using Models for Cognitive Diagnosis, with Matthias von Davier and 

Lou DiBello of ETS (2006); Pathways to Labor Market Success: The Literacy Proficiency of U.S. 

Adults, with Irwin Kirsch of ETS and Andrew Sum of Northeastern University (2004); The 

Literacy Proficiencies of the Nation’s Immigrant Population and their Labor Market and Social 

Consequences, with Kirsch and Sum (2004); Literacy Proficiencies and Labor Market  

Success: Key Findings from National and International Surveys, with Kirsch and Sum (2004): 

A Human Capital Concern: The Literacy Proficiency of U.S. Immigrants, with Kirsch and Sum 

(2004); Literacy and Health in America, with Kirsch and Rima Rudd (2004); A chapter: “Mod-

eling the Effects of Test Length and Test Time on Parameter Estimation Using the HYBRID 

Model,” in Rost, J. & Langeheine R. (Eds.), Applications of Latent Trait and Latent Class Models 

in the Social Sciences (1997); A chapter: “Scoring, Scaling and Statisical Models for Proficiency 

Estimation of the IALS” in International Adult Literacy Survey Technical Report (1997); Scaling 

and statistical model for proficiency estimation of NALS and GED (1996); Estimating the effects 

of test length and test time on parameter estimation using the Hybrid model (1995); Scaling  

(Technical Report of the National Adult Literacy Survey 1994); Estimating proficiencies of  

survey respondents who did not respond to cognitive items (1994).

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