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        *  Changes and Developments in the catR Package  *
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- Changes in catR 2.2 (2012-03-15) -
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MINOR UPDATE

  o  The references of several help files have been updated.

  o  A basic NAMESPACE file has been added for compatibility
     with R versions 2.14.0 and later.


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- Changes in catR 2.1 (2011-12-05) -
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MINOR UPDATES

  o  It is now possible to save the output of 'randomCAT' into
     a text file, by specifying the new arguments 'save.output'
     and 'output' properly. Similarly, the plots obtained with
     the 'plot.cat' function can be saved as PDF or JPEG files
     by specifying properly the new arguments 'save.plot' and 
     'save.options'. See the corresponding help files for 
     further details.

  o  Some typos have been fixed in the help files.


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- Changes in catR 2.0 (2011-10-21) -
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MAJOR UPDATES

  o  Several distributions are now available for item
     parameter generation of the 'createItemBank' function.
     Possible distributions are: normal and uniform for item
     difficulties; normal, lognormal and uniform
     distributions for item discriminations; uniform and 
     Beta for both item lower and upper asymptotes.

  o  Item exposure control is now feasible with the so-called
     'randomesque' approach (Kingsbury and Zara, 1989). The 
     function 'nextItem' and 'randomCAT' hold now the
     'randomesque' argument that sets the number of optimal
     items to be selected first, among those the next
     administered item will be randomly chosen.

  o  Content balancing can now be controlled by specifying
     subgroups of items in the 'createItemBank' function. The
     subgroups are coded into a fifth column (after item 
     parameters) and they are stored in the item bank by
     setting the new argument 'cb' (for "content balancing")
     to TRUE. If this fifth column is missing, or if 'cb' is
     set to FALSE (default), nothing changes from the previous
     version of catR. See also functions 'nextItem' and 
     'randomCAT', which were modified for content balancing,
     as well as the new function 'test.cbList' for testing
     the format of the 'cbControl' list of 'nextItem'.

  o  Item parameters can now be provided as data frames in 
     the 'createItemBank' function. This also permits to 
     include subgroups of items easily.

  o  As a consequence of the previous major update, many help
     files were updated for comptability with the new function
     'createItemBank' (i.e. 'tcals' is no longer needed to be
     converted into a matrix).

  o  The 'tcals' data set was updated by adding a fifth
     column, holding the subgroups of items as defined by the
     test. See the help file of 'tcals' for further details.

  o  As a consequence of the previous major update, many help
     files were updated for compatibility of the new 'tcals'
     data set (i.e. all examples requiring the matrix of
     item parameters were slightly modified to remove the
     'Group' variable).

  o  The 'print.cat' function was updated to display output
     results of randomesque method for item expoisure control
     as well as for content balancing (whenever required).


MINOR UPDATES

  o  When the 'maxItems' criterion of 'randomCAT' is smaller
     than the 'stop$thr' argument, an error message is 
     returned. Previously it contained a mistake, claiming
     that 'maxItems' is larger than 'stop$thr'. This has 
     been fixed.

  o  Some typos have been fixed in the help file of 'tcals'
     data set and 'nextItem' functin.


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- Changes in catR 1.6 (2011-04-11) -
------------------------------------

MINOR UPDATES

  o  The 'Pi' functin has been slightly modified to avoid
     a technical bug: when probabilities Pi equal exactly
     zero or one, the ability estimates cannot be obtained
     with 'thetaEst' (the boundary conditions cannot be
     tested because of NaN values). Many thanks to Pan Tong
     (University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA)
     who noticed this problem.


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- Changes in catR 1.5 (2010-10-28) -
------------------------------------

MINOR UPDATES

  o  The help files of the 'thetaEst' and 'semTheta' methods
     have been updated as some information about the EAP
     estimation method was missing.


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- Changes in catR 1.4 (2010-10-17) -
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MINOR UPDATES

  o  The method referred to Owen's rule for selecting items
     in the starting step and in the adaptative process, was
     renamed Urry's rule given that this simple method was
     suggested first by Urry (1970) and that Owen's Bayes
     procedure differs from this one. 
    
  o  Consequently to the point above, 'Owen' optional value
     of the 'itemSelect' argument of the 'test' list was 
     replaced by 'Urry'. 

  o  In addition, the 'nextItem', 'testList', randomCAT' and
     'print.cat' have been updated by the replacement of
     'Owen' by 'Urry'. 
 
  o  A minor problem was fixed in the code of the 'randomCAT' 
     function: the output list was not returning all the
     required elements (in particular, the value of the
     'itemSelect' argument).

  o  A minor issue was fixed in the 'print.cat' function: the
     output was not displayed correctly when only two items
     are selected at the initial step.


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- Changes in catR 1.3 (2010-10-08) -
------------------------------------

MINOR UPDATES

  o  Several typos have been fixed.

  o  The 'randomCAT' help file has been updated as some
     information was incorrect or incomplete.


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- Changes in catR 1.2 (2010-09-07) -
------------------------------------

MAJOR UPDATES

  o  Several procedures for next item selection have been
     added. First, Maximum Likelihood Weighted Information
     (MLWI) and Maximum Posterior Weighted Information (MPWI)
     are now available. The command 'MWI' has been developed
     for that purpose.

  o  Second, Maximum Expected Information (MEI) has been
     implemented for next item selection. The function 'MEI'
     was developed for computing MEI values.

  o  The MEI criterion required the creation of the 'OIi'
     command for computing observed information function. 

  o  The Maximum Expected Posterior Variance (MEPV) is also
     available. The command 'EPV' computes expected posterior
     variances and is used within the 'nextItem' function.

  o  Finally, the completely random selection of the next 
     item is also possible right now.

  o  The functions 'eapEst' and 'eapSem' have been modified
     to speed up their computation. The approximation of the
     integrals is now made by the 'integrate.xy' function 
     from the package 'sfsmisc'.

  o  The function 'startItems' has been modified. First, the
     argument 'bw' has been replaced by 'halfRange' and codes
     now for the half range of the sequence and not the full
     range (this was misleading). Second, the items can be
     selected either according to their difficulty level or
     their information function. This is specified by the
     'startSelect' argument.

  o  Consequently, the functions 'nextItem', 'testList', 
     'randomCAT' and 'print.cat' have been updated.


MINOR UPDATES

  o  The argument 'eapPar' from functions 'eapEst' and 'eapSem'
     has been renamed to 'parInt' for consistency with the 
     'MWI' and 'nextItem' functions. It better refers to the
     parameters for numerical integration and not only for the
     EAP method, but also for MLWI and MPWI computation. 

  o  Several typos have been fixed in the help manual.

  o  The 'plot.cat' function has been modified. Now, the 
     confidence intervals do not appear by default ('ci=FALSE'
     in the code). Moreover, confidence intervals are displayed
     with dotted traits, while the true ability level is drawn
     with a solid horizontal line. Also, any classification
     level can be specified and drawn by a dashed horizontal
     trait.


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- Changes in catR 1.1 (2010-06-15) -
------------------------------------

MAJOR UPDATES

  o  Owen's procedure has been added as a method for next item
     selection. 

  o  Consequently, the functions 'nextItem', 'testList', 
     'randomCAT' and 'print.cat' have been updated.


MINOR UPDATES

  o  Several typos have been fixed in the help manual.
