mstATA

The goal of mstATA is to provide tools for automated test assembly of multistage tests using mixed-integer linear programming formulations.

Installation

You can install the development version of mstATA from GitHub using pak:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("Hongchen030/mstATA")

Alternatively, you can use remotes:

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("Hongchen030/mstATA")

mstATA supports multiple mixed-integer programming solvers, including:

Gurobi – requires separate installation and a valid license. Installation instructions are available here: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=prioritizr. See the prioritizr package vignette “gurobi_installation_guide” for installation instructions. Gurobi requires a valid license. However, free academic licenses are available for qualified students and researchers through the Gurobi Academic Program.

HiGHS – available on CRAN via install.packages(“highs”)

GLPK (via Rglpk) – available on CRAN via install.package(“Rglpk”)

SYMPHONY (via Rsymphony) – available on CRAN via install.package(“Rsymphony”)

lpSolve (via lpSolveAPI) – available on CRAN via install.package(“lpSolveAPI”)

Vignettes

The package includes several vignettes:

• Getting Started with mstATA – complete end-to-end workflow.
• MST Assembly Examples: Bottom-Up, Top-Down, and Hybrid Strategies – bottom-up, top-down, and extended-hybrid strategies.
• Stimulus-Based Assessment in mstATA: Conditional Item Selection – conditional item selection with stimulus constraints.
• Formulation for Multiple Objectives – multi-objective optimization strategies and evaluation.
• Detecting and Resolving Infeasibility - how to deal with infeasibility.

To browse available vignettes:

browseVignettes("mstATA")
#> No vignettes found by browseVignettes("mstATA")

Citation

If you use mstATA in research, please cite:

Chen, H. (2026). mstATA: An R Package for IRT-Based Multistage Test Assembly.