Abstract: Item parceling could be defined as a technique of composing two or more items assessing the same construct to a new manifest indicator. Although item parceling was controversial all the time, it attracted more and more researchers’ attention since this technique had been widely applied in structural equation modeling procedures. The purpose of this article is to discuss some important aspects about the research in this field, especially the rationale, the advantage and disadvantage, and the methods of parceling practice. On this base, we give some advice about how to construct item parcels, including (a) choosing to parcel or not to parcel according to the research goal and situation; (b) ensuring the dimensionality before parceling; and (c) building parcels on certain theories etc. Future research can focus on the impact of various parceling methods on the model fit and estimates, or the application of parceling in advanced SEM procedures and other measurement theories

Key words: item parceling, parcel, structural equation model