the purpose of this study was to detect differentially functioning items in the university of tehran english proficiency test (utept) which is a high stake test of english developed and administered by the language testing centre of the university of tehran. this paper is based on the answers of 400 test takers to the test. all participants earned a master degree either in humanities or science...

This is the first study of the measurement equivalence of the Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System® (PROMIS®) Anxiety short forms in a large ethnically diverse sample. The psychometric properties and differential item functioning (DIF) were examined across different racial/ethnic, educational, age, gender and language groups. METHODS These data are from individuals selecte...

Short form measures from the Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System® (PROMIS®) are used widely. The present study was among the first to examine differential item functioning (DIF) in the PROMIS Depression short form scales in a sample of over 5000 racially/ethnically diverse patients with cancer. DIF analyses were conducted across different racial/ethnic, educational, age, ge...

The purpose of this study was to detect differentially functioning items in the University of Tehran English Proficiency Test (UTEPT) which is a high stake test of English developed and administered by the Language Testing Centre of the University of Tehran. This paper is based on the answers of 400 test takers to the test. All participants earned a master degree either in humanities or science...

In this simulation study, we investigate the power and Type I error rate of a procedure based on the mean and covariance structure analysis (MACS) model in detecting differential item functioning (DIF) of graded response items with five response categories. The following factors were manipulated: type of DIF (uniform and non-uniform), DIF magnitude (low, medium and large), equality/inequality o...

the university of tehran english proficiency test (utept) is a high-stakes entrance examination taken by more than 10,000 master’s degree holders annually. the examinees’ scores have a significant influence on the final decisions concerning admission to the university of tehran ph.d. programs. as a test validation investigation, the present study, which is a bias detection research in nature, u...

The aims of this paper are to present findings related to differential item functioning (DIF) in the Patient Reported Outcome Measurement Information System (PROMIS) depression item bank, and to discuss potential threats to the validity of results from studies of DIF. The 32 depression items studied were modified from several widely used instruments. DIF analyses of gender, age and education we...

Multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) models (Joreskog & Golberger 1975) can be employed in a psychometric context to test for differential item functioning (DIF) between groups on the measurement of a latent variable (Muthén 1989). MIMIC DIF models can be attributed some favorable properties when compared to alternative DIF testing methods (i.e., Item Response Theory-Likelihood Ratio DIF...

Evaluating measurement equivalence (also known as differential item functioning (DIF)) is an important part of the process of validating psychometric questionnaires. This study aimed at evaluating the multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) model for DIF detection when latent construct distribution is nonnormal and the focal group sample size is small. In this simulation-based study, Type I...

BACKGROUND Self-reported health status measures, like the Short Form 36-item Health Survey (SF-36), can provide rich information about the overall health of a population and its components, such as physical, mental, and social health. However, differential item functioning (DIF), which arises when population sub-groups with the same underlying (i.e., latent) level of health have different measu...