In this paper, a method for studying DIF is demonstrated that can used with either dichotomous or polytomous items. The method is shown to be valid for data that follow a partial credit IRT model. It is also shown that logistic regression gives results equivalent to those of the proposed method....

Household food security in the United States has been extensively researched and a number of indexes have been generated. However, household energy security has been largely ignored even though low-income households spend almost equal income shares on food and energy. This paper uses Rasch...

Item Response Theory (IRT) is a psychometric theory widely used in educational assessment and cognitive psychology to analyse data emerged from answers given to items contained in exams, questionnaires, etc. Standard IRT, however, is based on models which assume that items behave equally to all...

In organizational and educational practices, sensitivity reviews are commonly advocated techniques for reducing test bias and enhancing fairness. In the present paper, results from two studies are reported which investigate how effective individuals are at detecting problematic test content and...

Differential item functioning (DIF) occurs when persons with equal ability who belong to different groups have a different probability to correctly solve an item of a certain test. As the occurrence of DIF is considered a serious problem when using tests for personnel selection, many procedures...

The inferences drawn from the most widely used regression models of subjective welfare are subject to a “frame-of-reference bias,” stemming from non-ignorable heterogeneity in subjective scales, such as what it means to be “rich” or “poor.” To test for this bias, respondents in...

Nur wenige Studien geben Aufschluss über den Gesundheitszustand der in Deutschland lebenden Migrantenbevölkerung und beschränken sich meist auf rein medizinische Kriterien. Die vorliegende Arbeit vergleicht auf Grundlage von Daten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) den Gesundheitszustand...

A new diagnostic tool for the identification of differential item functioning (DIF) is proposed. Classical approaches to DIF allow to consider only few subpopulations like ethnic groups when investigating if the solution of items depends on the membership to a subpopulation. We propose an...

The literature in modern test theory on procedures for identifying items with differential item functioning (DIF) among two groups of persons includes the Mantel–Haenszel (MH) procedure. Generally, it is not recognized explicitly that if there is real DIF in some items which favor one...