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Item Difficulty of Four Verbal Item Types and an Index of Differential Item Functioning for Black and White Examinees
Author(s) -
Freedle Roy,
Kostin Irene
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of educational measurement
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.917
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1745-3984
pISSN - 0022-0655
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-3984.1990.tb00752.x
Subject(s) - differential item functioning , psychology , context (archaeology) , correlation , test (biology) , cognitive psychology , sentence , developmental psychology , nonverbal communication , comprehension , item analysis , psychometrics , item response theory , linguistics , mathematics , paleontology , philosophy , geometry , biology
In this study, the authors explored the importance of item difficulty (equated delta) as a predictor of differential item functioning (DIF) of Black versus matched White examinees for four verbal item types (analogies, antonyms, sentence completions, reading comprehension) using 13 GRE‐disclosed forms (988 verbal items) and 11 SAT‐disclosed forms (935 verbal items). The average correlation across test forms for each item type (and often the correlation for each individual test form as well) revealed a significant relationship between item difficulty and DIF value for both GRE and SAT. The most important finding indicates that for hard items, Black examinees perform differentially better than matched ability White examinees for each of the four item types and for both the GRE and SAT tests! The results further suggest that the amount of verbal context is an important determinant of the magnitude of the relationship between item difficulty and differential performance of Black versus matched White examinees. Several hypotheses accounting for this result were explored.