The College of Education proudly presents colloquia on research methods. We begin the series for this year on November 13 with Akihito Kamata and Differential Item Functioning, a psychometric technique useful for disparity research and test construction.

• DATE & TIME: 2:00-5:00, Friday, November 13, 2009
• LOCATION: HEDCO 340
• PRESENTER: Akihito Kamata, Ph.D., Professor
Department of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership
phone: (541) 346-5065  email: kamata@uoregon.edu

Can DIF Make a DIFference? - A Practical Guide
Differential Item Functioning (DIF) analsysis is a psychometric technique to flag test items that are potentially biased to a particular subpopulation of examinees or respondents. It has been widely utilized for the purpose of identifying test items to be revisd or removed in a test construction process. Also, DIF analysis is useful to understand why a particular subpopulation of examinees or respondents behaves differently and/or why particular test items make a particular subpopulation of examinees behaves differently. For example, if we gain a better understanding of why a particular group of ELL students behave differently on a particular set of test items, it may allow us to strategically improve not only test items, but also testing situations and instructions for those students.

This three-hour workshop will present some practical procedures to conduct DIF analysis. Participants will gain fundamental knowledge about DIF anaysis and its limitations. Participants will also learn practical DIF analysis procedures that utilize principles of item response theory (IRT) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), which are readily applicable to many different types of test items, including educational achievement test items and general psychological inventory test items. Also, some recently developed analysis procedures and their methodological research results will be briefly presented.