difR-package: Collection of methods to detect dichotomous differential item...

In difR: Collection of Methods to Detect Dichotomous Differential Item Functioning (DIF)

Description

The difR package contains several traditional methods to detect DIF in dichotomously scored items. Both uniform and non-uniform DIF effects can be detected, with methods relying upon item response models or not. Some methods deal with more than one focal group.

Methods currently available are:

1. Transformed Item Difficulties (TID) method (Angoff and Ford, 1973)

2. Mantel-Haenszel (Holland and Thayer, 1988)

3. Standardization (Dorans and Kullick, 1986)

4. Breslow-Day (Aguerri et al., 2009; Penfield, 2003)

5. Logistic regression (Swaminathan and Rogers, 1990)

6. SIBTEST (Shealy and Stout) and Crossing-SIBTEST (Chalmers, 2018; Li and Stout, 1996)

7. Lord's chi-square test (Lord, 1980)

8. Raju's area (Raju, 1990)

9. Likelihood-ratio test (Thissen, Steinberg and Wainer, 1988)

10. Generalized Mantel-Haenszel (Penfield, 2001)

11. Generalized logistic regression (Magis, Raiche, Beland and Gerard, 2011)

12. Generalized Lord's chi-square test (Kim, Cohen and Park, 1995).

The difR package is further described in Magis, Beland, Tuerlinckx and De Boeck (2010).

Details

Package:	difR
Type:	Package
Version:	5.1
Date:	2020-05-10
Depends:	R (>= 3.0.0)
Imports:	mirt, ltm, lme4, deltaPlotR
License:	GPL

Author(s)

Sebastien Beland
Collectif pour le Developpement et les Applications en Mesure et Evaluation (Cdame)
Universite du Quebec a Montreal
[e-mail], http://www.cdame.uqam.ca/
David Magis
Department of Psychology, University of Liege
Research Group of Quantitative Psychology and Individual Differences, KU Leuven
[e-mail], http://ppw.kuleuven.be/okp/home/
Gilles Raiche
Collectif pour le Developpement et les Applications en Mesure et Evaluation (Cdame)
Universite du Quebec a Montreal
[e-mail], http://www.cdame.uqam.ca/

References

Aguerri, M.E., Galibert, M.S., Attorresi, H.F. and Maranon, P.P. (2009). Erroneous detection of nonuniform DIF using the Breslow-Day test in a short test. Quality and Quantity, 43, 35-44. doi: 10.1007/s11135-007-9130-2

Angoff, W. H., and Ford, S. F. (1973). Item-race interaction on a test of scholastic aptitude. Journal of Educational Measurement, 2, 95-106. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-3984.1973.tb00787.x

Chalmers, R. P. (2018). Improving the Crossing-SIBTEST statistic for detecting non-uniform DIF. Psychometrika, 83(2), 376–386. doi: 10.1007/s11336-017-9583-8

Dorans, N. J. and Kulick, E. (1986). Demonstrating the utility of the standardization approach to assessing unexpected differential item performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Journal of Educational Measurement, 23, 355-368. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-3984.1986.tb00255.x

Holland, P. W. and Thayer, D. T. (1988). Differential item performance and the Mantel-Haenszel procedure. In H. Wainer and H. I. Braun (Dirs.), Test validity. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Kim, S.-H., Cohen, A.S. and Park, T.-H. (1995). Detection of differential item functioning in multiple groups. Journal of Educational Measurement, 32, 261-276. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-3984.1995.tb00466.x

Li, H.-H., and Stout, W. (1996). A new procedure for detection of crossing DIF. Psychometrika, 61, 647–677. doi: 10.1007/BF02294041

Lord, F. (1980). Applications of item response theory to practical testing problems. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Magis, D., Beland, S., Tuerlinckx, F. and De Boeck, P. (2010). A general framework and an R package for the detection of dichotomous differential item functioning. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 847-862. doi: 10.3758/BRM.42.3.847

Magis, D., Raiche, G., Beland, S. and Gerard, P. (2011). A logistic regression procedure to detect differential item functioning among multiple groups. International Journal of Testing, 11, 365–386. doi: 10.1080/15305058.2011.602810

Penfield, R. D. (2001). Assessing differential item functioning among multiple groups: a comparison of three Mantel-Haenszel procedures. Applied Measurement in Education, 14, 235-259. doi: 10.1207/S15324818AME1403_3

Penfield, R.D. (2003). Application of the Breslow-Day test of trend in odds ratio heterogeneity to the detection of nonuniform DIF. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 49, 231-243.

Raju, N. S. (1990). Determining the significance of estimated signed and unsigned areas between two item response functions. Applied Psychological Measurement, 14, 197-207. doi: 10.1177/014662169001400208

Shealy, R. and Stout, W. (1993). A model-based standardization approach that separates true bias/DIF from group ability differences and detect test bias/DTF as well as item bias/DIF. Psychometrika, 58, 159-194. doi: 10.1007/BF02294572

Swaminathan, H. and Rogers, H. J. (1990). Detecting differential item functioning using logistic regression procedures. Journal of Educational Measurement, 27, 361-370. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-3984.1990.tb00754.x

Thissen, D., Steinberg, L. and Wainer, H. (1988). Use of item response theory in the study of group difference in trace lines. In H. Wainer and H. Braun (Eds.), Test validity. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

See Also

Other useful packages can be found in the R Psychometric task view.

difR documentation built on July 2, 2020, 3:34 a.m.