A Procedure to Detect Item Bias Present Simultaneously in Several Items
Abstract
This paper presents a statistical procedure (denoted by SIB) designed to test for undirectional test bias existing simultaneously in several items of an ability test. It was argued in Shealy and Stout (1991) that in order to model such bias with an IRT model, a multidimensional model is necessary. The proposed procedure, based on this multidimensional IRT modeling approach, statistically tests for bias in one or more items at a time and is corrected for the inflation (or deflation) of the test statistic due to target ability difference, a valid group difference that is conceptually independent of psychological test bias. The correction plays the same role as the practice of including the single studied item in the matching criterion score in the Mantel-Haenszel (MH) procedure adapted for test responses by Holland and Thayer (1988). It is shown through the initial portion of an extensive simulation study underway (Shealy (1991)) that, with the correction in place, the procedure performs as well as the MH procedure in many cases when there is a single biased item, and performs well in the case of multiple item test bias.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 25, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA235252
Entities
People
- Robin Shealy
- William Stout
Organizations
- University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign