Differential item functioning and language translation: A cross-national study with a test developed for certification.

摘要

Statement of the problem. Often, educational and psychological measurement instruments must be translated from one language to another when they are administered to different cultural groups. The translation process often necessarily introduces measurement inequivalence. Therefore, an examination may be said to be culturally biased if the test provides a consistent advantage to one particular race or culture through the manner in which the test items are written.;Method. In this study, 1000 American and 1134 Japanese entry level examinees participating in a scuba diving certification course took a standardized criterion mastery test for certification. Differential Functioning of items and Tests (DFIT) proposed by Raju, van der Linden, and Fleer (1992) was used to detect Differential Item Functioning (DIF).;Results. Out of a total of 30 items, 10 were found to exhibit significant Non Compensatory DIF (NC-DIF) (;Conclusions. Results from the study provide evidence that there was significant DIF/DTF between the American and Japanese groups on the test used in this study. DFIT identified 10 items out of 30 that had significant NC-DIF. DBF identified the physics content area as the one that had the largest Bundle NC-DIF value.