Abstract
This study investigated differential item functioning (DIF), differential bundle functioning (DBF), and differential test functioning (DTF) across gender of the reading comprehension section of the Graduate School Entrance English Exam in China. The datasets included 10,000 test-takers’ item-level responses to 6 five-item testlets. Both DIF and DBF were examined by using poly-simultaneous item bias test and item-response-theory-likelihood-ratio test, and DTF was investigated with multi-group confirmatory factor analyses (MG-CFA). The results indicated that although none of the 30 items exhibited statistically and practically significant DIF across gender at the item level, 2 testlets were consistently identified as having significant DBF at the testlet level by the two procedures. Nonetheless, DBF does not manifest itself at the overall test score level to produce DTF based on MG-CFA. This suggests that the relationship between item-level DIF and test-level DTF is a complicated issue with the mediating effect of testlets in testlet-based language assessment.
Published Version
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