Using Differential Item Functioning (Dif) Procedures for Investigating the Cross -Cultural Equivalence of Personality Tests

167 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001.The results showed that the extraversion scale of the 16PF had the same factor structure across the two groups only in that it had the same number of factors and the same items on each factor. According to the DIF results, the choice of matching variables based on a combination of internal and external measures appeared to have little effect and the iterative purification method was unsuccessful. The DIF results were relatively consistent across two DIF methods and item types. However, there was found the possibility of incorrectly classifying items as DIF or non-DIF when dichotomizing polytomous items. In addition, LDFA seemed to perform more consistently across item types than SIBTEST. In summary, the results generally showed a small number of DIF items on each scale, except for scales A and N where about half of the items showed DIF. From the qualitative review of items, the main reasons for DIF were found to be translation difficulty and differences in cultural relevance.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD