scDIFtest: Efficient DIF detection

DIF detection using the score-based test framework

The score-based test framework for parameter instability has been proposed for testing measurement invariance in measurement models. Until now, the focus was on (a) testing the invariance of all parameters simultaneously, or (b) on testing the invariance of a single parameter in the model. However in educational and psychological assessments, the appropriateness of each items is of interest. For instance, the detection of differential item function (DIF) plays an important role in validating new items. The scDIFtest package provides a user-friendly method for detecting DIF by automatically and efficiently applying the tests from the score-based test framework to the individual items in the assessment. The main function of the scDIFtest package is the scDIFtest function, which is a wrapper around the strucchange::sctest-function.

To detect DIF with the scDIFtest package, first, the appropriate Item Response Theory (IRT) or Factor Analysis (FA) model should fitted using the mirt package. The scDIFtest-function can directly be used on the resulting mirt-object. Hence, in addition to the scDIFtest, the package mirt will typically also be loaded in the R session. For now, scDIFtest only works for IRT/FA models that were fitted using the mirt package, but we aim to extend this to other packages that fit IRT/FA models using maximum likelihood estimation.

Overview of the method

In order to fit the IRT model and analyze DIF with the scDIFtest, the following steps are necessary:

  1. installation of the R-package(s)
  2. data preparation
  3. fitting the IRT Model by using either the mirt or multipleGroup-function implemented in the mirt package Chalmers (2012)
  4. detecting DIF by using scDIFtest Debeer (2020)
  5. interpreting the results

In the sections that follow, these steps will be explained in detail.

Installation

The scDIFtest package is installed using the following commands:

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("ddebeer/scDIFtest")

Since, the mirt package Chalmers (2012) is required for fitting the IRT/FA model of interest, it should also be installed (using install.packages("mirt")).

Data preparation

In this vignette, a subset of the SPISA data is used. This data is part of the psychotree package, it can be accessed when the psychotree package is installed. To load the SPISA dataset:

install.packages("psychotree", quiet = TRUE)
data("SPISA", package = "psychotree")
data("SPISA", package = "psychotree")

The SPISA data is a subsample from the general knowledge quiz “Studentenpisa” conducted online by the German weekly news magazine SPIEGEL Trepte and Verbeet (2010). The data contain the quiz results from 45 questions as well as socio-demographic data for 1075 university students from Bavaria Trepte and Verbeet (2010). Although there were 45 questions addressing different topics, this illustration is limited to the analysis of the nine science questions (items 37 - 45). To analyze the data with mirt, the responses are converted to a data frame.

resp <- as.data.frame(SPISA$spisa[,37:45])

In addition to the responses, the SPISA data also contains five socio-demographic variables (i.e., person covariates):

summary(SPISA[,2:6])
#>     gender         age          semester   elite            spon    
#>  female:417   Min.   :18.0   2      :173   no :836   never    :303  
#>  male  :658   1st Qu.:21.0   4      :123   yes:239   <1/month :127  
#>               Median :23.0   6      :116             1-3/month:107  
#>               Mean   :23.1   1      :105             1/week   : 79  
#>               3rd Qu.:25.0   5      : 99             2-3/week : 73  
#>               Max.   :40.0   3      : 98             4-5/week : 60  
#>                              (Other):361             daily    :326

In this illustration, we will try to detect DIF along the following three covariates:

  1. age of the student in years (numeric covariate)
  2. gender of the student (unordered categorical covariate)
  3. and spon, which is the frequency of assessing the SPIEGEL ONline (SPON) magazine (ordered categorical covariate)

Fitting the IRT model using either the mirt or multipleGroup function

It is important to note that, for the package to work, the parameters in the assumed IRT model need to be be estimated using either the mirt or the multipleGroup function from the mirt-package. The multipleGroup function can model impact between groups of persons, which is not possible with the mirt function. Modeling impact is important when the goal is to detect DIF DeMars (2010). In this illustration, for instance, we test whether there is impact with respect to gender by comparing a model which allows ability differences between male and female students with a model that assumes there are no group difference in ability. The relative fit of these two models is compared, and the best fitting model is selected for the DIF analysis. The general idea is that we want to avoid (a) false cases of DIF detection that can be attributed to ability differences and (b) not detecting DIF that is masked due to not modeling ability differences.

First the mirt package is loaded in the `R} session:

library(mirt, quietly = TRUE)

Then the two models are fit and compared. Note that in general we do not recommend using verbose = FALSE, but for this vignette it is more convenient.

fit_2PL <- mirt(data = resp, 
                model = 1, 
                itemtype = "2PL", 
                verbose = FALSE)
fit_multiGroup <- multipleGroup(
  data = resp, model = 1,  
  group = SPISA$gender,
  invariance = c("free_means", 
                 "slopes", 
                 "intercepts", 
                 "free_var"),
  verbose = FALSE)

The comparison of the two models with anova yields the following results:

anova(fit_2PL, fit_multiGroup)
#>                     AIC    SABIC       HQ      BIC    logLik     X2   df   p
#> fit_2PL        10161.68 10194.16 10195.64 10251.33 -5062.843                
#> fit_multiGroup 10139.62 10175.69 10177.34 10239.22 -5049.808 26.069 -509 NaN

The multipleGroup model with ability differences between male and female test takers best fits the data (lower AIC and BIC; small p-value for the Likelihood Ratio Test). It seem like there are differences between male and female students with respect to the assessed science knowledge. Therefore, the multipleGroup model is used in the DIF detection analysis.

Detecting DIF by using scDIFtest

In the (sub)sections that follow, DIF is tested for three different covariates: gender, age and spon but only the DIF analysis for gender is explained in more detail. Yet the the used R commands are the same for any covariate. The interpretation is given for all of the covariates.

DIF by gender

To test item wise DIF along gender, the scDIFtest function is used with the fitted model object and gender as the DIF_covariate argument. Note that the scDIFtest package has to be loaded first.

library(scDIFtest)
DIF_gender <- scDIFtest(fit_multiGroup, DIF_covariate = SPISA$gender)

The resulting object is assigned to DIF_gender. For a readable version of the results The print method is available. In addition, the summary method returns a summary of the results as a data frame.

Interpreting the results

In the two subsections that follow, the results regarding the analyses of item wise DIF by gender, age and spon will be interpreted.

DIF by gender

For the gender covariate, the print method gives the following results:

DIF_gender
#> 
#>  Score Based DIF-tests for 9 items
#>  Person covariate: SPISA$gender
#>  Test statistic type: Lagrange Multiplier Test for Unordered Groups
#> 
#>    item_type n_est_pars       stat      p_value        p_fdr
#> V1       2PL          2  0.4141290 8.129672e-01 9.145881e-01
#> V2       2PL          2  8.3160143 1.563869e-02 4.691608e-02
#> V3       2PL          2  4.8448186 8.870764e-02 1.995922e-01
#> V4       2PL          2 32.7336800 7.797793e-08 7.018014e-07
#> V5       2PL          2  3.2678719 1.951599e-01 3.512879e-01
#> V6       2PL          2  0.4159239 8.122379e-01 9.145881e-01
#> V7       2PL          2 30.3498706 2.568085e-07 1.155638e-06
#> V8       2PL          2  0.1516963 9.269569e-01 9.269569e-01
#> V9       2PL          2  0.5925199 7.435941e-01 9.145881e-01

First, in three lines some general information is given:

  1. the type of test that is performed
  2. the covariate along which DIF is tested (in this case gender ) and
  3. the test statistic which is used, in this case the Lagrange-Multiplier-Test for unordered covariates, (LMuo; Merkle and Zeileis (2013), Merkle, Fan, and Zeileis (2014)).

After these three lines, a table with the main results is printed with one line for each item that was included in the DIF detection analysis. The columns of the table represent:

  1. the name of each item (in this case "V1" - "V9")
  2. item_type the type of IRT model used for each item (in this case the two-Parameter Logistic Model (2PL))
  3. n_est_pars: the number of estimated parameters for each item
  4. statistic: the value for the statistic per item (in this case the LMuo statistic)
  5. p-value: the p-value per item
  6. p.fdr: the False-Discovery-Rate corrected p-value Benjamini and Hochberg (1995)

The printed output indicates that, when a significance level of .05 is used, DIF along gender is detected in item V4 and in item V7: these two items function differently, depending on the gender of the students.

When one of more items are selected using the item_selection argument of the print method, the underlying sctest objects (or M-fluctuation tests) are printed.

print(DIF_gender, item_selection = c("V4", "V7"))
#> 
#>  DIF-test for V4
#>  Person covariate: SPISA$gender
#>  Test statistic type: Lagrange Multiplier Test for Unordered Groups
#> 
#>  M-fluctuation test
#> 
#> data:  resp
#> f(efp) = 32.734, p-value = 7.798e-08
#> 
#> 
#>  DIF-test for V7
#>  Person covariate: SPISA$gender
#>  Test statistic type: Lagrange Multiplier Test for Unordered Groups
#> 
#>  M-fluctuation test
#> 
#> data:  resp
#> f(efp) = 30.35, p-value = 2.568e-07

Note that here the uncorrected p-values are given.

DIF by age

The results for the DIF-detection analysis with age as the covariate are:

DIF_age <- scDIFtest(fit_multiGroup, DIF_covariate = SPISA$age)
summary_age <- summary(DIF_age)
summary_age
#>    item_type n_est_pars      stat     p_value      p_fdr
#> V1       2PL          2 1.0593683 0.378589381 0.56788407
#> V2       2PL          2 0.7508064 0.859981568 0.96747926
#> V3       2PL          2 1.3579483 0.097577612 0.21954963
#> V4       2PL          2 1.6092813 0.022394842 0.06718452
#> V5       2PL          2 1.0936506 0.332065265 0.56788407
#> V6       2PL          2 1.6830414 0.013809032 0.06214064
#> V7       2PL          2 0.5720341 0.989800709 0.98980071
#> V8       2PL          2 0.7729091 0.830897077 0.96747926
#> V9       2PL          2 1.9126405 0.002656469 0.02390822

In this case, the Double Maximum Test for continuous numeric orderings (dm; Merkle and Zeileis (2013), Merkle, Fan, and Zeileis (2014)) is used. The results indicate that DIF along age is detected in three items: V4 (p = 0.022), V6 (p = 0.014), and V9 ($ p = 0.003$). Note that the score-based framework has the power to detect DIF along numeric covariates, without assuming some functional form of the DIF.

DIF by spon

The results for the DIF-detection analysis with spon as the covariate are:

DIF_spon <- scDIFtest(fit_multiGroup, DIF_covariate = SPISA$spon)
DIF_spon
#> 
#>  Score Based DIF-tests for 9 items
#>  Person covariate: SPISA$spon
#>  Test statistic type: Maximum Lagrange Multiplier Test for Ordered
#>  Groups
#> 
#>    item_type n_est_pars     stat   p_value     p_fdr
#> V1       2PL          2 1.868827 0.7787533 0.8760975
#> V2       2PL          2 6.342637 0.1381920 0.4497649
#> V3       2PL          2 2.390408 0.6652287 0.8552940
#> V4       2PL          2 3.597939 0.4305609 0.6458413
#> V5       2PL          2 7.536508 0.0825242 0.4497649
#> V6       2PL          2 4.847344 0.2595673 0.5288191
#> V7       2PL          2 1.305092 0.8962553 0.8962553
#> V8       2PL          2 6.174746 0.1499216 0.4497649
#> V9       2PL          2 4.553667 0.2937884 0.5288191

In this case, the maximum Lagrange-Multiplier-Test (maxLMO; Merkle and Zeileis (2013), Merkle, Fan, and Zeileis (2014)) is used. Since all tests result in large p-values, we conclude that no DIF was detected along the spon covariate.

Conclusion

scDIFtest is a user-friendly and efficient wrapper around the sctest function of the strucchange package. scDIFtest can be used to detect item-wise DIF, along both categorical and continuous DIF covariates. Note however, that the functionality is compatible with IRT models fit using the mirt package only. For now.

References

Benjamini, Yoav, and Yosef Hochberg. 1995. “Controlling the False Discovery Rate: A Practical and Powerful Approach to Multiple Testing.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological) 57 (1): 289–300.
Chalmers, R. Philip. 2012. “mirt: A Multidimensional Item Response Theory Package for the R Environment.” Journal of Statistical Software 48 (6): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i06.
Debeer, Dries. 2020. scDIFtest: Item-Wise Score-Based DIF Tests.
DeMars, Christine E. 2010. “Type i Error Inflation for Detecting DIF in the Presence of Impact.” Educational and Psychological Measurement 70 (6): 961–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164410366691.
Merkle, Edgar C, Jinyan Fan, and Achim Zeileis. 2014. “Testing for Measurement Invariance with Respect to an Ordinal Variable.” Psychometrika 79 (4): 569–84.
Merkle, Edgar C, and Achim Zeileis. 2013. “Tests of Measurement Invariance Without Subgroups: A Generalization of Classical Methods.” Psychometrika 78 (1): 59–82.
Trepte, Sabine, and Markus Verbeet, eds. 2010. Allgemeinbildung in Deutschland - Erkenntnisse Aus Dem SPIEGEL Studentenpisa-Test. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.