Differential Item Functioning Using Item Response Theory: An Application to Attitudes towards Family Dissolution.

This paper tests the assumption that survey items that are equivalently worded are understood in the same way in different settings. The paper uses Item Response Theory (IRT) to identify items about attitudes towards family dissolution that have measurement variant characteristics (i.e. differential item functioning) across groups. The data are from the comparative project "Status of Women and Fertility" conducted in communities in India, Malaysia, Pakistan and the Philippines. The results indicate that most or all of the studied items have the same meaning within similar cultural/ linguistic countries (e.g. Pakistan) but not within heterogeneous settings (e.g. India and Malaysia).The paper also shows that respondents use different criteria in responding to attitude questions depending on the sex of the object item (i.e. whether the husband is leaving the spouse or vice versa). Pakistani, Indian, and ethnic Malay women are significantly less likely to approve of separation if the wife is leaving the spouse. Such pattern of responses is much less prevalent among men respondents. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]