Sentence examples for difficulty for all groups from inspiring English sources
To test the three hypotheses, WINSTEPS® compares the group mean scores on each item, the item difficulty to the mean difficulty for all groups on that item, and that the item DIF across all groups.
Three hypotheses will be tested: the first hypothesis is that the item has the same difficulty across two groups, the second is that the item has the same difficulty as the average difficulty for all groups, and the third hypothesis is that the item has no overall DIF across all groups (Linacre, 2004).
For the hypothesis that the item has the same difficulty as its average difficulty for all groups, statistically significant differences at an alpha level of 0.05 are shown below in Table 3 (a total of 6 items as follows: 5, 17, 23, 29, 41, 49).
14 In theory, and similar to the graduations of a metric ruler, items should have the same difficulty for all diagnostic groups, regardless of the disease being measured.
The present case provides the opportunity of 'proof of concept' for extension of cloze techniques from holistic estimation of readability to identification of specific features of specialist writing styles that may cause difficulty for particular groups of readers.
To examine whether the item manifests a different level of difficulty for different groups, the statistical method of DIF was used, meaning that some other factors or different latent traits may exist between groups that have influenced the item response.
Item bias means that an item has different difficulty for the two groups and would suggest that items scale differently for the two groups.
Differences between item difficulty specific to each diagnostic group and the mean item difficulty for all diagnoses were computed to identify disease-specific patterns of item difficulty.
The PCA was performed on the differences between item difficulty specific to each diagnostic group and the average item difficulty for all diagnoses, as these differences reflect disease-specific patterns of item difficulty.
The identification of areas of difficulty for particular demographic groups make these findings highly relevant for organisations or practitioners seeking to intervene at any of the above access points.
